Post
Topic
Board Development & Technical Discussion
Re: 51% Attack
by
stompix
on 19/02/2020, 02:24:54 UTC
Quote
look around your house and you will see china in every corner

China has 2 trillion in exports, just the EU (not Europe) has 5.5, if everything in your house is made in China, your house is made in Germany!!!!

you seem to have gotten things mixed up a bit, the example you used is PPP per capita which is pretty dependant on the population size,

Both GDP and GDP PPP have a per capital value, and in both cases is it divided by population.
I showed you that example because although in PPP terms they make 26k$ a year, in real life where it matters they only do 12k$!
And at the end of the year, they can't afford 2,6 BTC because BTC doesn't give a damn about PPP but about real $, with PPP $ you might buy bitcoin cash or bitcoin gold but not BTC.  Grin

But yeah, we're going off-topic, let's continue this (if) in the economics section.
Back to the mining

anyone who has both power and money can potentially and easily accumulate all the hashrate they need, in fact, the Chinese president now does "technically" have control over all the mining farms in China and can perform the attack if he wants, but you are suggesting that he probably wouldn't, therefore there is no risk?

There is always the risk, that doesn't mean it will happen, and with almost nothing, we can really do, so, what's the point of not sleeping the nights?
And if someone is bent on spending billions or tens of billions attacking it continuously, even if we find a bulletproof solution to a 51% attack, there is still the possibility of a Sybil attack then....

If we talk about somebody with unlimited money, unlimited political power, nothing is safe!

There must be, it's to be or not to be, in 2041 BTC has to be worth nearly half a million dollars  for the chain to be as secured against 51% as is today, if it's worth only 100k then it will be 80% less secure than it is now.

I do believe in the role of economy, more people and businesses owning bitcoin gives it more value and more security as whoever uses it should at some point "invest" a portion of what they have to secure the network, I don't discard that role, but there is nothing wrong with planning for a technical-based solution rather than completely counting on the assumption that "nobody will perform a 51% because it's expensive or difficult".

Hihi, I remembered we had a discussion like that, and on this, we agree!

I think that at one point the big business in crypto will have no choice but to take care of a part of the burden involved in securing the chain.
When you're doing millions in trading, you're having thousands of users with your bitcoin card, you're getting millions in bets the last thing you want is this all of this to go down forever, not just the price going down as business will continue even with BTC at 1k, think Silkroad for example, but completely down with the chain unsecured and 51% making a mess of it and faith in cryptos fucked forever.

So, once there will be signs of dangers the big guys in this will have to protect their business.