Bitcoin v0.1 released

Date: January 25, 2009

Source: Cryptography Mailing List (metzdowd.com)

URL: https://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/emails/cryptography/18/

Hal Finney wrote:

> * Spammer botnets could burn through pay-per-send email filters

> trivially

If POW tokens do become useful, and especially if they become money,

machines will no longer sit idle. Users will expect their computers to

be earning them money (assuming the reward is greater than the cost to

operate). A computer whose earnings are being stolen by a botnet will

be more noticeable to its owner than is the case today, hence we might

expect that in that world, users will work harder to maintain their

computers and clean them of botnet infestations.

Another factor that would mitigate spam if POW tokens have value:

there would be a profit motive for people to set up massive

quantities of fake e-mail accounts to harvest POW tokens from

spam. They'd essentially be reverse-spamming the spammers with

automated mailboxes that collect their POW and don't read the

message. The ratio of fake mailboxes to real people could become

too high for spam to be cost effective.

The process has the potential to establish the POW token's value

in the first place, since spammers that don't have a botnet could

buy tokens from harvesters. While the buying back would

temporarily let more spam through, it would only hasten the

self-defeating cycle leading to too many harvesters exploiting the

spammers.

Interestingly, one of the e-gold systems already has a form of

spam called "dusting". Spammers send a tiny amount of gold dust

in order to put a spam message in the transaction's comment field.

If the system let users configure the minimum payment they're

willing to receive, or at least the minimum that can have a

message with it, users could set how much they're willing to get

paid to receive spam.

Satoshi Nakamoto

---------------------------------------------------------------------

The Cryptography Mailing List

Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo at metzdowd.com