I have no idea of what the price might do.  Sure, it could go to 5000$.  Or back to 5$.  There is no solid argument for either one.  (No, what happened from 2009 to 2013 is not "solid argument".  Neither is the "scarce resource" , "first player's advantage", etc.)


Noy yet, sorry.  But I am curious, did he succeed in convincing the Senators that bitcoin will render the Canadian government powerless, and the Canadian dollar worthless? 

How the heck...?

I see.  So the risk is real, it seems.

As I wrote before, in another thread some clients of Chinese manufacturer "lketc" complained about lack of ssh access, and someone claimed that the manufacturer was stealing hashpower.  IIRC, they even detected encrypted internet traffic between the mining rig and the manufacturer.  But I did not see any followup on those claims.

That is the consensus only among those who think that the next rally will hit 5000$ or so.  There are other opinions.  Even doubts that the price will ever get to 1000$ again.

That is the intended overall effect, OK; but I was asking about a technical implementation detail, to see whether a manufacturer can steal hashpower from a pool member.

AFAIK, the mining software periodically gathers a batch of unprocessed transactions into a candidate block, that includes a coinbase transaction directing the eventual reward to the pool's input address.  Then the mining software sets one or more machines to work on that candidate block.  The work consists in making a series of attempts. In each attempt, the nonce field in the block header is replaced by a different value, and the SHA-squared hash of the header is recomputed.  If the hash value is below the network difficulty threshold, the attempt was successful and the block is broadcast to the bitcoin network, which credits the reward to the pool.  Otherwise, if the hash is below the pool's difficulty threshold, the block and the hash value are sent to the pool, as proof of effort.  Otherwise the attempt has no effect.  Correct so far?

Now consider whether this attack by malicious mining software could be viable: in one attempt out of every six (or in one candidate block out of every six) the software replaces the coinbase output address by the thief's address.  As before, if an  attempt yields a hash below the network threshold, the block is broadcast to the bitcoin network.  Otherwise, if the hash is below the pool's threshold and the coinbase address is pointing at the pool, then block+hash are sent to the pool as proof of effort.  Otherwise, the attempt has no effect.

If this attack could be set up, then the data seen by the pool would be consistent with the miner having only 5/6 of the hash power that he really has.  Of every 6 successfully mined blocks, 5 would be credited to the pool, and 1 to the thief; but the pool will not notice the latter.  If the miner is monitoring his performance exclusively through the pool's site, he will not notice the stolen blocks either -- only a loss of 1/6 of the hashpower.

Does this make sense?

Thanks!

I do not know how mining pools work.  Do you send each mined block to the pool, and they broadcast it? Or do you broadcast it yourself, and the block just directs the reward to the pool's address?  (I presume the latter, to avoid unnecessary delay, correct?) 

AFAIK, the consensus is that it is an inevitable consequence of free and unregulated market, and people are hoping that the worst will not happen.

That matches other reports in this thread.

The less damning explanation is that they doctored the software to show 15-20% more than reality.

A more worrisome possibility is that they are somehow using 15-20% of the machine's capacity to mine for their own profit.  Is that technically possible?  Can the miner access the internet on its own?

Yes, that is quite worthwhile.

Few things in the universe are less productive than a conversation with a scammer.

If you find that someone has tried to deceive you, just stop talking to him and do not pay attention to anything he says.  If he has scammed you out of money, and you have evidence of that, complain to the appropriate law enforcement and hope that they do something about it.  By arguing with the scammer you will not get anything but more lies and frustration.

I suppose that we should not ask the questioner to clarify the intended meaning of "goose", and rather derail the topic again to, say, mooses, or nooses, or perhaps booze,  right?

This testimony is known to the regulars here, I suppose (note the date):
https://www.scribd.com/doc/218445798/Affidavit-of-Jody-Drake-Sept-20-2013

Isn't that question a lame cop-out?

Are you sure? I bet he is not wearing safety googles, the grinder's disk doesn't have a proper edge guard, the ground wire is not actually connected to the ground, and he keeps his bitcoins in a Windows computer connected to the internet, that his kids use to play pirated games downloaded from m1cros0ft.com.

The "12-hour moving average" (MA) is the average of the price over the last 12 hours, recomputed every hour or less (that's the "moving" part).

Sorry about that...I hope the damage gets fixed soon.

"Never gamble what you cannot afford to lose".  That includes your family and friends...

Did you know: the English suffix "-ant" (like the far more common suffix "-er") is attached to a verb to signify a person who does the corresponding action.  Thus, for example, "to claim" --> "claimant", "to defend" --> "defendant",  "to protest" --> "protestant", etc..  So, beware: every time you click on the "ignore" button, you become more ignorant.

Not to imply anything, but: there were claims (not confirmed, apparently) of another Chinese manufacturer of mining equipment that shipped machines with a closed-source software that stole 10% of the solutions and sent them encrypted to the manufacturer. 

Which is more bizarre, the girl's affection for the insect, or the insect's for the girl?

Thanks.  So the class action has indeed been derailed into a plea to stop the liquidation and give all assets to Sunlot (which has already granted "pardon" to GGB and JMC, even before any investigation).