4 ms·

They have to get ahead of the chain and then out compute the rest of the grid of "honest" nodes. I believe currently all clients will just accept the current bl

by dekz 16y ago

They have to get ahead of the chain and then out compute the rest of the grid of "honest" nodes. I believe currently all clients will just accept the current block chain with the most amount of work on it. So if they can drown out everyone they can spawn off their own chain, take a look at the thesis by Satoshi (http://www.bitcoin.org/sites/default/files/bitcoin.pdf http://www.bitcoin.org/sites/default/files/bitcoin.pdf) where he talks about this under Calculations.

mshron 16y ago
I believe OP is not concerned about bogus chains, but imbalances in computing power. This is not a serious problem but it looks like one on the face of it. If a massive amount of computation suddenly went into computing bitcoins there are two issues you could be worried about. The first is that it isn't very fair. The reply to this is that the current balance of money isn't fair either, we just didn't get to watch it happen. And as people have said elsewhere, it's not reasonable to expect a currency to solve social inequality. The second is that, if the cost of mining a bitcoin goes through the roof but there is not enough economy to make money on transaction fees, then people will drop out of mining. However: difficulty is not automatically increasing, it's proportionally increased or decreased relative to the difficulty of the past two weeks. If it becomes prohibitively expensive for Amazon to mine for bitcoins and they drop out, the threshold will fall again. Either way there's always an incentive to keep it running, until the system is out of coins. (edit for clarity)
- Groxx 16y ago
  >until the system is out of coins. Which won't happen. They exponentially decrease in value per block as time goes on. And to offset this, as fewer are created, they will be worth more, because by that point there will be far more people using Bitcoin (if it doesn't bust, first).
  - euccastro 16y ago
    As currently designed, the system has an absolute cap at ~21 million coins.
    - delinka 16y ago
      But if coins are [infinitely?] divisible, then the currency just undergoes deflation.
      - weavejester 16y ago
        Not infinitely, but divisible to 8 decimal places IIRC.
    - Groxx 16y ago
      Indeed they are. But their generation (via payout from successful block creation) slows exponentially. So unless we find every solution to the hash problem, which essentially can't be done, statistically speaking, the system will never stop producing some bitcoins.

by dekz 16y ago

mshron 16y ago

I believe OP is not concerned about bogus chains, but imbalances in computing power. This is not a serious problem but it looks like one on the face of it. If a massive amount of computation suddenly went into computing bitcoins there are two issues you could be worried about. The first is that it isn't very fair. The reply to this is that the current balance of money isn't fair either, we just didn't get to watch it happen. And as people have said elsewhere, it's not reasonable to expect a currency to solve social inequality. The second is that, if the cost of mining a bitcoin goes through the roof but there is not enough economy to make money on transaction fees, then people will drop out of mining. However: difficulty is not automatically increasing, it's proportionally increased or decreased relative to the difficulty of the past two weeks. If it becomes prohibitively expensive for Amazon to mine for bitcoins and they drop out, the threshold will fall again. Either way there's always an incentive to keep it running, until the system is out of coins. (edit for clarity)

Groxx 16y ago
>until the system is out of coins. Which won't happen. They exponentially decrease in value per block as time goes on. And to offset this, as fewer are created, they will be worth more, because by that point there will be far more people using Bitcoin (if it doesn't bust, first).
- euccastro 16y ago
  As currently designed, the system has an absolute cap at ~21 million coins.
  - delinka 16y ago
    But if coins are [infinitely?] divisible, then the currency just undergoes deflation.
    - weavejester 16y ago
      Not infinitely, but divisible to 8 decimal places IIRC.
  - Groxx 16y ago
    Indeed they are. But their generation (via payout from successful block creation) slows exponentially. So unless we find every solution to the hash problem, which essentially can't be done, statistically speaking, the system will never stop producing some bitcoins.