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Paul Krugman. He is the author of 27 books. He has a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (qu.ax)
submitted 11 months ago by to c/videos@lemmy.world
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[–] 1 point 11 months ago (14 children)

Bitcoin (not crypto) solves the problem of centralization and control of money.

No it doesnt, 51% attack, please do hush. It's the same reason TOR is probably compromised - we can't actually detect if one has happened.

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  • [–] 6 points 11 months ago (11 children)

    I can't even fathom what the cost of trying to implement a 51% attack on bitcoin would be.

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  • [–] -1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (10 children)

    Among the many feasible vectors with which you could accomplish it: Bitmain's HQ is in Beijing, and while there is some scrutiny on the subject there has never been a (public) investigation into what's actually baked into the silicon to check and make sure there's not a 1337 backdoor or similar. Antminers are a fucking stunning percentage of the nodes out there, and although nothing like 51% of all nodes are just antminers, it still wouldn't be difficult (for a powerful nation-state) to repeat the process across multiple manufacturers and get that kind of distributed influence.

    It's completely possible that the classically imagined 51% attack has never occurred (the "muhahaha all your coins are belong to us" scenario), but having that kind of large influence over the blockchain would trivially allow for subtle manipulations that would have world-spanning impacts. We have no way of demonstrating that it's happened, nor mitigating it if it has, which is a big part of why bitcoin is regarded as such a joke by everyone that isn't part of the cult. And to be clear, I have no idea if this has happened - that's the problem, there's by design no way of checking or verifying integrity on that scale.

    Bitcoin was a half-baked idea that's only stuck around because of the speculative market.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    what’s actually baked into the silicon

    Bitmain has actually discovered and used a vulnerability in SHA256 hash function to their own benefit before. It took months, but people eventually found out.

    While the situation is concerning, it's not like there are no eyes on what bitmain is doing. These days you can reflash the software on their machines, or eve use your own custom control boards if you wish. The guys from Braiins are doing some amazing work in this regard.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago*

    Yeah, there's lots of hypothetical routes. Braiins or similar getting a poisoned repo would be my bet for a real attack, but I was mostly considering how much of an impact it would have to, say, slip a few tens of millions to a handful of TSMC (or buy 15% of NVIDIA...) design engineers to include something on the compute dies. The specific issue with ASICs is that manipulations could be present below firmware, baked in at the physical silicon level, and with modern lithographic densities there's essentially no mechanism for anyone to check to make sure that hasn't happened.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (7 children)

    I just bought another $100, thank you

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  • [–] 0 points 11 months ago* (6 children)

    Why would you think I care? The audience I'm writing for isn't you, one of the above referenced "cultists" they were talking about screaming in the comments, it's for anyone who isn't already firmly entrenched within this strange little cult. Your poor financial decisions are your own burdens to bear, don't try to offload the burden for your choices onto me.

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  • [–] 0 points 11 months ago (5 children)

    Remember this conversation. Seriously. Don't forget it.

    Obviously so you can laugh at my misfortune later, no other reason.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago* (4 children)

    No? Seriously, I don't care what you do, you aren't the topic being discussed here. This isn't about you, except in that your behavior was predicted in a deeply amusing way and that you pretty clearly don't understand how bitcoin works. You are serving as an excellent vessel to dispel that misunderstanding, though.

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  • [–] -2 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    Oh you'll remember

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (2 children)

    I feel like you really want that to be true. Is the validation you get from buying bitcoin not so much, that you must seek it out elsewhere?

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