5 ms·

Wrong. It's every 2100 blocks. The difficulty adjust so that the rate of bitcoin generation is always 300 bitcoin per hours. Also, it's not possible to generate

by kiba 16y ago

Wrong. It's every 2100 blocks. The difficulty adjust so that the rate of bitcoin generation is always 300 bitcoin per hours. Also, it's not possible to generate more than 21 million bitcoin. Last time I heard, every 27 days, the hashrate of the network double, so it become more expensive for big dudes to own more than half of the hashing power of the network. Remember, the bulk of the computation machinery are ATI 5870 GPU farms, which are better than almost all the GPU out there for hashing. Amazon doesn't have these GPUs, and I don't know if Google possess a GPU farm. Read the FAQ at https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/FAQ https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/FAQ

kiba 16y ago
Actually, the difficulty adjustment is 2016 blocks, not 2100 blocks. Sorry for the inaccuracy. The GPU farms are actually ATI 5970, not 5870.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
tybris 16y ago
It's funny that people are adopting BitCoin without any compelling evidence that it is safe. All alarm bells should go off when you hear "security without trust". I'm sure that if BitCoin will be taken seriously, Bruce Scheier will be happy to cause the first decentralized currency crash. There are many things you can do to rip apart a peer-to-peer network. You start by generating a few million identities. Next, you start manipulating the peer sampling mechanisms to surround nodes with evil peers and create groups of evil peers ready to acknowledge transactions. Finally, you can convince surrounded nodes of pretty much anything (e.g., that the network is far smaller and younger than it actually is) unless they consult a trusted authority claiming otherwise. Of course, if you had a trusted authority you wouldn't have to go through all this trouble and you could just let it sign a bunch of coins or even handle the full transactions. It would be just like every other currency, and now you know why. By the way, anyone can rent a cheap, on-demand GPU farm from Amazon: http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/hpc-applications/ http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/hpc-applications/
- kiba 16y ago
  It's funny that people are adopting BitCoin without any compelling evidence that it is safe. All alarm bells should go off when you hear "security without trust". I'm sure that if BitCoin will be taken seriously, Bruce Scheier will be happy to cause the first decentralized currency crash. There are many things you can do to rip apart a peer-to-peer network. You start by generating a few million identities. Next, you start manipulating the peer sampling mechanisms to surround nodes with evil peers and create groups of evil peers ready to acknowledge transactions. Finally, you can convince surrounded nodes of pretty much anything (e.g., that the network is far smaller and younger than it actually is) unless they consult a trusted authority claiming otherwise. The longest blockchain are accepted as the most authoritative. Unless the evil peers are able to generate enough mining power, they can't discard transactions. While evil peers can refuse to transmit or rely transaction, it only took a single peer to connect to the authentic network. Also notes that the bitcoin network do not use any form of identities other than IP addresses themselves. So the attackers would need access to million of IP addresses to create that many evil nodes. Perhaps with an attack, it will be possible to disrupt transactions in the bitcoin network, but it will not be possible to steal money or make money disappear. However, it would need to be very carefully planned and executed. By the way, anyone can rent a cheap, on-demand GPU farm from Amazon: http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/hpc-applications/ http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/hpc-applications/ http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=1795.0 http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=1795.0 You seem to not have done the math yet.
  - tybris 16y ago
    The longest blockchain are accepted as the most authoritative. Why would the nodes be aware of the longest block chain? Unless the evil peers are able to generate enough mining power, they can't discard transactions. Lets, for the sake of the argument, assume they don't. What makes you so sure I can't make others do the work for me? While evil peers can refuse to transmit or rely transaction, it only took a single peer to connect to the authentic network. How do you know it's authentic? Also notes that the bitcoin network do not use any form of identities other than IP addresses themselves. So the attackers would need access to million of IP addresses to create that many evil nodes. or 0.0000000000000000000000000000001% of the IPv6 pool ;-) but actually, BitCount identities are public/private key pairs and you can have them in an infinite amount: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin#Addresses http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin#Addresses Also: http://www.bitcoin.org/wiki/doku.php?id=ip_address http://www.bitcoin.org/wiki/doku.php?id=ip_address You seem to not have done the math yet. You seem to assume the value of BTC is not going to increase despite them becoming increasingly hard to generate. Are you saying you expect bitcoin to fail?
rsuttongee 16y ago
What about Pixar? Couldn't they turn their renderfarm towards bitcoins and crowd everyone else out?
- fjfjfj 16y ago
  The stats I saw on Pixar's render farm is 3000 AMD processors. Without knowing the exact CPU, let's pick a reasonable estimate that each cranks out about 5 mhps. That's a total hashspeed of 15 ghps. The current bitcoin network is pumping out over 500 ghps. No one would even notice if Pixar put the whole farm on bitcoin mining.

