Kamikaze Attack: Block Halving and the Perils of Proof-of-Work

Kamikaze Attack: Block Halving and the Perils of Proof-of-Work

Topics:

  • How an attacker would need to go about shorting bitcoin
  • How the kamikaze mining pool could be used to bribe miners to join the attacker
  • Why all profit-driven miners will have an incentive to join the attack, whether or not they believe it will succeed
  • Why the block halving in 2016 could be an exceptionally dangerous time for Bitcoin, since an attack would be cheap to execute and likely to succeed
  • How a gradual decrease of the block reward, instead of the 4-year halving rhythm would reduce risk

Links:

Hosts:Sebastien Couture, Brian Crain