Abstract. We present the first empirical analysis of Bitcoin-based scams: operations established with fraudulent intent. By amalgamating reports gathered by voluntary vigilantes and tracked in online forums, we identify 192 scams and categorize them into four groups: Ponzi schemes, mining scams, scam wallets and fraudulent exchanges. In 21% of the cases, we also found the associated Bitcoin addresses, which enables us to track payments into and out of the scams. We find that at least $11 million has been contributed to the scams from 13 000 distinct victims. Furthermore, we present evidence that the most successful scams depend on large contributions from a very small number of victims. Finally, we discuss ways in which the scams could be countered.

Abstract. One of the unique features of the digital currency Bitcoin is that new cash is introduced by so-called miners carrying out resourceintensive proof-of-work operations. To increase their chances of obtaining freshly minted bitcoins, miners typically join pools to collaborate on the computations. However, intense competition among mining pools has recently manifested in two ways. Miners may invest in additional computing resources to increase the likelihood of winning the next mining race. But, at times, a more sinister tactic is also employed: a mining pool may trigger a costly distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack to lower the expected success outlook of a competing mining pool. We explore the trade-off between these strategies with a series of game-theoretical models of competition between two pools of varying sizes. We consider differences in costs of investment and attack, as well as uncertainty over whether a DDoS attack will succeed. By characterizing the game's equilibria, we can draw a number of conclusions. In particular, we find that pools have a greater incentive to attack large pools than small ones. We also observe that larger mining pools have a greater incentive to attack than smaller ones.

Abstract. We present an empirical investigation into the prevalence and impact of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on operators in the Bitcoin economy. To that end, we gather and analyze posts mentioning "DDoS" on the popular Bitcoin forum bitcointalk.org. Starting from around 3 000 different posts made between May 2011 and October 2013, we document 142 unique DDoS attacks on 40 Bitcoin services. We find that 7% of all known operators have been attacked, but that currency exchanges, mining pools, gambling operators, eWallets, and financial services are much more likely to be attacked than other services. Not coincidentally, we find currency exchanges and mining pools are much more likely to have DDoS protection such as CloudFlare, Incapsula, or Amazon Cloud. We show that those services that have been attacked are more than three times as likely to buy anti-DDoS services than operators who have not been attacked. We find that big mining pools (those with historical hashrate shares of at least 5%) are much more likely to be DDoSed than small pools. We investigate Mt. Gox as a case study for DDoS attacks on currency exchanges and find a disproportionate amount of DDoS reports made during the large spike in trading volume and exchange rates in spring 2013. We conclude by outlining future opportunities for researching DDoS attacks on Bitcoin.

This paper analyzes the supply and demand for Bitcoinbased Ponzi schemes. There are a variety of these types of scams: from long cons such as Bitcoin Savings & Loans to overnight doubling schemes that do not take off. We investigate what makes some Ponzi schemes successful and others less so. By scouring 11 424 threads on bitcointalk. org, we identify 1 780 distinct scams. Of these, half lasted a week or less. Using survival analysis, we identify factors that affect scam persistence. One approach that appears to elongate the life of the scam is when the scammer interacts a lot with their victims, such as by posting more than a quarter of the comments in the related thread. By contrast, we also find that scams are shorter-lived when the scammers register their account on the same day that they post about their scam. Surprisingly, more daily posts by victims is associated with the scam ending sooner.

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