I am very confused by China's movements on bitcoin lately. They control enough of the processing nodes, and the currency, to be able to create a coordinated attack on the blockchain (2/3 majority required).
Here is another question. It is being reported that Colonial Pipeline paid $90 M to the hackers in Bitcoin. But at the same time, Elon Musk came out and said he was no longer taken bitcoin. And a few days later China says the same thing.
Yeah. It's all very strange -- can't make much sense out of it.
Luckily I moved my crypto all into ETH in 2016 (besides a small hedge in doge ?), when I saw how much control China had on BTC. Clearly China is planning something and Musk is either privy to it or has seen it in the tea leaves. I guess we'll have to wait and see.
Yes. Because one has utility and has increased substantially (percentage wise) in the last 5 years compared to the other. Also less control by bad actors.
Controlling a majority of miners just means that you have potential to double-spend your bitcoins. Once the blockchain gets long enough, only one of those transactions would be valid.
So basically controlling a majority of miners could let you default on payments, but you only get away with it for a few minutes (hour at best).
It's not just mining. It's also the processing nodes. With a majority control you can take over the block chain. Which is why its security depends on its decentralization.
Sorry, I should clarify, when I say node, I'm referring to the partial or lightweight nodes, as opposed to the full nodes (miners).
And I am concerned, because at any time if some entity controls the majority of the nodes they can completely manipulate and even crash the currency by creating false transactions and verifying it by majority consensus. And the vast majority of bitcoin and nodes are held in China (or were the last time I looked into it a few years back), which has a potential for very bad things to happen to bitcoin, given the CCP's history with currency.
This is infeasible. All transactions have an origin and a destination address. To transfer bitcoins out of the origin address you need to know the private key for that address. If you don't have that private key, it'd take thousands of years to guess it, even if you had the combined computing power of every computer on Earth.
Due to asymmetric cryptography, it's very easy for anyone to verify whether or not a transaction is legitimate.
verifying it by majority consensus
The whole system is designed in such a way that you can't just make up transactions and verify fake ones. Those blocks would immediately be rejected as invalid by everyone else.
The whole verification by consensus happens when 2 different miners solve the same block at about the same time. The blockchain forks and whichever side of the fork grows larger in a shorter amount of time becomes the accepted path, and the other side fades away as if it never happened.
But each block must be filled with valid transactions for it to be considered legitimate.
The whole system is designed in such a way that you can't just make up transactions and verify fake ones. Those blocks would immediately be rejected as invalid by everyone else.
Which only matters if "everyone else" is the majority. In this case, "everyone else" is the minority if China's bitcoin investment is coordinated. It's called the "Byzantine Generals Problem" and is the basis for all validation on a P2P network. It is not impervious to attacks, and China is situated pretty well to be able to carry it out.
Either way, just as there is no guarantee of security, there is also no guarantee of threat, and everyone is free to put their money wherever they like.
If China decides to start making fake blocks, they don't suddenly get the ability to steal Bitcoin, nor do they get the ability to deny Bitcoin transactions for others. Everyone else will immediately notice that some (or even most) miners are dishonest and ignore them.
What would they gain by buying up a majority of Bitcoin? It wouldn't prevent anyone else from buying, selling, or trading Bitcoin. I guess they could dump it at some future date and cause the value to go down, but that would only be temporary and at great cost to themselves.
There are no coincidences so the fact that the title brings up Bitcoin makes me convinced that it is somehow connected. The only thing is that others are saying it might be an underground cabal tunnel collapsing from our raging but secretive war with China. Are all 3 connected?
I am very confused by China's movements on bitcoin lately. They control enough of the processing nodes, and the currency, to be able to create a coordinated attack on the blockchain (2/3 majority required).
So why are they suddenly anti-bitcoin?
Here is another question. It is being reported that Colonial Pipeline paid $90 M to the hackers in Bitcoin. But at the same time, Elon Musk came out and said he was no longer taken bitcoin. And a few days later China says the same thing.
Yeah. It's all very strange -- can't make much sense out of it.
Luckily I moved my crypto all into ETH in 2016 (besides a small hedge in doge ?), when I saw how much control China had on BTC. Clearly China is planning something and Musk is either privy to it or has seen it in the tea leaves. I guess we'll have to wait and see.
Does it really matter when all the cryptos move together?
Yes. Because one has utility and has increased substantially (percentage wise) in the last 5 years compared to the other. Also less control by bad actors.
Controlling a majority of miners just means that you have potential to double-spend your bitcoins. Once the blockchain gets long enough, only one of those transactions would be valid.
So basically controlling a majority of miners could let you default on payments, but you only get away with it for a few minutes (hour at best).
It's not just mining. It's also the processing nodes. With a majority control you can take over the block chain. Which is why its security depends on its decentralization.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_fault
Miners ARE the processing nodes.
I'm not concerned about China having the most miners, because at any time anyone can become a miner.
Sorry, I should clarify, when I say node, I'm referring to the partial or lightweight nodes, as opposed to the full nodes (miners).
And I am concerned, because at any time if some entity controls the majority of the nodes they can completely manipulate and even crash the currency by creating false transactions and verifying it by majority consensus. And the vast majority of bitcoin and nodes are held in China (or were the last time I looked into it a few years back), which has a potential for very bad things to happen to bitcoin, given the CCP's history with currency.
This is infeasible. All transactions have an origin and a destination address. To transfer bitcoins out of the origin address you need to know the private key for that address. If you don't have that private key, it'd take thousands of years to guess it, even if you had the combined computing power of every computer on Earth.
Due to asymmetric cryptography, it's very easy for anyone to verify whether or not a transaction is legitimate.
The whole system is designed in such a way that you can't just make up transactions and verify fake ones. Those blocks would immediately be rejected as invalid by everyone else.
The whole verification by consensus happens when 2 different miners solve the same block at about the same time. The blockchain forks and whichever side of the fork grows larger in a shorter amount of time becomes the accepted path, and the other side fades away as if it never happened.
But each block must be filled with valid transactions for it to be considered legitimate.
Which only matters if "everyone else" is the majority. In this case, "everyone else" is the minority if China's bitcoin investment is coordinated. It's called the "Byzantine Generals Problem" and is the basis for all validation on a P2P network. It is not impervious to attacks, and China is situated pretty well to be able to carry it out.
Either way, just as there is no guarantee of security, there is also no guarantee of threat, and everyone is free to put their money wherever they like.
Right, and I'm telling you that the novel concept in Bitcoin is solving the Byzantine Generals Problem.
If China decides to start making fake blocks, they don't suddenly get the ability to steal Bitcoin, nor do they get the ability to deny Bitcoin transactions for others. Everyone else will immediately notice that some (or even most) miners are dishonest and ignore them.
What would they gain by buying up a majority of Bitcoin? It wouldn't prevent anyone else from buying, selling, or trading Bitcoin. I guess they could dump it at some future date and cause the value to go down, but that would only be temporary and at great cost to themselves.
Just like that..!
There are no coincidences so the fact that the title brings up Bitcoin makes me convinced that it is somehow connected. The only thing is that others are saying it might be an underground cabal tunnel collapsing from our raging but secretive war with China. Are all 3 connected?
You could be very correct!
Well considering mining supports the network it may be over for coincels.
Bagholding LTC....just when things were looking up -_-