[Cryptography] Bitcoin, fork you very much

Jeffrey Schiller jis at mit.edu
Sat Dec 23 23:24:05 EST 2017


If China has more then 51% of the hashing power, it could simply block the
bitcoin network. This would create a network partition. One blockchain
would grow inside China while one would grow outside China. If China has
more hashing power, its blockchain would likely grow longer (deeper) then
the one outside.

Then it removes the block and the partition heals. Suddenly the inside
China blockchain is definitive, because it is deeper, and the blocks on the
chain outside China (from the time of the partition) are orphaned. Wammo,
all of the transactions in those blocks are invalidated! Now THAT would be
disruptive!

-Jeff

-- 
_______________________________________________________________________
Jeffrey I. Schiller
Information Systems and Technology – MIT App Inventor
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
77 Massachusetts Avenue  Room 32G-530
Cambridge, MA 02139-4307
617.910.0259 - Voice
jis at mit.edu, jis at qyv.net
http://jis.qyv.name
http://appinventor.mit.edu
_______________________________________________________________________
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