Electronic money

[Ben Laurie]

On Sun Dec 07 2014 at 10:21:35 AM Charles Lindsey <chl at clerew.man.ac.uk>
wrote:

> On Fri, 05 Dec 2014 20:47:42 -0000, Ben Laurie <ben at links.org> wrote:
>
>
> > Consider the following thought experiment. I am an Evil Genius, with a
> > Lot
> > of Computers.
> >
> > I go away for a year and mine bitcoins on my own version of the chain.
> > Because I have a LoC, I can do this faster than the rest of you.
> >
> > When the year ends, I present my longer chain, and under the Holy Rules
> > of
> > Bitcoin, all of the last year of mining and transactions goes away.
> >
> > Clearly this situation is untenable. The solution? Checkpoints.
> >
> > Those who set the checkpoints are the central authority.
>
> AIUI, if you mine a bitcoin (and coincidentally someone else mines the
> same one), then the first to register it in the Ledger takes preference
> (AFAIK, the mineable bitcoins have no predefined order).


Clearly you don't understand it: longest chain wins.

Also, what is this "the" Ledger you register first in?


> Anyway, it is all
> described in Wikipedia, and I don't think your situation would cause any
> problem.
>

Uhuh.
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