[Cryptography] Bitcoin compute power (was Re: Aggregate signatures)

Lodewijk andré de la porte l at odewijk.nl
Tue Jun 10 18:30:57 EDT 2014


Adoptation is another issue. You can have a faster-growing blockchain fork,
but if it isn't valid every full node would reject it. "Valid" means
validating according to the given rules. This is what happens every time
Bitcoin switches to a newer protocol.

These protocols can have sufficient overlap that some transactions go into
both forks, and many go in one but not the other. For users that's hell. So
it's been avoided so far.

If ghash.io forces a fork it's most likely frowned upon by everyone else
and nobody hops on the boat, 'cause their clients don't do it.

It's a very complicated attack model, let's just say that. It complicates a
whole range of attacks, not just this one. It's pretty mental sometimes.
Bottom line is that it's more robust than you thought it was, because all
it does is timestamping (see bitcoin paper).

2014-06-10 23:36 GMT+02:00 Phillip Hallam-Baker <phill at hallambaker.com>:

> The Internet removes the middle man, BitCoin is a Ponzi scheme that
> removes the need for a Bernie Madoff running it.
>

Nope. Not if you use the word "Ponzi scheme" as it would seem that you
should use it.
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