The easy way out

Posted Nov 7, 2012 12:13 UTC (Wed) by robert_s (subscriber, #42402)
In reply to: The easy way out by Rudd-O
Parent article: Let’s Limit the Effect of Software Patents, Since We Can’t Eliminate Them (Wired)

"my currency of choice is Bitcoin"

You MUST be kidding.

If a government like the US decided to destroy bitcoin it could do it tomorrow.

There are many ways someone with the resources of the US could wage economic war on bitcoin, the simplest just being to use the enormous computing and cryptanalysis capability they have to just destroy its value or make the market so volatile it's unusable.

The easy way out

Posted Nov 7, 2012 21:17 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (5 responses)

Actually, it won't work because the number of bitcoins is limited by design (with about 25% of total coins already minted).

However, bitcoin markets are slowly destroying themselves just fine - they are a prime example of a deflationary spiral and why it's not good for economy.

The easy way out

Posted Nov 9, 2012 11:03 UTC (Fri) by robert_s (subscriber, #42402) [Link] (4 responses)

It'll absolutely work. The number may be limited by design, but someone with enough computing power could be the one to farm effectively *all* of them as they become available before anyone else gets the chance.

Or someone with enough computing power might cause bitcoin to ramp up their "work proof" hardness, to the point that normal people can't really compete.

And this is totally ignoring the possibility of finding any cryptographic flaws in the algorithms which could make fraud (or "theft" - don't know what you'd call it) easy.

The easy way out

Posted Nov 9, 2012 15:42 UTC (Fri) by apoelstra (subscriber, #75205) [Link] (1 responses)

> Or someone with enough computing power might cause bitcoin to ramp up their "work proof" hardness, to the point that normal people can't really compete.

The bitcoin network is currently doing roughly 25 trillion (10^12) hashes per second. It is the most powerful computing network in the world, so somebody would need to invest a -lot- of money, and a -lot- of power for a -lot- of time to muck with it in any meaningful way.

> And this is totally ignoring the possibility of finding any cryptographic flaws in the algorithms which could make fraud (or "theft" - don't know what you'd call it) easy.

This would be very bad -- and not just for bitcoin, but for everything using ECC.

The easy way out

Posted Nov 11, 2012 1:15 UTC (Sun) by robert_s (subscriber, #42402) [Link]

"This would be very bad -- and not just for bitcoin, but for everything using ECC."

Even with theoretically perfect cryptography algorithms it is *very* difficult to design the surrounding mechanisms in a way that is immune to attack.

I mean even SSL/TLS protocol designers and implementers don't get it 100% right.

The easy way out

Posted Nov 9, 2012 17:57 UTC (Fri) by jackb (guest, #41909) [Link] (1 responses)

Or someone with enough computing power might cause bitcoin to ramp up their "work proof" hardness, to the point that normal people can't really compete.

"Normal people" don't have any need to solve blocks. Ramping up the difficulty has no effect at all on most Bitcoin users.

The easy way out

Posted Nov 11, 2012 1:16 UTC (Sun) by robert_s (subscriber, #42402) [Link]

"Normal people" here meaning anyone who isn't the US (or, I suppose, Chinese) government.