(quoted post by user)
Hi. (I’m sorry if I don’t understand any concept). What you think if anyone intruder will buy up bitcoin currency and erase all binary data. This way can destroy bitcoin systems. Is btc network protected against that attack?
(Hypnotically) If I run any two (or more) unique e-currency exchanger I can displace btc e-currency from it circulation. I seems, “truly” system must include mechanisms that protect self from any fraud activity. And what do you think?
2Developers and BTC-system designers: please, join to discussion
I don’t think you understood my point.
It is a lot easier to arrest and lock up the prominent bitcoin users than to manipulate the market. Like it was pointed out, a market is not just a single currency, it can be a lot of different types of currency and goods. Trying to manipulate one end or the other would be difficult. It is better to just get the people - fear of being arrested is much more effective than trying to shake up confidence in the currency.
Destroying a large amount of currency just causes deflation and makes the remaining currency that much more desirable - imagine if you had a pallet of gold bars in your garage and nobody else did.
Maybe you don’t agree with my assessment of the situation but what you posted was far from constructive.
In response to your original post, I don’t believe the situation you describe is a big risk.
Quote from: laszlo on July 08, 2010, 05:25:25 PM
I don’t think you understood my point.
Ok, let’s elaborate It.
You wrote:
Quote from: laszlo on July 08, 2010, 05:25:25 PM
It is a lot easier to arrest and lock up the prominent bitcoin users than to manipulate the market.
But I write earlier:
Quote from: user on July 07, 2010, 06:15:28 PM
What you think if anyone intruder will buy up bitcoin currency and erase all binary data. This way can destroy bitcoin systems. Is btc network protected against that attack?
And If you try to lookup subject carefully you can find:
I don’t discuss in another attack that you indicated (I understand you idea: attack to system through people).
Ok. Follow next.
Quote from: laszlo on July 08, 2010, 05:25:25 PM
Maybe you don’t agree with my assessment of the situation but what you posted was far from constructive.
The main idea why I begin this thread:
Quote from: user on July 07, 2010, 08:57:27 PM
I seems, “truly” system must include mechanisms that protect self from any fraud activity.
Quote from: laszlo on July 08, 2010, 05:25:25 PM
In response to your original post, I don’t believe the situation you describe is a big risk.
But I think that It will be better if in design-time developers build mechanisms that decrease potential of fraudulent ability. And you?
Please, explain me if I am wrong. I want to understand you reflections.
You can’t destroy them all, more will be generated constantly. That 21 million number is not going to be reached in the foreseeable future. As you know, the generation algorithm adjusts itself to slow the generation rate intentionally.
It is unnecessary to protect against an attack in which an attacker buys all Bitcoins and deletes their wallet.
Assuming we were all willing to sell, the attacker would just give us large amounts of cash for our Bitcoins. We could then start another Bitcoin block chain and start over from square one (only with a much larger confidence in the market, since it worked once!) and reinvest that money if we wanted.
Essentially, no matter what happens there is always the nuclear option of “starting over.”
There are much more dangerous and likely attacks to be worried about.
What the OP described is called “cornering the market”. When someone tries to buy all the world’s supply of a scarce asset, the more they buy the higher the price goes. At some point, it gets too expensive for them to buy any more. It’s great for the people who owned it beforehand because they get to sell it to the corner at crazy high prices. As the price keeps going up and up, some people keep holding out for yet higher prices and refuse to sell.
The Hunt brothers famously bankrupted themselves trying to corner the silver market in 1979: “Brothers Nelson Bunker Hunt and Herbert Hunt attempted to corner the world silver markets in the late 1970s and early 1980s, at one stage holding the rights to more than half of the world’s deliverable silver.[1] During Hunt’s accumulation of the precious metal silver prices rose from $11 an ounce in September 1979 to nearly $50 an ounce in January 1980.[2] Silver prices ultimately collapsed to below $11 an ounce two months later,[2] much of the fall on a single day now known as Silver Thursday, due to changes made to exchange rules regarding the purchase of commodities on margin.[3]”