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Is MML(miner money laundering) a viable concept? I thought that the transaction blocks were randomly distributed so it would be hard for a launderer to "target"

Is MML(miner money laundering) a viable concept? I thought that the transaction blocks were randomly distributed so it would be hard for a launderer to "target" a miner they trust. If someone has a bit more technical insight about whether this makes sense, or is viable I would be interested. I would also contend that even if it was trivially easy to do, it would probably make more sense to just route transactions to various wallets and then to some exchanges and into other currencies, ect. I don't know if the miner thing makes sense

maxerickson 10y ago
Presumably the high fee transaction could be withheld from the network until the block was mined. I don't know if that is possible, but if it is it would ensure that a given miner was getting those fees.
- placeybordeaux 10y ago
  There is no reason why you need to transmit any transactions. In fact your best chance of executing a double spend is similar, these kind of attacks are called finney attacks. http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/4942/what-is-a-finney-attack http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/4942/what-is-a-fi...
- wcoenen 10y ago
  It is indeed possible to withold a transaction while trying to mine it into a block But this still doesn't provide 100% certainty that you will collect the transaction fee. You risk that other miners try to orphan the block once it is published (i.e. ignore it and build on the previous one instead) in order to put the transaction in their own block.
  - CydeWeys 10y ago
    Any miner that would want to steal a block fee would have to mine two blocks in succession before the rest of the network gets another one. It's possible, but quite unlikely, and if you don't pull it off you've thrown away a lot of hashing cycles. The only way to make it probable is to control a majority of the network hashrate, but in that case, there are much larger problems afoot (i.e. a 51% attack). It does place an upper bound on the total amount of BTC that can be laundered through transaction fees on a single block, though. I won't do the math right now but it's some multiple of the block reward fee that depends on what percentage of the network hash rate you control. Fortunately (?) for the would-be launderer, the average pool is mining a good deal more than one block per day, so you just spread your laundering across a series of blocks.
  - URSpider94 10y ago
    This is an excellent point. If a block with unusually high fees comes up, you'd be well served to try to re-mine it as long as P(win)^(n+1) * fee > P(win) * mining reward, where n equals the number of blocks after the few was published. If you have a 10% chance of earning a block, you could push on for quite a while.

maxerickson 10y ago

Presumably the high fee transaction could be withheld from the network until the block was mined. I don't know if that is possible, but if it is it would ensure that a given miner was getting those fees.

placeybordeaux 10y ago
There is no reason why you need to transmit any transactions. In fact your best chance of executing a double spend is similar, these kind of attacks are called finney attacks. http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/4942/what-is-a-finney-attack http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/4942/what-is-a-fi...
wcoenen 10y ago
It is indeed possible to withold a transaction while trying to mine it into a block But this still doesn't provide 100% certainty that you will collect the transaction fee. You risk that other miners try to orphan the block once it is published (i.e. ignore it and build on the previous one instead) in order to put the transaction in their own block.
- CydeWeys 10y ago
  Any miner that would want to steal a block fee would have to mine two blocks in succession before the rest of the network gets another one. It's possible, but quite unlikely, and if you don't pull it off you've thrown away a lot of hashing cycles. The only way to make it probable is to control a majority of the network hashrate, but in that case, there are much larger problems afoot (i.e. a 51% attack). It does place an upper bound on the total amount of BTC that can be laundered through transaction fees on a single block, though. I won't do the math right now but it's some multiple of the block reward fee that depends on what percentage of the network hash rate you control. Fortunately (?) for the would-be launderer, the average pool is mining a good deal more than one block per day, so you just spread your laundering across a series of blocks.
- URSpider94 10y ago
  This is an excellent point. If a block with unusually high fees comes up, you'd be well served to try to re-mine it as long as P(win)^(n+1) * fee > P(win) * mining reward, where n equals the number of blocks after the few was published. If you have a 10% chance of earning a block, you could push on for quite a while.