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Also I looked at your Google search and could not find anyone talking about a block chain. I would be surprised if someone proposed a digital currency based on
by josephagoss 14y ago
Also I looked at your Google search and could not find anyone talking about a block chain. I would be surprised if someone proposed a digital currency based on a blockchain before Satoshi, because that is the unique insight he is held in high regard for.
- Sure some of the links in the Google search have lots of complicated schemes for a digital currency, but I think its the simplicity of the Bitcoin system that is unique.
- Also I hear the system itself can only be attacked via brute force, do you claim this is not the case?
- betterunix 14y ago"Also I hear the system itself can only be attacked via brute force, do you claim this is not the case?" The best known double-spending attack on Bitcoin requires work equal to the sum of all work done by the honest parties in the system. That is not a very high security margin; by comparison, attacking many of the systems from the Google search would require work that is exponential in the parameters of the system, while the honest parties only do work that is polynomial in those parameters. Forcing the attacker to do exponential work in the system parameters is the typical requirement for a cryptosystem to be "secure," and thus Bitcoin is not actually secure under the commonly accepted notions of security (at least among cryptographers).
- josephagoss 14y agoAgain you make a good point. It seems the 51% attack problem is glossed over a lot in the forums. I guess everyone is hoping that after a couple of years there will be millions of ASIC devices and this will be enough to ensure the 51% issues. But of course it can never be fully solved.