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Topic: why wouldnt a government create its own asic to 51% bitcoin? (Read 1665 times)

legendary
Activity: 1806
Merit: 1003
If they raise inflation rates to attack BTC it would have an impact on the economy too, and they would have to explain people about it. But yeah it's a problem, governments could spend billions in propaganda and promote their forks as well bribing everyone up, so it's not only a potential 51% government funded mining operation attack, but malicious hard forks too (I suspect all of these bigger block hardforks are promoted by certain governments)

I remember this topic had already been discussed in the past

In fact, the money to be printed won't necessarily raise the inflation rates. The US government ran two (or even three) rounds of quantitative easing with inflation still being exceptionally low. How come? Because the newly printed money never entered the real economy. It was used mostly to extinguish the bad debts that came about from subprime loans which caused the subprime mortgage crisis in the US in 2008. The money itself was sterilized by financial and stock markets, so the inflation was kept on a tight rein and at its lowest levels. Basically the same would happen to money printed to kill or destroy some coin (if it ever came to that)

No, newly printed money will enter the real economy, just not immediately. Otherwise, where do you think the inflation come from? If all newly printed money does not enter the economy, then there should be deflation, not inflation. Newly printed money enter the economy in a gradual and controlled fashion, this is the job of central banks.
legendary
Activity: 3430
Merit: 1280
English ⬄ Russian Translation Services
If they raise inflation rates to attack BTC it would have an impact on the economy too, and they would have to explain people about it. But yeah it's a problem, governments could spend billions in propaganda and promote their forks as well bribing everyone up, so it's not only a potential 51% government funded mining operation attack, but malicious hard forks too (I suspect all of these bigger block hardforks are promoted by certain governments)

I remember this topic had already been discussed in the past

In fact, the money to be printed won't necessarily raise the inflation rates. The US government ran two (or even three) rounds of quantitative easing with inflation still being exceptionally low. How come? Because the newly printed money never entered the real economy. It was used mostly to extinguish the bad debts that came about from subprime loans which caused the subprime mortgage crisis in the US in 2008. The money itself was sterilized by financial and stock markets, so the inflation was kept on a tight rein and at its lowest levels. Basically the same would happen to money printed to kill or destroy some coin (if it ever came to that)
legendary
Activity: 4326
Merit: 3519
what is this "brake pedal" you speak of?
I'm curious how you could miss this thread

easy: real life  Tongue

thanks for the link ill read it through.

legendary
Activity: 3430
Merit: 1280
English ⬄ Russian Translation Services
I can tell you that with certainty

Personal profits are on their minds exclusively. They don't care for Bitcoin, blockchain, or whatever, all what they are actually looking for is money which they could receive as budget financing if they successfully push this idea into the budget plan for the next few years. Whether it will bring anything of substance doesn't in the least interest these dudes. All the buzz words they say with such a serious tone and pompous view are said entirely with this purpose in mind

i must of missed this rumor.. could you clarify or link to it?

you mean russian government wants to mine for itself? ie budget it out (the mining farm) and all profits go to the government?

wonder if they would make it illegal for russians to mine for themselves or use others pools. mine to the russian pool or else..

I'm curious how you could miss this thread

There is also an ongoing discussion of the matter in the Russian section of the forum, and you can find it here, but you are on your own with translation. I just expressed the consensus that built up among the posters in that thread and what I myself feel like the most probable outcome of such an effort. Basically, this is how all such projects typically end up, i.e. with tax payer's money spent mostly in vain (but someone certainly ending up rich and richer)

No, no, there have been some crossed wires here.  The claim is that deisik knows with certainty that the Russian government want to make profit (which is a fair assumption, I suppose).  However, deisik doesn't know with certainty how they plan on achieving that goal, but suspects it's not going to be Bitcoin. It sounds as though deisik is saying they could conceivably allocate some of their fiat budget to investigating the possibilities and, even if nothing came of it, that research money in and of itself would still be profitable for someone (not that they necessarily are doing that research, just that they could)

