Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: 51% attack, possible with segwith2x?
by
drzed
on 08/11/2017, 10:13:18 UTC
So I've been reading an article on Coindesk recently, about a new possibility of a 51% attack.

Link here, https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoins-bogeyman-cometh-segwit2x-51-attack/.

From what I understood, it is the ability of a miner with 51% hashing power of the whole network to be able to control bitcoin transactions. They can possibly not confirm a transaction, change a transaction, and other awful effects. This attack almost happened 3 years ago with ghash.io mining pool almost reaching 51% (they were so close, when they reached 50% hashing power).

Now, fast forward to today, this attack is again looking possible because, from what I read, the segwit2x was being pushed by a group of miners, that, if combined, will result to 80% of the hashing power of the world. Well that is assuming the pool members will not leave their respective pools that joined the new york agreement. From my further readings, the people that met for the new york agreement had a close door meeting, hence there is no clear information that discloses what they talked about in there.

What if these people colluded to attack bitcoins using the 51% attack? Do you guys think this is a possibility and will those entities that are pushing for segwit2x attack the network?

You don't even have to have the full 51%. This is a real danger and there are solutions. I am not sure why the community hasn't been more vocal about this.

What if a country decided to launch a 51% attack on Bitcoin? China could do it quite quickly. North Korea? The cost of launching attacks to these countries is nothing.

Having said all this there are many Altcoins that as we speak have over 51% of the hashing power in the hand of one entity. Often mining pools. It's quite common and happened to Litecoin a couple of years back I think.