Topic: Im fairly confident the NSA (US Gov) Can 51% Any Coin At Any Time (Read 7044 times)

OP, you're that confident because you don't know enough about bitcoin or computers.

I'm going to take a wild guess here and assert that the NSA doesn't give a rat's ass about BitCoin, and most likely, never will.

If our (US) government opts to allocate necessary resources to such an endeavor, my coins will be the least of my worries. My principal worry will be holding my place in line for government handouts that will be necessary to support those of us that do not hold the wealth needed to support this effort and still feed ourselves. The time may come. In the meantime the US government will likely resort to less resource intensive intrusions on both privacy and economy.

I'm fairly confident you don't know what you're talking about.

FLoating point OPerations have nothing to do with bitcoin mining.

You will likely be able to go into Best Buy in the next few years and buy an ASIC miner, cheap.

You've been watching too many movies haven't you? This is a plot from the movie Sneakers.

fortunately this isnt really a threat. the computers they have now are not designed to hash sha256 and if they did invest the resources necessary to develop their own asics we would simply switch to a new POW scheme each time

Even if the government decided to take such action, even if they effectively "killed" Bitcoin, there are about 10 others to choose from I think. Bitcoin is a hydra, cut off one head two more appear 

I don't think the market cap is the real threat. The whole idea of taking away control over both supply and traceability of transactions is annoying the New World Order pyramid.



Written code is inefficient. CPU mining shows this. First the code is compiled from C++ to ASM by compiler on Satoshi's notebook. Then the ASM x86 instructions are translated into RISC instructions by CPU internal hardware to finally execute. ASIC hardware have the logic needed for Bitcoin hashing designed into silicon wafers and transistors bypassing ALL other steps needed. This is why ASIC is the fastest solution possible and also this makes the ASIC unsuitable to any other purpose than Bitcoin mining and home heating.

If the 51% attack starts today all they can do is invalidate transactions starting from today. Unless they redo ALL work from last checkpoint hardcoded into Bitcoin-Qt that is more challenging than simple 51% denial of service and doublespend attack.This.I think reading private e-mails of all population to figure out who don't like USA government and new world order is more important task. Seriously. More than 50% of world hates USA. Now that's a 51% attack against USA!Even if they receive such orders all they can do is attack public persons involved in Bitcoin, take down exchanges and services accepting them and attack individual nodes. This will bring chaos and destruction but the Bitcoin will survive. Think about going really hidden and anonymous then.Think about BFL and Inaba scaming CIA like everyone else. They can order the ASIC chips from foundries but it might be hard for them to keep this secret. The designs might get leaked, the chips might be produced more than ordered and sold on black market. There are not many foundries in world who operate on recent 28nm or even 45nm process. They need such process unless they are ready to use outdated and inefficient 180nm.We already figured out that Satoshi is time traveler from future and not Sirius. He definitely could not be CIA. Invalidate the current US Dollar, start printing red colored dollars called New US Dollar. Exchange all current US dollars for new US dollars with exchange rate 200 to 1. Problem solved. Learn what the government fucks did to money in Latvia after fall of USSR.Sure they can switch off large part of internet. Including their own military systems depending on Internet. Existing network in other parts in world will continue to function. Bitcoin will continue to function there too.They actually could do less. Pirate Bay have centralized servers. Raid them, take them offline, harass the owners. Bitcoin is decentralized to such degree that every node and pool is independent Pirate Bay.In the moment they start to plan this move, the spy agencies in Russia, China, Iran will be informed. They might not care about well-being of Bitcoin but they might sabotage the NSA-CIA work as a routine action of spite and lulz. Contaminating the fab facility by subtle sabotage is not hard for them. Definitely it does not cost 30 billion or require Otto Skorenzy parachuting over the fab.Even 13 year old boy can do that without revealing himself. They connect to Bitcoin network using Tor and then publish the longer malicious chain. I just solved the problem for NSA. They are welcome to send the hacked bitcoins to address in my signature as I probably spared them of few million taxpayers USD needed to solve this problem!This largely depends on how many people are willing to go on streets and start shooting at police and military troops because they cannot share lolcats in internet. And how victoriously they could do it without being defeated. For this to happen the situation in other aspects of society must be as bad too. This is why all regulations, censorship and taking away civil liberties are done slowly and in small increments.Mass surveillance of both domestic and foreign population. Datamining and storing every communication for eternity.Bullshit. Everyone who knows about computer security will agree that there is no such thing as guaranteed hackability. This is why Pirate Bay was physically raided and taken away and not hacked from NSA or FBI every time it resurfaced.I think these countries might embrace Bitcoin instead as a weapon to destabilize USA monetary grip over world.

Also I'm slightly annoyed about the way mom quotes. Almost as bad as German 8 o'clock news. Source: Internet

Fed-up adults will not break up kids' game by playing the game. 

within a year, diff will be so high that even NSA wont be able to 51 BTC, at least not without a really significant expense.. like too expensive, even for the NSA !!!

BTC will strive forever !

I don't think the market cap is the real threat. The whole idea of taking away control over both supply and traceability of transactions is annoying the New World Order pyramid.



Written code is inefficient. CPU mining shows this. First the code is compiled from C++ to ASM by compiler on Satoshi's notebook. Then the ASM x86 instructions are translated into RISC instructions by CPU internal hardware to finally execute. ASIC hardware have the logic needed for Bitcoin hashing designed into silicon wafers and transistors bypassing ALL other steps needed. This is why ASIC is the fastest solution possible and also this makes the ASIC unsuitable to any other purpose than Bitcoin mining and home heating.

