[EM] A secure distributed election scheme based on Bitcoin's Proof-of-Work protocol

[Warren Smith]

On 6/18/11, Mike Frank <michael.patrick.frank at gmail.com> wrote:
> Bitcoin's security is not based on its price, it is based on the fact that
> compromising the system's security is compute-intensive - same as with every
> other cryptosystem.
>
> Even if the total resources deployed on the Bitcoin network were to someday
> fall to such a low level that a single attacker could easily produce a
> forged chain of transactions, that would only mean that this attacker could
> double-spend their own coins from that point onwards, not that they could
> nullify the established chain that was already in existence and accepted by
> all nodes on the network.
>
> Also, if participation in the network fell that far, then this could only
> mean that the aggregate value of the currency had already fallen similarly
> far as well, and so at that point, Bitcoin would have already failed, from a
> market-acceptance perspective.  So, no one would care at that point that its
> security was compromised.

--come on.
I could say that about ANY cryptosystem no matter how bad.

I mean, (1) it works, (2) someday maybe it will be discovered it sucks,
(3) but at that point nobody will care since they'll have abandoned it anyway.
So be happy!

I want real mathematically-assured security, not some market-based
garbage reasoning.   (And you totally ignored my criticism about
constant factors, by the way.
Oh, I guess you'll say that if there were any faster implementation of the key
algorithms like 10X faster on some better hardware or with better compiler or
something, the market would have already found it??  Vomit.)

-- 
Warren D. Smith
http://RangeVoting.org  <-- add your endorsement (by clicking
"endorse" as 1st step)
and
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