firstly. the linkage of the movements of the bitcoin and ethereum market are clear that ethereums market is shadowing bitcoin. because bitcoin has known market cycles and if ethereum was independent it would not be following bitcoins market cycles. so when it does follow bitcoins market cycles, its obvious that its ethereum that is the follower

also its not a case of bitcoiners dumping their bitcoin to move to ethereum and stay with ethereum. its instead a financial action called arbitrage where by traders loop around the markets to get back to their base currency to repeat opportunities again
(arbitraging is fun. but was way more fun years ago when it was just a opportunity between LTC and BTC as the swings were wide and more often)
when comparing many market pairs of different altcoins you can start to see which coins are leaders and which are followers. ethereum is not a leader
...
as for the certain thresholds. you can use the market history. and compare it to other data
for instance if you measured the hashrate average of 2021-2022 and worked out rational lowest global electric prices and calculated out the (then) generation of asics to come up with most economic global mining cost you will then see that the 2022 period tested the bottom.
this can be seen in other times too when the market bottoms were tested and compare it to those times economic cost lows.
you can then do the same for the most expensive regions and get a top(premium) and then see the periodic tops being tested. such as the 2021 ATH as well as other ATH

this is where the international market of bitcoiners know these numbers where those in the most expensive regions will happily buy all the way to the top if the market swayed in their direction but even they have a cut off point where they decide things are getting a lil too crazy
and as said a few times now about the periodic bottoms that when bitcoin cannot be acquired any cheaper people stop selling for less and it creates the supportive bottom no one wants to cross

its called economics
same applies to many assets that have real world costs. things like gold is backed and has a bottom the market wont go below due to the mining costs,

there is actual reasons why markets bottom out at certain levels periodically and topout at certain levels periodically
bitcoin topped out at $70k in 2021 for good economic logical reason..
bitcoin in 2024 has a higher window than you think right now and has not actually tested the top yet(thats the fun of next year) its currently being held down at the $70k level by whales that only have trade algo patterns that only work based on old limit data so they are holding it back until the market cycle is ready to push forward, which would be around the time the miners with lengthy hardware and electric contracts that expire and they evaluate their coins earned vs their next contract cost to calculate how much to sell coin for, for the next market cycle in 2025
(there are reasons ATH happen a year after a halving)

Oh no, on the contrary. I don't think that they will be able to keep it a secret at all, nor do they need to. Secrecy is a requirement if you plan to make a replay attack where you also aim to trade the stolen Bitcoin for other commodities. But as mentioned in a previous reply, this is not the goal for a Goldfinger attack.

In fact, the less secret the attack is, the better. Since the ultimate goal is to a crash the value of Bitcoin, rather than the steal itself, it is (in my view) better to let the attack be as public as possible. Hereby the attackers can hope that the Bitcoin investors will start to get uneasy already when the attack is underway, and that some of them will start to abandon ship before the rest, causing the attack to become even cheaper. (But this last point is currently an ongoing discussion on this thread, i.e. whether a drop of the price of Bitcoin would make the attack even cheaper.)

About the potential for a reverse attack, do you then believe that Bitcoin would actually be able to profit from such a "rival Goldfinger attack" on Ethereum?

It certainly goes against the whole philosophy of PoS, which is that since the 51%-attackers will have to become stakeholders of the blockchain in order to get 51% of the vote, it will never be in their interest to attack it. Especially if we believe the word of the Ethereum community, and assume that the whole group of stakeholders would just vote to revert a 51% attack in case it happens, then it does seem unlikely that a Goldfinger attack would work against Ethereum.

In terms of "improvising and adapting" to overcome a Goldfinger attack, I think that Bitcoin would be much better off by making sure to plan ahead of what to do in case of such an attack, in order to prevent investors getting uneasy and start moving their assets away from Bitcoin.

Thank you very much!

you keep circling the weird, silly, foolish notion that the marketcap ranking have real dollar/% value

how about create a altcoin of 1trill coins and sell 0.01coin for $1 and see that you just created a #1 market cap of $100trillion for just $1

please realise that the market cap numbers are not at all related to any true $ amount held anywhere. people dont get richer via market cap numbers

You seem to be of the opinion that the price of Bitcoin is directly dependent on the cost of mining. By that logic, the Bitcoin stakeholders could always just spend a small percentage of their wealth at any given time to increase the combined hash rate of the world, and then see their assets grow by a similar factor. You do see that this logic is flawed, don't you?

I've already addressed the point that the miners loss of CapEx in terms of not being able to sell their ASICs after the attack has to be compensated by the stakeholders, and that this is part of price of the attack.

In terms of Bitcoin extending their confirmation period, you bring up a valid point. Bitcoin would indeed likely extend this period if an attack is anticipated.

However, they cannot extend this period retrospectively. And because the operational costs of an attack are relatively small compared to the full price (and not least compared to the potential winnings of a 'Rival Goldfinger attack'), the attackers could in theory rewrite months of the ledger in an attack. So in order to mitigate an attack by extending the confirmation period, Bitcoin would thus have to extend it to months. And if Bitcoin does this, its use as a cryptocurrency will then be close to none, which would therefore cause severe damage to its value already.

I am not convinced an attack launched by Ethereum would crash Bitcoin and not the exact opposite effect instead.  Let technicalities to the side and think about it through the mind of an average person.  If Ethereum plan attacks on Bitcoin, they are becoming sort of an Evil force trying to destroy the other forces in their way to get through to the top.  If I was an Ethereum holder and heard of this, I would immediately sell every thing I have and move to any thing else other than it.  An attack would not destroy the Reputation of Bitcoin but of Ethereum.

