ht @eiainehttps://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-16/bitcoin-and-other-cryptocurrencies-are-open-about-being-at-risk …
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Such confidence in Bitcoin is splendid, but a 94,500 BTC tx tempts fate. If recipient can make that much from reversing the tx, they can afford to run a 51% attack for more than 40 days. Big if & very visible, but security here depends more on trust & less on the protocol itself.https://twitter.com/whale_alert/status/1169815776733220866 …
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If this is a tx internal to an organization, while that doesn't make it risk free (indeed just trusting employees with custody can be risky), their key management & other internal controls, not raw difficulty of reversing BTC tx, is their main protection for such a large amount.
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^ s/recipient/sender/ (i.e. sender of the BTC, recipient of some presumptive benefit traded for the BTC, although in this case it was a consolidation and likely just internal to an organization).
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That’s comparing the cost of the re-org to the value of the transaction, without considering the crash in price that would occur if such a reorg took place, due to loss of confidence in BTC, or due to them market selling such huge quantity immediately after the reorg.
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If attacker exchanged the later-reversed BTC for something non-BTC of same value, & incurred no external costs (e.g. law enforcement) -- a big if, but the trust minimizing assumption -- price must tank 100% before attacker could double-spend, else still has some profit.
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Are there any non-btc transactions of this size which cannot be reversed at least as easily as the attack you describe? Is that even possible? Maybe a very large black market art or drug deal? Or and exchange of gold between nation states?
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We should strongly discourage making Bitcoin security dependent on speculations about reversing any of myriad of possible things externally, e.g. the costs of reversing another crytocurrency blockchain (probably a Bitcoin competitor) in a crypto-for-crypto exchange.
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If Bitcoin isn't robust than it isn't robust, right? It's a great point but the security of Bitcoin shouldn't be dependent on unappealing block amounts, correct?
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The security of everything in the world is dependent on the costs and benefits to the attacker of breaching that security.
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"Participants should either wait longer to confirm payment, or transact in smaller amounts."
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1/ Coordinating a 51 percent attack is a logistical nightmare itself. However, bitcoin game theory takes an interesting turn here
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Pools participating in this attack now have their participants bitcoin hardware investment lose value as the price of bitcoin tanks. Miners and pools go out of business and its the end of the industry.
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Its in miners and pools best interest to maintain a just bitcoin chain to maximise investment return on their hardware. A one time profit from such an event dwarves the future expected return from honestly mining bitcoin on the longest chain.
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Vague, hand-waving nonsense.
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Why such high fees (600-ish euros) for this tax ? Genuine question.
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It was likely a company doing an internal tx, not very price sensitive, the difference between $600 and $60 for this probably negligible compared to their key management & other internal control costs of having employees handle that much BTC.
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Thank you for taking the time Mr Szabo. I guess that, had they cared, they could have moved them for cheaper right ?
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Yep they could, imagine lowballing and have 97000 BTC waiting in the mempool though :)
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