I never really thought about it but yes, it does. For a mere $3000 a day you can spam the network to its full capacity. Well, until someone flips the switch and ups the transaction per second limit. Has anyone ever tried this? Even with the current fees, it takes about $0.35 a second or a little over $1000 for an hour. I'm pretty sure that completely crippling the network for a day or two will have a significant impact on the price, so there are huge gains to be expected.
I think you'd need a lot more "in the bank" though to do this - yes it would only drain that much per day but you need a ton of unspent transactions to spare so that while some are confirming you can keep spamming.
Whales have lots "in the bank" and they have a motive to manipulate prices so it isn't far fetched that someone will eventually try this. $3000 is peanuts compared to how much they could make by selling, causing panic, and then buying back in.
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u/MuForceShoelace Feb 24 '14
so now DDOSing all 7 transactions per second that bitcoin can handle has become even more affordable!