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From: Mike Hearn <mike@plan99.net>
To: Andy Parkins <andyparkins@gmail.com>
Cc: Bitcoin Dev <bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net>
Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Coinbase reallocation to discourage Finney attacks
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2014 13:45:34 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CANEZrP3w0XY_2bUG-+L57gMU2psicWu5dUv3O1S7hgaq_+8Xqg@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <201404231239.20202.andyparkins@gmail.com>

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>
> You're still being unfair to bitcoin.  Not everyone who uses bitcoins will
> be dishonest.  The dishonest 5% hashing power is not going to be used in
> 100% of any given merchants transactions.
>

OK, sure, let's say most Bitcoin users will be honest (we hope). But
unfortunately in a situation where fraud is possible users wouldn't
necessarily distribute evenly over transactions.

Back when I worked on Gmail, we did a little study where we selected a
random subset of email accounts from Nigeria and waited to see if they
received abuse reports, showed up on dating site blacklists etc. It turned
out about 2/3rds of them did. This obviously doesn't imply that 2/3rds of
all Nigerians are scammers, but unfortunately the few that are are
responsible for a disproportionate number of account creations.

If a merchant is selling something of value repeatedly, then a small number
of scammers can go back and try their luck over and over. I'm not sure how
many trades fall into such an exploitable category, though.

Also, there's the philosophical question of how honest people really are
when there's no consequences to their actions. For instance, if most people
were honest, then piracy would be not a big problem. But game studios that
have cracked DRM quite often report piracy rates of 95%, i.e. for every 5
sales they make, they get 100 people playing on their servers - the vast
majority of their users are not honest.

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  reply	other threads:[~2014-04-23 11:45 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 90+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2014-04-23  7:55 [Bitcoin-development] Coinbase reallocation to discourage Finney attacks Mike Hearn
2014-04-23  9:57 ` Andy Parkins
2014-04-23 11:07   ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-23 11:39     ` Andy Parkins
2014-04-23 11:45       ` Mike Hearn [this message]
2014-04-23 13:21         ` Andy Parkins
2014-04-23 13:31           ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-24  9:21             ` Andy Parkins
2014-04-23 12:43 ` Christophe Biocca
2014-04-23 12:51   ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-23 14:52 ` Justus Ranvier
2014-04-23 15:07   ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-23 17:19     ` Justus Ranvier
2014-04-23 17:47       ` Gavin Andresen
2014-04-23 17:49         ` Justus Ranvier
2014-04-23 17:57           ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-23 18:04             ` Justus Ranvier
2014-04-23 18:15               ` Peter Todd
2014-04-23 18:20                 ` Justus Ranvier
2014-04-23 18:37                   ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-23 18:49                     ` Justus Ranvier
2014-04-23 19:01                       ` Drak
2014-04-23 18:58                     ` Tier Nolan
2014-04-23 15:04 ` Alex Mizrahi
2014-04-23 15:09   ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-23 15:38     ` Alex Mizrahi
2014-04-23 16:04       ` Christophe Biocca
2014-04-23 16:19         ` Chris Pacia
2014-04-23 16:21         ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-23 16:33         ` Kevin
2014-04-24 11:22     ` Jorge Timón
2014-04-24 11:43       ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-24 13:57         ` Jorge Timón
2014-04-24 14:28           ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-24 15:37             ` Jorge Timón
2014-04-24 17:07               ` Justus Ranvier
2014-04-25  4:31             ` Gareth Williams
2014-04-25 10:17               ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-25 13:19                 ` Gareth Williams
2014-04-25 15:28                   ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-26 12:15                     ` Gareth Williams
2014-04-27  1:42                       ` Christophe Biocca
2014-04-27 12:53                         ` Gareth Williams
2014-04-27 14:31                           ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-27 23:10                             ` Gareth Williams
2014-04-28 21:41                           ` Adam Back
2014-04-29 14:13                             ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-29 14:21                               ` Gregory Maxwell
2014-04-29 14:26                                 ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-30 13:12                                   ` Gareth Williams
2014-04-30 13:55                                     ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-30 14:31                                       ` Gareth Williams
2014-04-29 19:29                               ` Justus Ranvier
2014-04-30 13:00                               ` Gareth Williams
2014-04-30 17:06                                 ` Troy Benjegerdes
2014-04-30 17:13                                   ` Jameson Lopp
2014-04-30 14:08                               ` Gareth Williams
2014-04-23 15:28   ` Peter Todd
2014-04-23 15:34 ` Kevin
2014-04-23 15:41   ` Pieter Wuille
2014-04-23 15:55     ` Peter Todd
2014-04-23 18:57 ` Gregory Maxwell
2014-04-23 19:19   ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-23 19:47     ` Gregory Maxwell
2014-04-23 19:59       ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-23 20:24         ` Gregory Maxwell
2014-04-23 20:37           ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-23 20:44             ` Adam Ritter
2014-04-23 20:51               ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-24 15:13                 ` Sergio Lerner
2014-04-24 15:34                   ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-23 20:53               ` Gregory Maxwell
2014-04-23 21:23                 ` Tier Nolan
2014-04-23 21:39                   ` Gregory Maxwell
2014-04-23 22:26                     ` Tier Nolan
2014-04-24  0:55                   ` Tom Harding
     [not found]                 ` <CAKuKjyWDniyP503XSw8=tK9XQW-T58j+VD6ajXCxz=HihN93mQ@mail.gmail.com>
2014-04-24 14:52                   ` [Bitcoin-development] Fwd: " Adam Ritter
2014-04-23 20:41         ` [Bitcoin-development] " Daniel Krawisz
2014-04-23 22:06     ` Alex Mizrahi
2014-04-24  7:58       ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-24  8:19         ` Gregory Maxwell
2014-04-24  8:39           ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-24  9:25             ` Gregory Maxwell
2014-04-24  9:56               ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-24 13:44                 ` Peter Todd
2014-04-24 14:09                   ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-24 14:47                     ` Christophe Biocca
2014-04-24 15:03                       ` Peter Todd
2014-04-24 16:05                         ` Christophe Biocca
2014-04-24 16:14                         ` Mike Hearn

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