Qiwi terminals could commit "51% attack" on Bitcoin's blockade

[Mazda3]

Last week, the head of Qiwi, Sergei Solonin, told an intriguing story about how the former technical director of the company managed to implicate in early 2011 500 thousand bitcoins directly on the company's terminals.
"Now it seems: I must have had to agree with him somehow, for $ 5 million buy it all, because now it's some kind of catastrophic money," Solonin complained.
At first glance, the numbers seem to be overestimated, especially in the mid-2018, when Bitcoin is useless without special devices. But, digging in open sources, specialists of the fund mining.vg found out if it was possible that what Solonin told about, and came to unexpected conclusions.

Commented the operating director of the fund mining.vg Vladimir Shabanov:

To understand whether it is possible to mine so many bitcoins, take the introductory data that Solonin said:

"Most of all I was amazed by the amount: he for three months namaynil 500 thousand coins, and it cost 5 million dollars. And now it costs billions of dollars. "
So, what we have:

500 thousand coins worth $ 5 million, that is, 1 BTC for $ 10,
More than 100 thousand terminals Qiwi,
Three months for production in 2011
The first thing you need to determine is the mining period, because the degree of complexity of extraction and the required capacity depend on it. Here we will proceed from this price of $ 10. This indicator of BTC reached approximately June 2, 2011, and then this price returned on August 3 of the same year, with the reverse correction of the rate.

Generation of a new block in Bitcoin's blockade takes an average of 10 minutes. In 2011, for each block found, the miners received a reward of 50 BTC. In a month, 4 320 units were generated, which eventually gave the opportunity for the miners to receive a total of 216 thousand BTCs per month as a reward. Thus, in 2011 for three months of mining it was possible to extract no more than 648 thousand bitcoins.

Also, it is important to take into account the fact that the reward for the block is distributed among the miners evenly, in accordance with the contribution of each miner. The specific distribution methodology depends on the specific mining pool. Based on the above figures, the power of the miner should be more than 87% of all Bitcoin network capacities within 3 months in order to receive a sufficient number of bitcoins in the form of a reward for mining. By the way, with such a volume of power, you can commit "51% attack".

"Attack 51%" allows an attacker to gain control over an attacked blocking system, and thereby stop transactions and mining on the network. But the most interesting scenario for a hacker is the creation of an alternative secret chain of blocks. In the future, this alternative chain allows an attacker to double write-offs.

Now let's look at the quarterly complexity of the mining, given that the indicated price took place only in the second and third quarters:

In the first quarter, the difficulty rose from 15.91 to 55.59k, in the second from 55.59 to 434.877k, in the third from 434.877 to 1.777 M and in the fourth from 1.777 M to 1.1599 M. The fourth quarter is cut off , as the price of Bitcoin was already much lower than the agreed $ 10, and the complexity has greatly increased. The likelihood that the mining occurred in Q3 is also quite low due to the high complexity of production, so assume that the production took place in the first and second quarters of 2011.

Since we do not know which processors were in the terminals at that time, we simply calculate which equipment could provide the necessary power.

Let's give a little odds to the terminals and in the comparative table of the CPU we'll find the processors of 2011 that could be put into the terminals. Although, most likely the processors were in 2010 or earlier release period. The server processor type Xeon or i7 did not make sense in the terminal. Most likely, the top-end terminals could have an Intel Core i3-2100 processor onboard, which produces 6.9 Mh / s. With the help of the history of the Bitcoin network complexity change, we perform a monthly calculation, which would require 6.9 Mh / s processors to provide about 87% of the network capacity.

The initial unit of calculations is Gh / s and Mh / s. To get one Gh / s power, you need about 145 processors (1000 / 6.9 = 144.92).

It is important to note that the terminals probably had less powerful processors, and 24/7 was impossible to mine. part of the time was spent on user maintenance. But even if we divide the base capacity of the processors by half and take into account the time costs for servicing users, the mining of a specified number of bitcoins is highly probable from January to April 2011.

