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Would it be possible for someone to deliver the 'death blow' to Bitcoin right now, by DDOS-ing the network or flooding it with even more transactions, includin

• ianpurton 10y ago
  Not really. Invalid transaction wouldn't get propagated so you'd need valid ones and they cost money. So an attack has a cost per hour and this cost is pretty high.
  • pjc50 10y ago
    Only confirmed transactions cost money. So in theory you could send each miner a different double-spend, which they'd have to hang on to until either they confirmed it or received a contradictory confirmed transaction.
    • csomar 10y ago
      You can't really send a different double-spend to each miner. In my experience, the transaction will be propagated in 1-3 seconds. Each miner will pick the one it prefers (some prefer first seen, some prefer highest fee)
  • shshhdhs 10y ago
    Couldn't an attacker with multiple accounts just pay themselves?
    • Taek 10y ago
      You have to pay transaction fees to the miners.
      • shshhdhs 10y ago
        And what if the attackers were also the miners. Unless I am missing something, shouldn't the fee be zero-sum?
• Taek 10y ago
  No, Bitcoin is configured to favor high fee transactions. Any sort of fee-based attack can be ignored by paying higher fees than the attacker.