English

A Combinatorial-Probabilistic Analysis of Bitcoin Attacks

Combinatorics 2018-11-06 v2 Cryptography and Security

Abstract

Using Wilf-Zeilberger algorithmic proof theory, we continue pioneering work of Meni Rosenfeld (followed up by interesting work by Cyril Grunspan and Ricardo Perez-Marco) and study the probability and duration of successful bitcoin attacks, but using an equivalent, and much more congenial, formulation as a certain two-phase soccer match.

Cite

@article{arxiv.1808.05255,
  title  = {A Combinatorial-Probabilistic Analysis of Bitcoin Attacks},
  author = {Evangelos Georgiadis and Doron Zeilberger},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1808.05255},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

8 pages; Accompanied by a Maple package and outputs filed obtainable from http://sites.math.rutgers.edu/~zeilberg/mamarim/mamarimhtml/bitcoin.html (Added: proof provenance about the negative binomial distribution.)

R2 v1 2026-06-23T03:35:06.874Z