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> 2. ledgers keep transaction histories, not absolute values. to clear someone's wallet, you have to transfer his money out. you can't forge that guy's crypto s
by borplk 9y ago
> 2. ledgers keep transaction histories, not absolute values. to clear someone's wallet, you have to transfer his money out. you can't forge that guy's crypto signature.
As long as there's >50% consensus, they can do anything they want (longest chain wins).
You don't need to forge someone's crypto signature to clear their wallet.
You just stop agreeing that the guy has the 5m.
- teolandon 9y agoThe longest valid chain wins. People can't add invalid blocks to the chain and have them be accepted by the rest of the community that is not in on it. The power of >50% is that you can keep some (valid) blocks on the chain, like some payments to a service provider, for as long as you want and have them accepted by the community because that's the longest chain that everyone's seen, and collect the service for that payment. Then whenever you want release another chain, that's longer and doesn't include the payment blocks, invalidating the payment. The rest of the 49% of the users can still agree that someone has 5m, nobody's gonna take that away from them. But they're not going to be able to agree on any payments on the chain, because the 51% could invalidate them at any point.
- borplk 9y agoYes you are correct.
- billconan 9y agothat guy has his 5m from a series transactions, you will need to drop the entire bitcoin transaction history to deny him do you? You can censor him though I guess, ignore all his transactions.
- borplk 9y agoYes what I said is impractical.