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A malicious miner successfully executed a double spend attack on the Bitcoin Gold network last week, making BTG at least the third altcoin to succumb to a network attack during that timespan.
[...] To execute the attack, the miner acquired at least 51 percent of the network's total hashpower, which provided them with temporary control of the blockchain. Obtaining this much hashpower is incredibly expensive — even on a smaller network like bitcoin gold — but it can be monetized by using it in tandem with a double spend attack.
After gaining control of the network, the attacker began depositing BTG at cryptocurrency exchanges while also attempting to send those same coins to a wallet under their control. Ordinarily, the blockchain would resolve this by including only the first transaction in the block, but the attacker was able to reverse transactions since they had majority control of the network.
Consequently, they were able to deposit funds on exchanges and quickly withdraw them again, after which they reversed the initial transaction so that they could send the coins they had originally deposited to another wallet.
A bitcoin gold address implicated in the attack has received more than 388,200 BTG since May 16 (mostly from transactions it sent to itself). Assuming all of those transactions were associated with the double spend exploit, the attacker could have stolen as much as $18.6 million worth of funds from exchanges.
The last transaction was sent on May 18, but the attacker could theoretically attempt to resume it if they still have access to enough hashpower to gain control of the blockchain.
Bitcoin gold's developers advised exchanges to address the attack by increasing the number of confirmations required before they credit deposits to customer accounts. Blockchain data indicates that the attacker successfully reversed transactions as far back as 22 blocks, leading developers to advise raising confirmation requirements to 50 blocks.
Bitcoin Gold appears to use a standard ~10 min block rate so the new recommendation is for exchanges to hold funds for ~8 hours before clearing them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 24 2018, @08:28PM (9 children)
Mildly amusing, but you can't even get the "evil capitalist" part correct so meh.
Oddly enough you are pretty close to the mark as to how things could actually be. Humans want to be useful, if all work was actually necessary and useful we wouldn't have a problem getting people to do the work that keeps humanity's activities running. We could do away with a LOT of bullshit work only necessary to keep the bean counters happy.
Basically our imaginary "money" has become the object of worship and we create entire industries around it that in reality are not necessary. The pursuit of money, and the limitations that "economics" imposes upon human activity is actually one of the more insane aspects of our modern society. It is not easy to switch out of the system, but just because you don't realize the problems and potential solutions doesn't make our Capitalist system "OK". There is a place for free market economics, but it should be much MUCH smaller than it is. Hell, capitalism is the direct cause of the marketing nightmare we live in.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday May 24 2018, @09:04PM (7 children)
A major obstruction to ending the nightmare is that it is objectively better than most previous nightmares within living memory. So many people "have it better today than ever before" that any efforts at change are resisted and rejected without much consideration.
It's starting to turn around: when my father went to college (late '60s), you could work menial summer jobs like pumping gas and save enough money to pay state University tuition for the whole academic year - if you managed to get a degree, that could leapfrog your income all the way up to a point where a working couple could afford a new house in the suburbs and a couple of new cars. Today the houses are bigger, the cars are fancier, but the ability to bootstrap up from nothing to get them is starting to falter - everything is getting to be out-of-reach if you don't win some sort of lottery (the most common being: born to money.)
If you can stand a sappy chick-flick, Anne Hathaway in Becoming Jane does a nice job of painting the economic picture of late 1700s England. After 175 years of "improving" from that situation, I feel like we're headed back there in a big hurry.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday May 26 2018, @03:07AM (6 children)
Expensive luxury homes and cars aren't a valid measure of what you should be "reaching" for, much less be "everything" that one could reach for. Maybe you should look into living in a lower cost of living area and just skip that above nonsense?
Why would that happen? You haven't mentioned anything that would turn back the clock 200+ years to the extreme social stratification of then. Funny how we transitioned from the mild troubles mentioned in the first paragraph to this dire threat.
I think there's a simple solution here - don't measure your success that way.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday May 26 2018, @11:56AM (5 children)
And they are not what "I" reach for... judging by market trends of what is being built and bought, it is what "we" as a nation and even a species are reaching for.
You tell me, what was so dire about the 1700s?
By "my" measure of success, the 1700s have an additional 300 years of future without ecological disaster, they're looking pretty good compared to today.
What's really going to suck is when we get the ecological / overpopulation disaster of 2100 coupled with the economic disparity of the 1700s.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday May 26 2018, @09:19PM (4 children)
Are you judging by market trends or are you saying shit?
Such as the already mentioned social stratification and dying from curable diseases?
Because the 1700s led to today, they are exactly as bad as today.
Good think we're not heading that way, right?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday May 26 2018, @09:50PM (3 children)
It's just shit, we all know that housing hasn't grown in square footage per person since the 1940s... no references required.
Making almost as much sense as the first quote above.
If that's what you think, just die happy - like our JW relatives and boomer parents - they'll be dead before the shit hits the fan, so why not deny it and enjoy the ride today. My boomer asshole relatives live on waterfront, but sea level rise doesn't bother them in the least because they're already 70.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday May 27 2018, @12:53AM (2 children)
And that was relevant how? You still haven't supported your earlier claim. Instead, to the contrary you ignore both that square footage varies hugely in price and that most of the cost of a home in high cost regions is in the land not in the square feet of habitable space on that land.
And yet it's true. A reset to the 1700s means one does this all over, perhaps not being so lucky with respect to dealings with tyranny or existential threats like nuclear or biological warfare.
A rise of a few meters of sea level over a couple of centuries is not even a threat we would notice. It's tiresome going from nebulous threat to nebulous threat without something serious ever happening. In the meantime, we're seeing the greatest elevation of humanity out of poverty and war ever.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday May 27 2018, @02:25AM (1 child)
You know, it's weird, because you're making sense in your other responses - I was just going to accuse you of being high(er than normal) and out of touch with reality here.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday May 27 2018, @04:22AM
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday May 26 2018, @02:19AM
Note the very first problem. Casting everything in terms of need than in terms of want and desires, and doing it all strictly from the point of view of Mr. AC. Well, Mr. AC, your continued existence is not necessary to me (and indeed not necessary to the vast majority of humanity). Does that mean we should end it?
If that's true, then we must have a really sane society, right? Let us recall here that doing anything on a scale that supports seven billion people requires a vast amount of resources, energy, and man-power. Economics is the study of any process that lets us survive that.
Let's also talk about the key point of money. Money's purpose is to simplify trade, not to be an object of worship.
The fact that we have yet to come up with anything better is what makes our capitalist system far better than merely "OK". In particular, I think it's counterproductive to propose to end an important component of a capitalist system, like money, without having an adequate replacement in mind. I often find that people who do so, plan to replace the component with a neutered version of the component, such as replacing money with crippled money so that you can't actually use it for much. Or relatively free markets with broken markets that barely work.
Why should it be shrunk? Instead, I think it should be expanded. But then my experiences with free markets have been very positive.
Yea, right. I don't buy that.