They failed to destroy Bitcoin because it is not only about buying mining hardware, just like wining a war is not just about buying weapons.
There is a shit loads of logistics involved with using these weapons while there is a lot of human factor involved and the situation on the battle field is changing constantly.
They don't have an organisation in place that could handle manufacturing and deploying mining equipment quickly enough and then maintaining it (undisturbed) for long enough. And they have too much corruption inside.
The only way it can work now is because it is distributed and each mining operation is independent.
Some of them are actually secret.
For the big organisations that would want to get rid of bitcoin, it is much easier to corrupt people and conduct propaganda campaigns in the media.
And that's what they do.
Mining is the most important (and the most resilient) point of resistance of Bitcoin, against the governments and the financial oligarchy.
+1
Good to see some military metaphors used to describe the situation, and exactly on point!
It's naive to assume that state actors are not involved in bitcoin in a major way. Personally I believe the Chinese govt. is subsidizing the miners, possibly even precisely to prevent a 51% percent attack from US banks? Makes sense to me. As far as US government involvement, normally that would be done via US multinational corporations and Wall Street financiers, who are in fact "hiding in plain sight" in bitcoin. Wall Street wants to control bitcoin for their own profit, but will do the bidding of the Fed when the phone call comes in. A Faustian bargain? There could well be financial execs "committing suicide" in their cars again... It will get more interesting in the next few years...
This topic is actually far more complicated than anyone here can comprehend.
This Chinese guy whose they made now the face of evil - whatever his name.
If this is true what they say, that he actually owns major amount of the network's hashing power, he must have the shitest job in the world.
Imagine what kind of system he must be having in place to deal with the corruption among his technicians. Technicians that he needs to have and who he needs to trust, in order to have his operation going.
I'm betting that it's just a matter of time before the loses from the corruption among his employees will grow big enough to make his big mining unprofitable.
That's all assuming that he's running a big mining now, which I seriously doubt, exactly because of the reasons I just described.
Now, this brings me to the point that the corruption inside all kind of mining organizations (especially as big as governments) and the free market around it, eventually favors small miners - such that can control their entire operation by themselves, or with a help from a closest friends. Such operations shall naturally be run under some secrecy, as this is the best protection from all kind of crooks, let alone the government eyes (taxes etc. )
And with all this, I'm predicting that bitcoin mining will become more and more distributed in the future.
The economy will make it happen.
I'm actually saying it has becoming like this already...
So all the fears about how the mining will be becoming more and more centralised - I think it's a bunch of bollocks and people spreading such info simply don't understand how the system works.
Which for fairness nobody fully understands, but certainly some understand it more than others.
Final note - this thread is almost devoid of technical debate on the UASF proposal. Is it safe to say that technically it's complete crap?
Yes
