Topic: Could China (or similar) take control of Bitcoin? - page 6. (Read 1583 times)

Bitcoin is being regulated by governments because a lot of consumers are using it, and like anything that becomes a part of consumer financial life, problems arise. But these regulations ultimately help the market because it makes it safer for your average consumer to enter it, and reduces social downsides (e.g. terrorism and criminality).

And while I agree with everybody here that it's currently unlikely China (or some other big country*) would want to do this to Bitcoin, it's important to understand that it's absolutely possible.

(* On another thread, we've discussed the possibility of the USA doing this if Trump was elected, so he could kill Bitcoin and force everybody to use his own personal currency instead--for instance...).

And what proof do you have that it can't be done other than your belief?

All this is simple math on equations we know, we know the network is protected by roughly 600Exahash, we know we need roughly 2.5 million new generation ASICs worth around 12 billion and drawing 10GW of power to overcome that.
We know the central budget of China is 3.5 trillion, we know their total installed capacity is 2.2 TWH.

So why do you think it would be impossible?


You're confusing the unwillingness to do something with the inability to do it.
This is the same as VPNs , China could at any time kill them all since they control everything there, they will simply ban every gateway out of their GFC but they don't go to extremes because they want to give the people the mirage of freedom, if they will feel threatened by it, you're going to see what authoritarian control means.

That's your opinion and I respect it but I still won't change my opinion and won't be convinced unless you have proof of China's power that can actually take over bitcoin. Do you work in a Chinese government agency or any other government agency? Because like I said, if they can do that then they can destroy it too, but why is it all just a ban now and they can't do anything else with bitcoin?

I don't belittle or underestimate any government but thinking that they can do whatever they want is not necessarily true. There will still be barriers, things that they will never take over or destroy, which is why bans, blocks, warnings...are created.

I think China is one of the countries that hasarge numbers of Bitcoin in their portfolio and that would keep growing soon.
We can always make money from Bitcoin if we are able to hold which is what many investors are practicing so a better future.
It is important we look for ways even though we might not have the funds to invest but their are things we can do to earn extra funds and invest it in the market. I think China could be the largest holders of Bitcoin after the United States

For 80% the point would be that if you want to change something in the chain, like for good, as in "take over" then you need 85% to be exact not 51% because that is what the rule literally says for blockchain. Just for example, BCH tried to change bitcoin's blockchain, they got rejected, people didn't use it and people just ignored it, that is how it worked, we didn't accepted their offer, however when we added segwit, 85%+ suddenly accepted it and now we can use it, that is how it goes.

You may ask "why" but that number wasn't picked by us, that is just how it works and we go with it, like saying "why 21 million and not 42 million?", we didn't pick the 21 million neither, and that was just something that bitcoin had when it was started, same goes for all those logic questions.

China has banned Bitcoin several times before and the announcement of this ban by China had a huge negative impact on the market.  But that negative effect didn't last long so I think China alone won't have much control over Bitcoin.  However, China has a large number of investors and these investors can have a great impact on the Bitcoin market.  However, it will not be possible for China alone to take complete control of the Bitcoin market.

No, as we discussed here, China absolutely could take over Bitcoin if they wanted to, as could any country with their resources. I agree that they probably don't want to, but that doesn't mean that it's impossible, or that Bitcoin is some sort of magical force that can withstand any conceivable attack.

Talking about whether China or any country can control bitcoin or not, I think there will be no exact answer. The answer "yes" is just everyone's speculation, none of us know the true strength of the Chinese government, how can they arbitrarily give such an answer? Also, if you consider that they can control bitcoin, that means they can also destroy it but why haven't they done that so far and can only issue a ban?

No country is strong enough to control, stop or destroy bitcoin. That will only happen if all governments join hands, but this scenario is even more unlikely. That's why governments that don't like bitcoin can only issue a ban and can't do anything else.

 

Several posts here have made the point about whether China would want to do this, but that wasn't my question. My question was whether they could, and the answer to that question is yes.


China or some other country or entity with similar resources could absolutely take over Bitcoin if they wanted to. Decentralization makes a network resistant to a take-over, but no network is takeover-proof.

But OP, I want to ask you why China wants to control bitcoin and what is their purpose? Have you ever thought about the scenario if China or any country controls bitcoin but the rest of the world bans bitcoin to avoid manipulation from China, would controlling bitcoin be beneficial?

Remember that bitcoin's value comes from its decentralized nature and if someone can control it then it means it is no longer decentralized so no one needs it anymore. The idea of controlling the bitcoin network makes no sense, so I never thought this would happen.

51% is smaller than 80% but why only 80% and not 100%, for it to be sure? Hehe. Yes they have a good budget but I think they aren't only interested on it because if they do then they already did it long time ago and there will ever be no banning that will occur in both BTC and BTC mining. 2 to 3 billion dollars and 32 million a day worth of power is a lot of money and all of this is for the hopes of controlling BTC?

But, what can they get after this? To earn more profit? However, I think people will stop supporting BTC once they figured out that it is now fully centralized and China can only get a bad reputation which I'm sure they don't like for it to happen.

Going by the population of China and their technological advancements, China has the potential power to take control of the Bitcoin technology if they chose to. I am saying this on the basis of the two factors I mentioned earlier, which are the population and the advancements in the technology of the country and amongst its people. Although, we do not know the founder of Bitcoin by identity due to his anonymity, however, from his name, Satoshi Nakomoto, he is an Asian by thoughts and could have come from those axis. Interestingly, China is great enough to take charge of the financial technologies but may not be able to do so, because the government in itself have banned the adoption of such.

