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Breaking SHA256 does not allow any party to "print bitcoin". It lets them be more successful at mining it, but the same amount per block will be generated, and
by NkVczPkybiXICG 14y ago
Breaking SHA256 does not allow any party to "print bitcoin". It lets them be more successful at mining it, but the same amount per block will be generated, and the difficulty still adjusts to 1 block every 10 minutes.
All they'd be doing is screwing miners out of profits.
- logn 14y agoDepending on how much you can exploit SHA256 you could take all chance out of getting the longest block and earn the new coins or fees as often as you want. I don't know the specifics of the moving average of difficulty but you might be able to game it by backing off and letting the difficulty reset before finding the right hashes quickly again. If you're already starting at 5% of the coins, and you're steadily gaining more, and the currency is tending to deflate, that sounds pretty close to printing money. Sure you're constrained but so is the Fed today in its abilities to print money effectively. Additionally, having so many BTCs pretty much ensures you can find a way to continue bettering your financial situation, generating interest or something more creative.
- cjg 14y agoThe difficulty reaches a maximum when the target hash is 0. If SHA256 is broken so badly that you can calculate a set of inputs to produce a particular output (0 in this case) then bitcoin can't make it any harder. You could mine a block as quickly as you could calculate valid inputs.
- runeks 14y agoBitcoin would break with a compromised SHA256. If pre-image attacks on SHA256 become possible, one can replace transactions in the block chain with ones own transactions. A SHA256 hash identifies each transaction, and if you can produce a transaction with the same hash, but one that pays to you instead, you can replace transactions in the block chain with ones that pay to you.