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Incident Raises Concerns About a More Formal Spec For Bitcoin
An anonymous reader writes: Aberrant treatment of transactions by Bitcoin miners has renewed concerns that Bitcoin as a protocol may need a stronger specification. OpenBSD savior and Bitcoin entrepreneur Mircea Popescu raised this issue back in 2013 that the current attitude of "the code is the spec" was introducing fragility and harming Bitcoin's vital decentralization. While a lot of fuss has been made about the maximum blocksize, perhaps formalizing the protocol and breaking the current mining cartel is a more urgent and serious problem. The debate going on resurrects many of Datskovskiy's early concerns about Bitcoin's fragility including mining as a necessary bug, but a bug nonetheless.
So the underlying problem is there is phenomenological evidence that indicates that for long stretches of time, some cartel can controls 51% of the block chain compute and is withholding submits so it can privately mine them before distributing them.
If I understand bitcoin correctly, both of those are its fundamental achilles heel, assumed never to happen, and therefore the currency is now subject to manipulation, and thus eventually worthless.
Or am I wrong?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
As does cash.
However, unlike cash, bitcoin is traceable.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Interestingly while VISA does typically authorize the transaction right away (although Supermarkets may choose to operate without online auth, for example if they have a telecoms outage)... ... authorization and settlement are separate.
Authorizations on their own do nothing. No money changes hands, nothing.
Settlement moves the money but doesn't require authorization. The supermarket can issue a settlement saying "send me $800 of Richard_at_work's money" without any authorization showing you asked to pay them that money. They normally do provide the authorization, but if they don't VISA can (and for a big customer like a supermarket usually will) complete the settlement anyway.
That's right, the only thing keeping a Walmart from taking every penny out of your credit card is good will. No technical measures are in place to ensure it doesn't happen. If they do it "by accident" and get caught, maybe VISA will slap them and tell them not to do it again. And in theory if they did it a few times, or if it caused a big public outrage, VISA could kick Walmart out and refuse to do any settlements for them. But most likely PR people would come in and smooth things over and assure everyone it will never ever happen again, even though in fact it might.