It wasn't the Chinese government that were incharge of the 50% hashrate but it was individual miners located in China and they'll all have different beliefs so this attack isn't possible. We have core believers of Bitcoin that are miners in China and they won't want anything to happen to Bitcoin Blockchain so they won't be in support of the Idea if it gets proposal by the government. We aren't the only ones tired of the government centralized fiats system and wants
a decentralized currency to succeed so you can forget about this thought of yours, nothing is happening to the way Bitcoin was built to operate, if after so many hard forks, nothing has happened and the Bitcoin Blockchain hasn't been affected, there's nothing any government will do to take down Bitcoin and be successful. The Chinese government have probably thought about this and didn't see a way they can pull it off.


They first have to accept Bitcoin before they can start planning any counter measure if this event was to come to reality but since the governments don't care about Bitcoin they won't have plans for this in their books. The Chinese governments are attacking Bitcoin and other related services in their country, other governments are doing the same thing in their various countries so what we should be more concerned about is the government coming to an alliance and try to ban Bitcoin globally instead of having this thought of yours but I get it as it's a discussion that shouldn't be swept under the rug.

If China did that there would just be a Fork, one way or the Other, China would Fork to their New Chain, or a Rebel Organization, maybe Bitcoin Foundation at that Time might be considered the Rebel Cause at less than 50% Consensus, and then they would Fork. Someone would Fork. And this was like the 1999 to 2000 Bug where Everyone thought the Missiles would Launch and we would all Die, when this Happened with Ethereum it was just nothing, it was no Big Deal, both Chains actually Continued to Work because some People didn't Switch.

Ethereum did it because of a Hacker, but if there were a Serious Disagreement it would be the same. Like how Aggroed Wrote a Steemit Magna Carta and they all left and Created HIVE. STEEM and HIVE were Built for Forks. There is no Reason for those and BLURT to be the Only ones, there should be 500 Steemit Clones. But China actually is kind of mad about that maybe, or was and didn't understand. By now there should be Universities in China Studying the STEEM Technology, Graphene. And all of this Exists between China and kind of American Anarcho-Capitalists is who is on the Other Side.

Most People don't even Notice, but it does Shape some of the Finances in American Politics. STEEM Platforms Fund Travel, they are Travel Blog Earnings Engines once an Account is Established, and Travel is Part of it Regularly. And it is also a Political Finance Engine in the same way. STEEM Platforms can Finance anything, like GoFund me but Better, more kind of "Democratic" You might Call it. But there are still so few Platforms we could also say they are anything but Democratic because there aren't 500 Options with 500 Themes and 500 Teams of Devs and Business People Running them. But all of this is Good for Money, and if it Happened with Bitcoin, it would be similar. It would matter where it Mattered, and most People wouldn't understand it.

Most of the International Problems are about kind of Eastern European Hackers asking for Ransoms. That has been a Big Problem. But not just them, that is just a Generalization when I said Eastern European, a lot of the Ransoms do come from there.

In theory, there's no specific amount required to launch a network attack.  You only need at least 50% to sustain the attack indefinitely, although, as you rightly pointed out, initiating such an attack would likely lead to a significant drop in price (unless the attacker exclusively mines empty blocks, good luck moving coins in that case, lol).

The pressing question is: Why would China or any other nation undertake such an action?  What would they stand to gain from it?  Investing in and implementing new tax regulations could offer them benefits, providing additional revenue sources for their tax systems. 

Yuan, not yen, the yen is Japan's currency!
This is actually funny when people talk about de dollarization and China replacing the $ but half of the population doesn't even know their currency name!


As long as you don't change the algorithm the attack will not cease, and changing that and render all legit miners useless will be just as bad, and even so will just earn you a bit of time till they build the new asics. Even PoS will not be a solution, they could simply buy their validators and good luck stopping that!

Bitcoin miners, if don't have their mining ASICs physically and geographically installed in China mainland, but are in other places, can quickly configure their ASICs and connect them to other pools.

China ban on Bitcoin mining years ago only cause a Great Mining Migration to other countries around China and to the USA. It did not kill Bitcoin network but make its stronger by being more decentralized. China government opened a Pandora box years ago.

Because Hong Kong is still not fully under control of China in politics and other things. China mainland government always want to bring Hong Kong back to their control and will continue to do this in future.

Around 50% of hashrate being under control of a certain company and located in China is a very different thing from China as a state being in control. China seems to have chosen a policy of avoiding and restricting Bitcoin, with an exception to Hong Kong.
I don't think that any major economy would try to nationalize major Bitcoin mining farms to gain control of hashrate, and I don't think it's that simple to do it because if someone suddenly creates a huge demand, the prices (for mining equipment and mining companies) will rise, so it'll be a race. There's just not enough motivation to attempt to do something like this and to spend tons of money on it.

Am going to speak from the point of recent happenings and it is that, China is really and firstly more interested in making the BRICS currency their own local fiat currency, of which is the Yen. They want to dominate and along with other interested countries, create a new world order that means dedollarization in essence.
It is quite possible that China could decide to tweak cryptocurrencies or create a new kind of Blockchain that may have its own coin specific for the Chinese community, but that has already been done as we see Hashgraph technology being almost similar to the blockchain and even if China does decide to create its own coin for it's economy, it still won't be as original as Bitcoin and that's a major consolation.

1.It is technically possible, but the costs are higher than the potential profits.

2.What technical implications? I don't know what you are talking about.

3.I don't think that China taking control over Bitcoin will have any geopolitical implications. Maybe the only consequence would be the USA and the western world Banning Bitcoin.

4.If China takes over Bitcoin, most of the BTC developers, miners and users would fork BTC and move to the forked version of BTC. The version of BTC that was taken over by China would become useless and worthless(which makes the whole process of "taking control over Bitcoin" totally pointless).

3.