by kiba 16y ago

kiba 16y ago

Actually, the difficulty adjustment is 2016 blocks, not 2100 blocks. Sorry for the inaccuracy. The GPU farms are actually ATI 5970, not 5870.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

tybris 16y ago

It's funny that people are adopting BitCoin without any compelling evidence that it is safe. All alarm bells should go off when you hear "security without trust". I'm sure that if BitCoin will be taken seriously, Bruce Scheier will be happy to cause the first decentralized currency crash. There are many things you can do to rip apart a peer-to-peer network. You start by generating a few million identities. Next, you start manipulating the peer sampling mechanisms to surround nodes with evil peers and create groups of evil peers ready to acknowledge transactions. Finally, you can convince surrounded nodes of pretty much anything (e.g., that the network is far smaller and younger than it actually is) unless they consult a trusted authority claiming otherwise. Of course, if you had a trusted authority you wouldn't have to go through all this trouble and you could just let it sign a bunch of coins or even handle the full transactions. It would be just like every other currency, and now you know why. By the way, anyone can rent a cheap, on-demand GPU farm from Amazon: http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/hpc-applications/ http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/hpc-applications/

kiba 16y ago
It's funny that people are adopting BitCoin without any compelling evidence that it is safe. All alarm bells should go off when you hear "security without trust". I'm sure that if BitCoin will be taken seriously, Bruce Scheier will be happy to cause the first decentralized currency crash. There are many things you can do to rip apart a peer-to-peer network. You start by generating a few million identities. Next, you start manipulating the peer sampling mechanisms to surround nodes with evil peers and create groups of evil peers ready to acknowledge transactions. Finally, you can convince surrounded nodes of pretty much anything (e.g., that the network is far smaller and younger than it actually is) unless they consult a trusted authority claiming otherwise. The longest blockchain are accepted as the most authoritative. Unless the evil peers are able to generate enough mining power, they can't discard transactions. While evil peers can refuse to transmit or rely transaction, it only took a single peer to connect to the authentic network. Also notes that the bitcoin network do not use any form of identities other than IP addresses themselves. So the attackers would need access to million of IP addresses to create that many evil nodes. Perhaps with an attack, it will be possible to disrupt transactions in the bitcoin network, but it will not be possible to steal money or make money disappear. However, it would need to be very carefully planned and executed. By the way, anyone can rent a cheap, on-demand GPU farm from Amazon: http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/hpc-applications/ http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/hpc-applications/ http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=1795.0 http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=1795.0 You seem to not have done the math yet.
- tybris 16y ago
  The longest blockchain are accepted as the most authoritative. Why would the nodes be aware of the longest block chain? Unless the evil peers are able to generate enough mining power, they can't discard transactions. Lets, for the sake of the argument, assume they don't. What makes you so sure I can't make others do the work for me? While evil peers can refuse to transmit or rely transaction, it only took a single peer to connect to the authentic network. How do you know it's authentic? Also notes that the bitcoin network do not use any form of identities other than IP addresses themselves. So the attackers would need access to million of IP addresses to create that many evil nodes. or 0.0000000000000000000000000000001% of the IPv6 pool ;-) but actually, BitCount identities are public/private key pairs and you can have them in an infinite amount: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin#Addresses http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin#Addresses Also: http://www.bitcoin.org/wiki/doku.php?id=ip_address http://www.bitcoin.org/wiki/doku.php?id=ip_address You seem to not have done the math yet. You seem to assume the value of BTC is not going to increase despite them becoming increasingly hard to generate. Are you saying you expect bitcoin to fail?

rsuttongee 16y ago

What about Pixar? Couldn't they turn their renderfarm towards bitcoins and crowd everyone else out?

fjfjfj 16y ago
The stats I saw on Pixar's render farm is 3000 AMD processors. Without knowing the exact CPU, let's pick a reasonable estimate that each cranks out about 5 mhps. That's a total hashspeed of 15 ghps. The current bitcoin network is pumping out over 500 ghps. No one would even notice if Pixar put the whole farm on bitcoin mining.