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The old question about how one eats an elephant comes to mind... you've expressed such a fundamental misunderstanding that the only sensible correction is: YOU

The old question about how one eats an elephant comes to mind... you've expressed such a fundamental misunderstanding that the only sensible correction is: YOU ARE WRONG, START OVER. For example, this: > ..make the current chain say anything I want, like give me all the BTC.. You know that transactions are cryptographically secured by public and private keys, right? That would be like saying "I can h4x0r all the hotmails and rewrite every PGP armored message to say whatever I want!" Do you think that miners, upon building the next block, have the opportunity to ignore all the rules with regard to PKI? > ..and it would become valid.. There is a very straightforward block validation sequence, your attack would impotently collapse against it for any number of reasons: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Protocol_rules https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Protocol_rules > I have read the white paper. No you didn't. Sorry to have to put it so bluntly, but you couldn't have read it and still be so comically wrong - like I said, it is written in very plain language.

zie 5y ago
I don't think you understand software like you think you do. Those protocol rules do exist, and yes cryptography is involved, obviously, but those rules exist because the miners all agree on it, see: BIP2: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0002.mediawiki https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0002.mediawi... I.e. These rules CHANGE, and since they change(and have changed in the past) if you can convince a majority, you can change the rules to be whatever you want. Also see: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Economic_majority https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Economic_majority Which is exactly what I said. If I have 51% of mining I can make BTC do whatever I want, but that doesn't mean the majority(or any) of the exchanges will accept it, which is basically what the above is saying. Also see: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin_is_not_ruled_by_miners https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin_is_not_ruled_by_miners Again, what they are saying is what I've said, they just put flowery language around it saying, see, miners can't do EVEYRTHING, which isn't technically true, but practically true. Miners can technically do whatever the hell they want, assuming they have the majority, but that doesn't mean exchanges like Coinbase will accept it and exchange the BTC for USD. so what I said above is generally and technically true, see my other comment in this thread as well, where I said it would be a giant mess and likely ruin BTC forever if someone ever did execute a 51% attack. So there is little incentive(financial or otherwise) to do so. The closest real-life example we have(that I'm aware of) is the BTC cash stuff, where it hard-forked and became it's own crypto currency because they couldn't get a majority to agree, but enough agreed to fork themselves.
- sennight 5y ago
  > I don't think you understand software like you think you do. Sorry, can't hear you above the noise of your furious backpedaling. If somebody rewrites the protocol rules in their software to allow anything approaching what you've described (lol, "yes cryptography is involved"), then why are they worried about btc hashing power? I mean, you specifically said: > If I had >50% hashing power of BTC(for exactly 1 transaction), I can make the current chain say anything I want, like give me all the BTC, and it would become valid and "permanent". I'll tell you what it would look like to the rest of the network if anybody enacted your diabolical plot: suddenly somebody starts submitting invalid blocks to the network at regular intervals and only those who are monitoring for weird traffic like that even notice, then the block solve rate slightly sags until the difficulty automatically adjusts. Congratulations, you've turned your massive hashing advantage into an incredibly expensive joke.
- ric2b 5y ago
  > I.e. These rules CHANGE, and since they change(and have changed in the past) if you can convince a majority, you can change the rules to be whatever you want. False, everyone running a node is enforcing whatever rules their node is written to enforce. You could have 99% of the hashpower, if you generated a block saying that Coinbase is handing over all their Bitcoin to you (with an invalid signature because you don't have their private key), their node and the nodes of most/all exchanges and businesses would just go "lol, wtf is this shit, not a valid block because it has a transaction with an invalid signature, ignored". A majority of hashpower is not the same as a majority of economic participants.

zie 5y ago

I don't think you understand software like you think you do. Those protocol rules do exist, and yes cryptography is involved, obviously, but those rules exist because the miners all agree on it, see: BIP2: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0002.mediawiki https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0002.mediawi... I.e. These rules CHANGE, and since they change(and have changed in the past) if you can convince a majority, you can change the rules to be whatever you want. Also see: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Economic_majority https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Economic_majority Which is exactly what I said. If I have 51% of mining I can make BTC do whatever I want, but that doesn't mean the majority(or any) of the exchanges will accept it, which is basically what the above is saying. Also see: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin_is_not_ruled_by_miners https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin_is_not_ruled_by_miners Again, what they are saying is what I've said, they just put flowery language around it saying, see, miners can't do EVEYRTHING, which isn't technically true, but practically true. Miners can technically do whatever the hell they want, assuming they have the majority, but that doesn't mean exchanges like Coinbase will accept it and exchange the BTC for USD. so what I said above is generally and technically true, see my other comment in this thread as well, where I said it would be a giant mess and likely ruin BTC forever if someone ever did execute a 51% attack. So there is little incentive(financial or otherwise) to do so. The closest real-life example we have(that I'm aware of) is the BTC cash stuff, where it hard-forked and became it's own crypto currency because they couldn't get a majority to agree, but enough agreed to fork themselves.

sennight 5y ago
> I don't think you understand software like you think you do. Sorry, can't hear you above the noise of your furious backpedaling. If somebody rewrites the protocol rules in their software to allow anything approaching what you've described (lol, "yes cryptography is involved"), then why are they worried about btc hashing power? I mean, you specifically said: > If I had >50% hashing power of BTC(for exactly 1 transaction), I can make the current chain say anything I want, like give me all the BTC, and it would become valid and "permanent". I'll tell you what it would look like to the rest of the network if anybody enacted your diabolical plot: suddenly somebody starts submitting invalid blocks to the network at regular intervals and only those who are monitoring for weird traffic like that even notice, then the block solve rate slightly sags until the difficulty automatically adjusts. Congratulations, you've turned your massive hashing advantage into an incredibly expensive joke.
ric2b 5y ago
> I.e. These rules CHANGE, and since they change(and have changed in the past) if you can convince a majority, you can change the rules to be whatever you want. False, everyone running a node is enforcing whatever rules their node is written to enforce. You could have 99% of the hashpower, if you generated a block saying that Coinbase is handing over all their Bitcoin to you (with an invalid signature because you don't have their private key), their node and the nodes of most/all exchanges and businesses would just go "lol, wtf is this shit, not a valid block because it has a transaction with an invalid signature, ignored". A majority of hashpower is not the same as a majority of economic participants.