I just bought another $100, thank you
Comment on Paul Krugman. Former Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Warl0k3@lemmy.world 3 weeks agoAmong the many feasible vectors you could accomplish that: 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. 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, 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 preventing it if it does, 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.
HumanOnEarth@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
Warl0k3@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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 bare, don’t try to offload the burden for your choices onto me…
HumanOnEarth@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
Remember this conversation. Seriously. Don’t forget it.
Obviously so you can laugh at my misfortune later, no other reason.
Warl0k3@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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 called out in an incidentally deeply amusing way.
deafboy@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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.
Warl0k3@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Yeah, there’s lots of hypothetical routes. I was really more considering how much of an impact it would have to give a few tens of millions to a few TSMC 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.