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Topic: Could China (or similar) take control of Bitcoin? - page 9. (Read 1721 times)

member
Activity: 182
Merit: 47

But don't worry about it, Bitcoin can't be taken over easily, because it's a global network of thousands of computers and mining has proof of work, which makes it very expensive to take over.


While I agree that it wouldn't be some kind of global catastrophe, I think that in this thread at least, we've established that China absolutely could take control of Bitcoin if they wanted to...

legendary
Activity: 3038
Merit: 2162
Putting a $1.5T asset at risk is something that could rattle the entire world economy. This seems like something they would at least think through?


The fact that Bitcoin has marketcap over $1T is not making it important to global economy. Was $1T actually invested in it? No, it's just the result of trading at high price multiplied by total supply. Bitcoin could crash to zero tomorrow and it won't affect the global economy because there's like 200-300 million people who own some Bitcoin, and only some percentage of them would be ruined financially if that happens.

But don't worry about it, Bitcoin can't be taken over easily, because it's a global network of thousands of computers and mining has proof of work, which makes it very expensive to take over.
member
Activity: 182
Merit: 47
I wonder why you're even taking China into consideration on this because they will always have the reason to adopt their own CBDC and enforces their citizens to adopt the same as well, then cant raise support for the use of cryptocurrency, because its not what is going to make them regulate the economy as they wanted, while bitcoin is even a decentralized digital currency, i don't think any of these is possible to happen in the future with them because right from the onset, we already know the way they have always been fighting against the use of crypto within their country.

Bitcoin is worth over one trillion dollars. China is a criminal regime that likes to steal things Smiley. They don't have to "love" Bitcoin in order to try to steal from it, or hold it hostage, etc.

China's current policy with respect to Bitcoin is to forbid their banks from holding it as an asset on their balance sheets. If your plan was to screw around with Bitcoin, that's the... first thing you would do--get your country's banks out of the way of the damage.


1. Yeah, pretty simple if you're willing to spend enough.
2. What technical "implications" it's a 51% attack, it happened before on a number of coins, we have the precedent
3. Zero
4. A big dive followed by a migration to the next best coin, and the revelation that the majority is interested in the returns now the coin
5. You're overreacting, nobody would really give a damn, 1.5T in market cap doesn't mean 1.5T in wealth for the US, even now at least 70 billion out of those are locked in Satoshi's wallets, more are lost, a shitton is held by other people in other countries including China, as for rattling the world economy, common...Bitcoin lost 3 years ago 1 trillion in market cap and it wasn't the end of the world.


I pretty much agree with all of that. The point about this not being a major geopolitical event is well-taken: that's both a reason China would do this (because they could score a cool $1T in winnings from their crime) and also a reason they would not do this (if the effect would be negligible, then why even do it).

So I agree that the actual affect on things wouldn't cause a major disruption, the "terrorism effect" could potentially give them some reason to do it (maybe in concert with a bunch of other things as a lead up to invading Taiwan).


It’s definitely possible and knowing China, I know they will do everything to get it done especially if it is the way to get something they want (and they want a lot of things). I can see China doing this for political gain, how? That I am not sure but one thing’s for sure if China were to take control of 50% of bitcoin investors might lose some confidence on the coin.

I get that, but they would too, and they'd probably have a careful plan about what they'd do in a careful sequence. For starters, they would probably work to hide the fact that they had control of a majority of servers. This wouldn't be very hard to do: they could have control of major US miners right now and we wouldn't necessarily know.










full member
Activity: 2590
Merit: 228
It’s definitely possible and knowing China, I know they will do everything to get it done especially if it is the way to get something they want (and they want a lot of things). I can see China doing this for political gain, how? That I am not sure but one thing’s for sure if China were to take control of 50% of bitcoin investors might lose some confidence on the coin.
legendary
Activity: 2912
Merit: 6403
Blackjack.fun
So this brings up questions:

1. Is this technically possible?

2. What would be the technical implications of China doing this?

3. What would be the geopolitical implications?

4. What would this do the broader cryptocurrency sector?

5. Have major governments e.g. the US and NATO countries ever (publicly) announced any contingency planning around this problem? Putting a $1.5T asset at risk is something that could rattle the entire world economy. This seems like something they would at least think through?

1. Yeah, pretty simple if you're willing to spend enough.
2. What technical "implications" it's a 51% attack, it happened before on a number of coins, we have the precedent
3. Zero
4. A big dive followed by a migration to the next best coin, and the revelation that the majority is interested in the returns now the coin
5. You're overreacting, nobody would really give a damn, 1.5T in market cap doesn't mean 1.5T in wealth for the US, even now at least 70 billion out of those are locked in Satoshi's wallets, more are lost, a shitton is held by other people in other countries including China, as for rattling the world economy, common...Bitcoin lost 3 years ago 1 trillion in market cap and it wasn't the end of the world.
sr. member
Activity: 798
Merit: 436
I wonder why you're even taking China into consideration on this because they will always have the reason to adopt their own CBDC and enforces their citizens to adopt the same as well, then cant raise support for the use of cryptocurrency, because its not what is going to make them regulate the economy as they wanted, while bitcoin is even a decentralized digital currency, i don't think any of these is possible to happen in the future with them because right from the onset, we already know the way they have always been fighting against the use of crypto within their country.
member
Activity: 182
Merit: 47
For further discussion, here's an old article talking about this possibility:

https://www.investopedia.com/news/bitcoin-wont-win-worldwide-adoption-because-china-controls-it-ripple-ceo/

Obviously the hashrate for China has changed, but my thesis here is that it definitely could happen...

member
Activity: 182
Merit: 47
This came up as a side discussion in another thread, and I thought it would be interesting as a top-level discussion here.

The notion is this: although taking over 50% of the Bitcoin hashrate would be a practical impossibility for any private actor or even a small country, China, as a country, has at times hosted over 50% of Bitcoin's hashrate, and it's thus plausible they could make this happen again if they wanted to.

And whomever controls over 50% of the hashrate can dictate the software in use, and/or dictate the contents of the blockchain. As the theory goes, if China wanted to wreak havoc on the world economy, or if it wanted to extract a ransom, or if it simply wanted to profit by inserting its own blocks, then... it could. They could do anything. Perhaps China could decide that Satoshi's blocks should be given away to charity. Maybe they change the architecture so that it worked better in China, or conformed to their "laws" or something.

So this brings up questions:

1. Is this technically possible?

2. What would be the technical implications of China doing this?

3. What would be the geopolitical implications?

4. What would this do the broader cryptocurrency sector?

5. Have major governments e.g. the US and NATO countries ever (publicly) announced any contingency planning around this problem? Putting a $1.5T asset at risk is something that could rattle the entire world economy. This seems like something they would at least think through?

Looking forward to people's thoughts...
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