<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body>
<p><br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 10/4/23 11:59, Phillip Hallam-Baker
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAMm+Lwh+LW47vLEW=fzrRbwhBAR7H64y6aRYUX+BWPUZBZiNvA@mail.gmail.com">
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<div dir="ltr">
<div dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br>
<div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">I don't
think the trusted role bug was solved, it was merely
deferred. The end game of the cryptocurrency world will
be mining consortiums trying to stave off bankruptcy by
unwinding the chain.</div>
</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p>That may be true but I doubt it. Unwinding the chain would
destroy the market value of any coins stolen in the attack - along
with the value of all the other coins in the chain. Picture
"success" as a huge disaster visible to the entire world, setting
off a million simultaneous sell alarms. Picture rats attempting to
outrun not just each other but also a hypersonic shockwave, in a
race to be the first to yeet themselves off an exploding ship.
Picture the attackers selling their coins at an exchange one
second after stealing them, but all the exchanges being closed
(and absolutely crushed under sell orders that can never be
executed) before the next block ever arrives.</p>
<p>Nobody wins. All the rats get pulverized in the explosion,
including the attackers.<br>
</p>
<p>There's really no upside for the attackers unless they want to
kill the system completely. When a chain more than six blocks
deep gets unwound because of a blatant mining attack, one minute
later the price of BTC will be zero. The value of BTC is
predicated on people's belief that the financial motives of the
mining consortiums are aligned with chain security. The INSTANT
the consortiums demonstrate that belief false, the value
vanishes. Which, in an odd 'meta' way, does in fact help to align
their financial motives with chain security.<br>
</p>
<p>The real problem with the trusted role bug isn't the miners,
though they're certainly problematic enough. The real problem is
that the solution didn't scale because of the bandwidth limitation
of blocks. All the keys are held by - wait for it - people in
TRUSTED ROLES at exchanges, because there's not enough transaction
bandwidth for individuals to transact in small amounts. </p>
<p>And there is - to put it MILDLY! - less reason to trust that
newly created infrastructure than there is to trust the
conventional banking infrastructure. Every trusted role that Hal
and Satoshi objected to in banking, credit, and regulatory
agencies has been recreated by cryptocurrency exchanges and
traders, along with an entire menagerie of entirely new obstacles
to the privacy and security of users that have no parallels in the
world of conventional banking.<br>
</p>
<p>Bear</p>
<p><br>
</p>
</body>
</html>