I probably did the wrong thing and should have only announced my discovery to the developers, so it could be vetted privately first. But my first reaction was how to short because if a coin killer I could earn a lot more. As I realized there is probably mitigation and also as I realized that to short I would be borrowing from the longs who are deep pocketed, that I couldn't win a shorting battle unless it was a fight to the finish and I have no desire to fight with my friend Risto nor the other developers I would like to work with in the future.
So the wisest action is to sell my insight to them if I am correct. Let them work on mitigation.
Wow, what a load of horse shit this is.
First you decide not to short because you realise you'll be profiting from a friends loss, you then decide a better course of action would be to extort the devs, while announcing to the public you have an exploit...and you know full well what that will lead to a dump...which in turn will also result in a friends loss...but hey, they can deal with that right?... you're the good guy in all this right?
So much for being an upstanding member of this community...dick.
I wanted nothing to do with it. Yesterday I received a PM from jl777 asking me how much BTC would motivate me to dig. I said 5 - 10 BTC. He then publicly offered a bounty, which BrilliantRocket upped to 10 BTC, so I felt obligated to investigate. When I awoke today, I looked at the math and didn't find the exploit I expected. So I quit.
At dinner I suddenly had an epipheny on the exploit. I initially thought I would short Monero, because it seemed it was doomed no matter what I did, because I also see another related attack against Monero because it doesn't have BBR's safety feature. I will detailing this in my next post.
But then while waiting for PMs of who would loan me XMR in sufficient size, I started to think of mitigations and then I realized if I short the whales will exhaust their BTC trying to defend and I would probably lose as mitigation would be found. Or if I won, my friend Risto could be destroyed. NFG! (no fucking good)
So then I had to decide if I do nothing, or help. I asked all by PM if we could agree on terms of the bounty.
Since I had already asked about borrowing XMR, I was being bombarded by PMs asking me if they should sell or not. I had no choice but to write a public message honestly.
Never did I intend to cause a price drop unless it would be unavoidable any way.
I agree I didn't operate calmly and methodically enough but cripes man that is too much happening in one day for an old man.
P.S. the younger CN devs have apparently gone to sleep, and my eyes are heavy now too. We've been trying to get the amplification algorithm characterized.
What are your thoughts and this 72 hour attack? do you think it is a legit concern? is it something different from what you are looking at?