Quote from: o_e_l_e_o on Today at 07:52:28 AM

You might also be interested to read this post, which describes how a miner can double spend a transaction with one confirmation: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=36788.msg463391#msg463391.

Nice read. I have taken the opportunity to read the thread as well, from twelve years ago. In the end, the conclusion I reach with this thread is the same as the one reached by a forum member in that thread. Basically that making such scam attempts could only cross the mind of a miner with large amounts:

Quote from: indio007 on August 15, 2011, 05:08:19 AM

I think it's more profitable to stay honest and rake in all those fees than try to spoof the block chain. Especially if it works and they get caught.Bitcoin will be declared worthless by the world.

And the one who answered him I think he was wrong:

Quote from: cunicula on August 15, 2011, 06:35:44 AM

For now. In future years, generation rates will become low and fees will remain meager. Alternative revenue models will become more attractive.

Apart from that:

Quote from: ranochigo on Today at 08:05:05 AM

The caveat being that the amount that you're depositing has to be more than your block reward at least for the attack to the worthwhile. Given how well the mining pools are connected to each other, it's unlikely that your block would be able to propagate faster than them so the scenario whereby your block gets stale is much more likely. The minimum cost for this attack would likely be more than the block reward, if you were to factor everything in.

It would also fail if the person receiving the funds sees the other block first with how the topology of Bitcoin network is designed. A more worthwhile attack would be the selfish mining, where an attacker tries to withhold and generate blocks faster than the rest.

I think that for a miner to think seriously about that nowadays it should be quite a bit more than block reward, I believe you here think in mathematics only.

If a miner can earn $170K or more by mining a block honestly, why would he try to scam someone for only $180K? That someone might later try to track him down to get revenge for the scam or be reported and wanted by the police.

With these considerations I conclude that this type of attempts, although possible, are quite improbable nowadays. In the thread cited by o_e_l_e_o perhaps the case that the OP tells is a case of this style, but the price at that time was like $1, and the block reward of 50 Bitcoins. It would be worth a dishonest miner's while to try for a few thousand dollars. Plus there were more individual miners, mining from a laptop from home, it wasn't as concentrated as it is now.

This is the reading I make, although obviously I am aware that I know much less about the subject than you do and I am open to your clarifications and corrections.