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> He then provided a screenshot showing that Binance had since increased their BTG withdrawal requirement to 20 confirmations. The journalist has missed an imp
by est31 7y ago
> He then provided a screenshot showing that Binance had since increased their BTG withdrawal requirement to 20 confirmations.
The journalist has missed an important part of the github gist that their story bases on:
> Based on Nicehash market price data for Zhash we estimate the cost of generating each reorg at around 0.2 BTC (~$1,700) and the attacker would have recouped around the same value in block rewards. Therefore, it is possible that the attacks were profitable if the double-spends succeeded at defrauding the attacker's counterparty, or break-even if the double-spends were unsuccessful. This suggests that a confirmation requirement on the order of tens of blocks for BTG is still far too few to make the budget constraint to launch an attack significant.
- Misdicorl 7y agoDouble spends are an inefficient way to profit from an attack, they're merely the advertising/marketing angle. The real profit will come from shorting the currency and capitalizing on the subsequent crash due to the crisis in confidence.
- wmf 7y agoIf you can short such an obscure coin and if there's a crash. Sometimes these attacks are already priced in.
- snarf21 7y agoI think the point they were making is that you keep double spending until it does. You profit or you profit very very big. It doesn't seem like news of a double spend would ever cause a pop.
- wmf 7y agoI would expect the probability of a crash to go down with each attack. The first attack is novel but the nth is not.
- johnbrodie 7y agoBut how do you go about shorting these coins? There's not an obvious way to short them, like traditional stocks.
- totony 7y agoCryptocurrency exchanges are pretty involved nowadays, iirc they offer short on most