If the 51% attack starts today all they can do is invalidate transactions starting from today. Unless they redo ALL work from last checkpoint hardcoded into Bitcoin-Qt that is more challenging than simple 51% denial of service and doublespend attack.This.I think reading private e-mails of all population to figure out who don't like USA government and new world order is more important task. Seriously. More than 50% of world hates USA. Now that's a 51% attack against USA!Even if they receive such orders all they can do is attack public persons involved in Bitcoin, take down exchanges and services accepting them and attack individual nodes. This will bring chaos and destruction but the Bitcoin will survive. Think about going really hidden and anonymous then.Think about BFL and Inaba scaming CIA like everyone else. They can order the ASIC chips from foundries but it might be hard for them to keep this secret. The designs might get leaked, the chips might be produced more than ordered and sold on black market. There are not many foundries in world who operate on recent 28nm or even 45nm process. They need such process unless they are ready to use outdated and inefficient 180nm.We already figured out that Satoshi is time traveler from future and not Sirius. He definitely could not be CIA. Invalidate the current US Dollar, start printing red colored dollars called New US Dollar. Exchange all current US dollars for new US dollars with exchange rate 200 to 1. Problem solved. Learn what the government fucks did to money in Latvia after fall of USSR.Sure they can switch off large part of internet. Including their own military systems depending on Internet. Existing network in other parts in world will continue to function. Bitcoin will continue to function there too.They actually could do less. Pirate Bay have centralized servers. Raid them, take them offline, harass the owners. Bitcoin is decentralized to such degree that every node and pool is independent Pirate Bay.In the moment they start to plan this move, the spy agencies in Russia, China, Iran will be informed. They might not care about well-being of Bitcoin but they might sabotage the NSA-CIA work as a routine action of spite and lulz. Contaminating the fab facility by subtle sabotage is not hard for them. Definitely it does not cost 30 billion or require Otto Skorenzy parachuting over the fab.Even 13 year old boy can do that without revealing himself. They connect to Bitcoin network using Tor and then publish the longer malicious chain. I just solved the problem for NSA. They are welcome to send the hacked bitcoins to address in my signature as I probably spared them of few million taxpayers USD needed to solve this problem!This largely depends on how many people are willing to go on streets and start shooting at police and military troops because they cannot share lolcats in internet. And how victoriously they could do it without being defeated. For this to happen the situation in other aspects of society must be as bad too. This is why all regulations, censorship and taking away civil liberties are done slowly and in small increments.Mass surveillance of both domestic and foreign population. Datamining and storing every communication for eternity.Bullshit. Everyone who knows about computer security will agree that there is no such thing as guaranteed hackability. This is why Pirate Bay was physically raided and taken away and not hacked from NSA or FBI every time it resurfaced.I think these countries might embrace Bitcoin instead as a weapon to destabilize USA monetary grip over world.

They or other governments could I suppose. Although I don't see why they would want to.

It's starting to seem more and more likely though that most governments will embrace bitcoin  (or p2p crytpocurrency in general) and it will coincide alongside with fiat government issued currency.  As of right now I don't really see or fear a backlash of government towards bitcoin.

Of course countries ran by authoritize regimes (China, Iran, Syria, North Korea, etc etc) would probably try to take a hardline approach on something like bitcoin if it undermined their power or influence at all.

I agree with OP.  What do you think they are doing with all that power?  Breaking codes, matching hashes, the same kind of thing Bitcoin miners do.

Also, they could hack into any exchange they want... surprised Gox hasn't been hacked more.

I agree 100%.  However, the only people currently attacking bitcoin in any real way are those manipulating the MtGox market  prices.  The crashing is ruining consumer confidence, precisely at a time when we need stability and growth.

This has just shown that although Bitcoin is ready, the services surrounding it aren't.

TBF a little bit of paranoia can be a good thing with a technology that's supposed to be censorship-resistant. Even if people in high places aren't particularly out to get you, there's a lot to be said for designing technologies that you could depend on if it turned out that they were.

Paranoid much?  Get a grip guys, the US Gov doesn't give 2 shits about bitcoin.  Bankers aren't quaking in their boots, get over yourselves.

The banks are freezing assets of exchanges that aren't following the rules... full stop.  KYC laws are serious business designed to help track down those performing questionable banking practices (money laundering, etc.).  US exchanges that follow the rules will be just fine.

There is a new type of bitcoin enthusiast that will quickly out number the crypto anarchist / libertarian gov. haters that have been trolling these boards for years.  They are finally bringing big money and legitimacy to bitcoin.  Stop trying to scare them off.

Agree, they don't give a shit. And by the time anybody does start giving a shit, Bitcoin will be used widely enough that people will get upset if anyone tries to disrupt it. This was also the genius of the early internet: The same technology that's to make dissident political communications hard to censor is also used for commerce and chatting to friends. You can't shut down the one without shutting down the other. This makes the network very strong, because people may not be bothered about some nutjob's right to express his political views, but mess with their ability to share pictures of their cats and THE STREETS WILL RUN RED WITH THE BLOOD OF REVOLUTION.

That said, if they were so minded it shouldn't cost a government (or anybody with a lot of capital who really cared) that much to take over the mining infrastructure. Done at scale in a competitive market, mining should be slightly profitable. If you're prepared to run at a very modest loss, or even zero profit, you should be able force up the block difficulty up and push the revenue per dollar spent on hardware / electricity down to the point where it becomes unprofitable for anyone else to do it. At that point (economically) rational miners would give up and you'd have the [marginally loss-making] mining business to yourself.

But they can not do it secretively, they will have to join the network and thus revealing their identity to have an impact, and this directly defeat the purpose of  existence of "No Such Agency".

unfortunately they cannot and would end up spending a billion dollars and end up with one of these