Topic: IF the NSA wanted to take control over Bitcoin, how would they do it? (Read 5999 times)

Worst case even if BITCOIN is hacked into by the NSA will they spend their time and effort into breaking into every single cryptocurrency out there? Something else will replace bitcoin

Unless they some how find a hack to break into the blockchain and duplicate bitcoin or somehow excecute a 51% attack there’s no way they’re pulling off anything lol

Nothing that complicated really. The mainstream sources I read said that the futures market would correct an imbalance in the markets because buying BTC was easier than selling. Currently they say that the futures markets have a short bias. That would mean (in theory) that the BTC/fiat price would be going down, which it has. If the futures markets allow naked shorting, then the price will really drop. This is just from a conventional financial markets perspective. If you throw in all of the "funbux" Tether tokens and other blatant market rigging, then you've really got a recipe for price drops.

Alternately, Bitfinex could just keep pumping up the price with Tethers etc. Pretty soon I think we'll see a clash between the market participants as BTC dominance and use cases continue to plummet.

I also think is not possible to control bitcoin. How they can have more than 51% of hash power of mining?
However, like in the thread above, why they to kill people because they just want control bitcoin? Is NSA bad company? Confusing.

This is really a big question for the big authorities , And also we knows that already many countries like Japan has big success in technology and they are able to make more control ( stop or make it garbage) but still they just regulated it by imposing tax on the buy sell of Bitcoin , so we can make ourself sure that it is 99% impossible for anyone to stop it by technology , even if any government may ban through ip but can't ban through vpn services use .
And also here we should see towards the humanity that money doesn't have more importance than what people's life have , so they can't kill people to use Bitcoin .
So here we can say there is currently no chance for them to control over btc .

In other words you have no idea of what Bitcoin is, what a blockchain is, where the blockchain resides, how Bitcoin works, or pretty much anything you just blabbered on about, right?

As crazy as it may sound, the NSA can send a giant computer virus that will target the blockchain. Bitcoins need the blockchain, so when the blockchain is in jeopardy, then the NSA got us on our balls. But this will definitely take a couple of years to do so as of now, we can take advantage of bitcoins.

I do not understand what you mean by "short BTC down below $10k".  It sounds as if you are saying that the existence of the BTC futures market allows "them" to manipulate the BTC price and force it lower?

Exactly how would that work?

This is a very necessary precaution of which i support. There is a possibility that this is already on going. Even though it is going to be a difficult task to take down cryptocurrency entirely, precautions are necessary.

+1 because that could be exactly what's happening in the BTC futures markets right now - if they're able to short BTC down below $10k, then I think we'll see abandonment of the BTC Kore chain. In which case Bitcoin Cash assumes the lead position. And Wall St. is left bagholding!

+1 because it is more and more becoming the ugly truth

Ah, well then I guess someone would suggest those things. But I see no path to a takeover yet. Although I would love to see banks lose a billion dollars trying.

Hi RodeoX. The question is not, if it is possible to take control over Bitcoin, but what they would try to do to achieve this goal.
Judging from quotes I read from the IMF, they are pretty aware, that "Cryptocurrencies" (Ms Lagarte avoided spelling the evil name "Bitcoin") can lead to a loss of control over the international cash flow. From there it is just a small step to put up a meeting with some important guys with the topic "How can we stop this Bitcoin thing if it gets too big?"

What would be suggested on this table?

That's a lot of if

1) centralized node? On a decentralized network? Centralizing nodes would require a hard fork that must be agreed to by an overwhelming majority of nodes worldwide. Why would the entire world do that?

2) That may happen organically? Some think this now and have created thousands of alts to address it. The NSA would just be alt #7453. Good luck competing though. 

3) No one on Earth has the authority/ability to do that in the protocol. It would require a hard fork to a fundamentally different system that we would all have to adopt. Have you ever met a bitcoin user that would agree to that, much less a super-majority?

4) I don't know what that means? It's over because someone said it? well in that case, war poverty and death are now over! I command it!

5) wow, this is going to be expensive. The US government is going to spend billions bribing miners all over thee planet to... wait why are they doing this? Where is the money going to come from? It is illegal for the us to pay bribes, so this will require an entire secret bureaucracy willing to go to jail for no apparent gain. They will need to operate in almost every country on Earth and be 100% successful. How long do we do this, forever? What happens when I refuse to be bribed and set up a mine? 

It is just not feasible, practical, likely to succeed, cost effective, or lawful. 

If this is true then the whole conspiracy theories about the core group being owned by bankers is just an a delusion we are so afraid to implement segwit because we believe in the lie that blockstream is centralized.
NSA might need more hash power to implement 51% attack in the past BU had that power but they didn't do it i wonder why.

Any NSA takeover of bitcoin begins and ends with the plot of Superman III.  Q.E.D

If you dont killing is an option, ask Hitler Clinton. Shes got 100's of dead bodies connected to her. That said, they still could not take bitcoin down.

Love this!  OP definitely underrated human capacity to be resilient. Bitcoin would've being history if it were that easy to destroy. The hate toward Crypto by Politicians, Fascists & security agency is hugh but I guarantee  they wouldn't be able to match the intellectual capability of personalities that really like the crypto concept. Even if they successful hire nerds it will hard to convinced those nerds to destroy Bitcoin unless they're completely brainwashed or lied to

If it got out that the CIA is trying to undermine bitcoin, i think it would drive the price up. From free advertising to making more people curious it would definitely go up.

IF the NSA wanted to take control over Bitcoin, how would they do it?

I'm guessing they would publicly release their collision attack for SHA-2