[ExI] Kevin Dowd on Bitcoin

[Bryan Bishop]

On Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 10:08 AM, Harvey Newstrom <mail at harveynewstrom.com>
wrote:

> The protocol allows a large (over 51%) consortium to take any or all the
> bitcoins they want.
>

That's not entirely true. Having lots of hashrate does not endow one with
the ability to take or spend all existing BTC. The attacker can't prevent
transactions from being created or relayed or sent, the attacker can't send
coin that never belonged to the attacker, the attacker can't create coin
out of thin air, etc. However, miners with lots of hashrate (say, more than
50%) can delay transactions from being included in blocks by not including
any transactions in the blocks the attacker mines.

- Bryan
http://heybryan.org/
1 512 203 0507
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