And if so, it can be assumed that the Qiwi terminals not only could mimic the specified number of bitcoins, but they could provide more than 51% of the network's network capacity. Obviously, the freezing of the network was unprofitable to the miner. Is there an alternative chain that we do not know about? Only a former Qiwi employee can answer this question.
A source:https://altcoin.info/news/terminaly_qiwi_mogli_sovershit_ataku_51_na_blokchejn_bitkoina-3667.html

[Kate]

1 hour ago, Mazda3 said:

Last week, the head of Qiwi, Sergei Solonin, told an intriguing story about how the former technical director of the company managed to implicate in early 2011 500 thousand bitcoins directly on the company's terminals.
"Now it seems: I must have had to agree with him somehow, for $ 5 million buy it all, because now it's some kind of catastrophic money," Solonin complained.
At first glance, the numbers seem to be overestimated, especially in the mid-2018, when Bitcoin is useless without special devices. But, digging in open sources, specialists of the fund mining.vg found out if it was possible that what Solonin told about, and came to unexpected conclusions.

Commented the operating director of the fund mining.vg Vladimir Shabanov:

To understand whether it is possible to mine so many bitcoins, take the introductory data that Solonin said:

"Most of all I was amazed by the amount: he for three months namaynil 500 thousand coins, and it cost 5 million dollars. And now it costs billions of dollars. "
So, what we have:

500 thousand coins worth $ 5 million, that is, 1 BTC for $ 10,
More than 100 thousand terminals Qiwi,
Three months for production in 2011
The first thing you need to determine is the mining period, because the degree of complexity of extraction and the required capacity depend on it. Here we will proceed from this price of $ 10. This indicator of BTC reached approximately June 2, 2011, and then this price returned on August 3 of the same year, with the reverse correction of the rate.

Generation of a new block in Bitcoin's blockade takes an average of 10 minutes. In 2011, for each block found, the miners received a reward of 50 BTC. In a month, 4 320 units were generated, which eventually gave the opportunity for the miners to receive a total of 216 thousand BTCs per month as a reward. Thus, in 2011 for three months of mining it was possible to extract no more than 648 thousand bitcoins.

Also, it is important to take into account the fact that the reward for the block is distributed among the miners evenly, in accordance with the contribution of each miner. The specific distribution methodology depends on the specific mining pool. Based on the above figures, the power of the miner should be more than 87% of all Bitcoin network capacities within 3 months in order to receive a sufficient number of bitcoins in the form of a reward for mining. By the way, with such a volume of power, you can commit "51% attack".

"Attack 51%" allows an attacker to gain control over an attacked blocking system, and thereby stop transactions and mining on the network. But the most interesting scenario for a hacker is the creation of an alternative secret chain of blocks. In the future, this alternative chain allows an attacker to double write-offs.

Now let's look at the quarterly complexity of the mining, given that the indicated price took place only in the second and third quarters:

In the first quarter, the difficulty rose from 15.91 to 55.59k, in the second from 55.59 to 434.877k, in the third from 434.877 to 1.777 M and in the fourth from 1.777 M to 1.1599 M. The fourth quarter is cut off , as the price of Bitcoin was already much lower than the agreed $ 10, and the complexity has greatly increased. The likelihood that the mining occurred in Q3 is also quite low due to the high complexity of production, so assume that the production took place in the first and second quarters of 2011.

Since we do not know which processors were in the terminals at that time, we simply calculate which equipment could provide the necessary power.

Let's give a little odds to the terminals and in the comparative table of the CPU we'll find the processors of 2011 that could be put into the terminals. Although, most likely the processors were in 2010 or earlier release period. The server processor type Xeon or i7 did not make sense in the terminal. Most likely, the top-end terminals could have an Intel Core i3-2100 processor onboard, which produces 6.9 Mh / s. With the help of the history of the Bitcoin network complexity change, we perform a monthly calculation, which would require 6.9 Mh / s processors to provide about 87% of the network capacity.

The initial unit of calculations is Gh / s and Mh / s. To get one Gh / s power, you need about 145 processors (1000 / 6.9 = 144.92).

It is important to note that the terminals probably had less powerful processors, and 24/7 was impossible to mine. part of the time was spent on user maintenance. But even if we divide the base capacity of the processors by half and take into account the time costs for servicing users, the mining of a specified number of bitcoins is highly probable from January to April 2011.

And if so, it can be assumed that the Qiwi terminals not only could mimic the specified number of bitcoins, but they could provide more than 51% of the network's network capacity. Obviously, the freezing of the network was unprofitable to the miner. Is there an alternative chain that we do not know about? Only a former Qiwi employee can answer this question.
A source:https://altcoin.info/news/terminaly_qiwi_mogli_sovershit_ataku_51_na_blokchejn_bitkoina-3667.html

I ain't fond of reading lol. But will try my best to complete it or like I could skip to the majn parts xD. But thanks