i love conspiracy theories, gives me something to think about.
There seems to be overwhelming evidence that people at the NSA have deliberately weakened cryptography several times so that encrypted material would be available them.
Is there any question about this?
The question really is if they can weaken SHA256 so much that they are able to break the encryption or render BTC useless. There are a lot of mathematical geniuses in the world and the incentive has never been higher to find a loop hole in those encryptions.
I agree that it is good to promote learning, to motivate it.
But there are very few people, none in fact, who have even one percent of the computing power of the NSA.
Should we trust that they are 'benevolent' with their power? Look around the world and decide.
The NSA has a long history of providing the most secret material to dictators and oppressive regimes. A tiny miniscule fraction of its intelligence product is used legitimately to fight objective crime.
Before the dawn of the internet this was not a problem. Almost no Americans knew what was actually being done with the data they collected. Now though the internet has changed things.
It is not a question of 'rendering bit coin useless'. Obviously that would defeat any purpose behind having control of the algorithm.
Imagine a world where only one group of people knows exactly how much money you have and where you spend it.
Now imagine you are in a country with a military dictatorship supported by that group. Your family has been killed. Most of your friends have been killed. There is almost nothing left you can do. But you have enough bit coin to escape...
