Bitcoin mining efficiency and Botnets

[coderman]

On Tue, Oct 15, 2013 at 3:31 AM, Cathal Garvey
<cathalgarvey at cathalgarvey.me> wrote:
> ... If you can [EDIT: out resource a majority of the network] ...
> you can rewrite recent history in
> bitcoin, selectively permit transactions between other peers, cause
> general havoc.

the key is an attacker taking over some majority of the network.  this
is a much longer tangent, of which mining capacity is just a part, and
i still assert that CPU and GPU mining doesn't factor into the overall
risk from malicious peers.


> The reward for mining was the bootstrap, but mining
> itself is a critical part of what makes bitcoin work.

in some few score years there will be zero coins rewarded for mining
blocks - the financial incentive, for what it is currently, merely a
transient part of the bootstrap.

is mining important? sure. but that does not mean a CPU or GPU can
contribute meaningfully to the current network. litecoin, as mentioned
in another reply, is certainly relevant for these architectures
however.


and again, it is just as important to participate in the network, even
if you do not mine! this will always be true, while financial
incentives for mining are transient and volatile.