Implying the attacker would get to keep the coins. Depending on the duration of the attack, reorgs after the fact are still in the realm of possibility. If the attack continues for so long as to make a reorg infeasible... congrats, you've just become a Bitcoin miner. You won't get to do another double spend though, because for that you'd have to divert hashing power, loosening your grip on the network.

Also keep in mind that double spends are easily detectable. It's highly unlikely you'd get to cash out any reasonable amount of double spent coins, especially with everyone being on high alert. The only "steal" an attacker could hope for is that the mining rewards they received aren't nullified by aforementioned reorg.



I'd expect Bitcoin to migrate to a different hashing algorithm long before even considering PoS. (much to the dismay of gamers worldwide)

I was actually personally very skeptical of PoS at first, mainly due to the potential for long-range attacks. But now it seems to me that at when you dig into the core of the concepts behind PoS and PoW, then they are both just decentralized ledgers that both create a Nash equilibrium in order to prevents cheating in their everyday protocol. And the difference in the core concepts just lies in the fact that for PoS the voting power is directly proportional to the amount of stake you have in the blockchain, whereas for PoW the power is instead distributed according to the hash rate an individual controls (and where the miners of course compete for the privilege to add new blocks and gain rewards). I personally don't see 'weak subjectivity' as ever truly becoming a problem for the consensus on a blockchain like Ethereum. The point is: Why would the Ethereum stakeholders ever allow an attack to finalize for good when that would undermine their currency?



I like this proposition a lot. But I don't see why it wouldn't be even better, perhaps very much so, for the Bitcoin community to try to come to agreement on this in advance. Then it would be seen as much less of a capitulation in the hypothetical event that an attack happens, and it would perhaps not be seen as 'the "little brother," Ethereum, bullying Bitcoin into submission.'    



Since the topic of the discussion is the security of Bitcoin, it is okay to speculate about what could potentially happen. It is also okay to speculate the other way around in order to discuss why a risk might not be very high, as you do, but then you just have to make sure, at the end of the discussion, that you haven't accidentally based your conclusion that Bitcoin is safe and secure on some speculative assumptions that you made along the way. That would be a poor security strategy.

But this doesn't mean that too speculative assumptions don't need to be called out on both sides, and you are free to call mine out if you can point to some; at the end of the day, we have to assess together what is probable and what is not, on both sides of the argument.

(And I don't see how I behave like a shill, I very much beg you to differ on that point. I'm trying to discuss a potential security risk of Bitcoin, and when almost everyone here has so far tried to argue that there is nothing to worry about, then that requires me to argue the position that the risk might be real. Otherwise it would be a moot and boring discussion, wouldn't it?)



Yes, I can't quite see how Ethereum stakeholders will be able to profit from attacking themselves? Especially since it seems that other stakeholders would just subsequently vote to revert the attack. And since the voting power is already distributed according to PoS, this would not be a capitulation on Ethereum's part. (In fact, they already seem to state that they intend to do so in case of an attack.)



Sales? Bitcoin and Ethereum are a currencies. Their worth is, in principle, equal to the perceived value of each BTC, in case of Bitcoin, times the amount of BTC in circulation. Now, you might speculate that there currently is a minority of investors/buyers who perceive the value of Ether to be more than others, and that these are somehow able to set the tone for the pricing, which would mean that the price would be more than it actually is. (And if you then were to take a short position on Ethereum, you would become a wealthy person, given that you have something to invest in that venture.) But at the end of the day, the market cap is representative of what the (tone-setting) buyers currently perceive the value of the cryptocurrency to be.

Every single Ethereum stakeholder believes that their Ether is worth its price, or more. Otherwise the would sell it, the price would drop slightly, in theory, and the same proposition would be true once again. If a Goldfinger attack against Bitcoin causes the price to rise 100% or more, then each Ethereum stakeholder will by that time believe their Ether to be worth that much as well.

Please, if I'm overlooking some advanced and profound mechanism that makes this proposition untrue (and I am admittedly not an economist), do correct me.

Simply - No, Stupid, and Laughable. What would happen is they'll have one successful double-spend before the network of full nodes push them OUT.

PLUS they'll simply notice that they would actually be paid in Bitcoin if they merely mined honestly. Welcome to the Bitcoin community Ethereum Stakeholders.

 

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Edit:
@franky1, I'm sorry that you don't think I'm listening to you. I don't think that's fair of you at all, and I honestly don't think you do either. I have addressed almost all your points so far, except the point about the arbitrage market. I'm listening to your points, asking whenever I find something unclear, and trying to provide some counter points, which is what is expected in a discussion. You can simply expect me to take your word for anything outright.

In terms of the arbitrage market point, I'm afraid I also don't quite follow you here. I'm sure you might be right that the price of Ethereum might be determined by the arbitrage traders. But why does this inflate the price of Ethereum? Doesn't that just mean that the arbitrage traders are relatively determined in their regard for the value of Ethereum in relation to the value of Bitcoin? (Edit: In other words, are the arbitrage traders not just the tone-setting traders at the moment in terms of determining the price of Ether?)

I also need some clarification if we are to continue with the discussion about the supposed lower threshold on the Bitcoin price. Am I understanding you right that you are saying that the price of Bitcoin is dependent on the work it takes to mine a coin? And if so, do you not agree that Bitcoin investors potentially thereby have a complete money machine?