Post
Topic
Board Mining speculation
Re: How to attack Bitcoin mining?
by
JohnFromWIT
on 18/08/2014, 19:42:40 UTC
Do you even have the slightest idea about how important Bitcoin Mining!!! and you want to attack it!!! Why!!!

I don't want to attack it! Half my alt-coin investment is in Bitcoin! However if someone says it may be possible to attack Bitcoin with 3/4% of the hashing power, I'd like to understand why it's wrong.

To me it seemed like, (To keep the numbers simple)...

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- If there were a $1 Billion in new coins made a year then a pool with 30% hash power could expect to earn $300 million in revenue.

- However Bitcoin margins are tight. How tight? I don't know but I doubt they're making more than $15-30 million profit.

- If 3% secret hash power (or 10% of the pool) was not submitting winning hashes, it would take $30 million of revenue from them, making them unprofitable.

- As you're part of their pool though you would still receive a 97% payout,  $27 million. So you may be at a loss too but only a $1 million or two and for that you get to make the main mining pool unprofitable.

- Hashers would leave the main unprofitable pool for the one a bad intentioned person controls, which could then easily accumulate 51% hashing power.
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Oh and withholding shares can be be detected with some smart heuristics.

That sounds like it may be an answer, why this can't work thanks!


First post didn't make sense to me, this post makes way more sense as to what you're saying.
Interesting idea, scorchingsun says you could find those withholding finds, but would this be efficient?