Comment by OutOfHere
5 hours ago
The answer to this problem is in the original Bitcoin whitepaper itself. It gives the formula for the required number of confirmations.
The Monero PoW community has had to deal with such nonsense, as have other smaller PoW coins.
With ε=1e-3, the expected number of 6 confirmations works only so long as the largest pool size does not exceed 12%. For a pool size of 30%, at least 24 confirmations should be required in Bitcoin, but 49 in Monero with its stricter ε=1e-6. You can see the table and the math at https://gist.github.com/impredicative/0907e1699f5ff97a9fed5d... and again it's all cleanly reproducible from the whitepaper. Anyone who is still requiring only 6 confirmations then will be setting themselves up for a risk of reversal.
TFA observes that it would be disruptive and socially difficult to move systems to expect requiring 24 confirmations, and expresses relief that other responses are possible.
Perhaps this is more suitable as a response over months or years to a long-term shift in the composition of Bitcoin miners than as a short-term measure when it appears that someone has suddenly acquired 30% of mining capacity today.
Yes: "Not aligning with reality is disruptive." Some lessons have to be learned the hard way if they're not learned the soft way. The problem is not reality.