That seems to be the whole point, i.e. nothing will ever come out of it
legendary
Activity: 1204
Merit: 1028
No, no, there have been some crossed wires here.  The claim is that deisik knows with certainty that the Russian government want to make profit (which is a fair assumption, I suppose).  However, deisik doesn't know with certainty how they plan on achieving that goal, but suspects it's not going to be Bitcoin.  It sounds as though deisik is saying they could conceivably allocate some of their fiat budget to investigating the possibilities and, even if nothing came of it, that research money in and of itself would still be profitable for someone (not that they necessarily are doing that research, just that they could).  

Even if there were a government planning on getting involved with large-scale mining operations, which seems unlikely to begin with, announcing such a project publicly would be a likelihood even more remote.  There isn't any real profit in a 51% attack, which is probably why no governments have attempted it.  But someone somewhere is probably spending a boatload of money in research to learn that obvious-to-us fact the hard way.

ah thanks for the correction.

as for 51% attacking (my premise) there is not real profit, its to control and kill it. would cost scads of money but what is money to a government? just print more up to kill btc and then your fiat is safe again.

If they raise inflation rates to attack BTC it would have an impact on the economy too, and they would have to explain people about it. But yeah it's a problem, governments could spend billions in propaganda and promote their forks as well bribing everyone up, so it's not only a potential 51% government funded mining operation attack, but malicious hard forks too (I suspect all of these bigger block hardforks are promoted by certain governments)
legendary
Activity: 4326
Merit: 3519
what is this "brake pedal" you speak of?
No, no, there have been some crossed wires here.  The claim is that deisik knows with certainty that the Russian government want to make profit (which is a fair assumption, I suppose).  However, deisik doesn't know with certainty how they plan on achieving that goal, but suspects it's not going to be Bitcoin.  It sounds as though deisik is saying they could conceivably allocate some of their fiat budget to investigating the possibilities and, even if nothing came of it, that research money in and of itself would still be profitable for someone (not that they necessarily are doing that research, just that they could).  

Even if there were a government planning on getting involved with large-scale mining operations, which seems unlikely to begin with, announcing such a project publicly would be a likelihood even more remote.  There isn't any real profit in a 51% attack, which is probably why no governments have attempted it.  But someone somewhere is probably spending a boatload of money in research to learn that obvious-to-us fact the hard way.

ah thanks for the correction.

as for 51% attacking (my premise) there is not real profit, its to control and kill it. would cost scads of money but what is money to a government? just print more up to kill btc and then your fiat is safe again.
legendary
Activity: 3724
Merit: 3063
Leave no FUD unchallenged
I can tell you that with certainty

Personal profits are on their minds exclusively. They don't care for Bitcoin, blockchain, or whatever, all what they are actually looking for is money which they could receive as budget financing if they successfully push this idea into the budget plan for the next few years. Whether it will bring anything of substance doesn't in the least interest these dudes. All the buzz words they say with such a serious tone and pompous view are said entirely with this purpose in mind

i must of missed this rumor.. could you clarify or link to it?

you mean russian government wants to mine for itself? ie budget it out (the mining farm) and all profits go to the government?

wonder if they would make it illegal for russians to mine for themselves or use others pools. mine to the russian pool or else..

No, no, there have been some crossed wires here.  The claim is that deisik knows with certainty that the Russian government want to make profit (which is a fair assumption, I suppose).  However, deisik doesn't know with certainty how they plan on achieving that goal, but suspects it's not going to be Bitcoin.  It sounds as though deisik is saying they could conceivably allocate some of their fiat budget to investigating the possibilities and, even if nothing came of it, that research money in and of itself would still be profitable for someone (not that they necessarily are doing that research, just that they could).  

Even if there were a government planning on getting involved with large-scale mining operations, which seems unlikely to begin with, announcing such a project publicly would be a likelihood even more remote.  There isn't any real profit in a 51% attack, which is probably why no governments have attempted it.  But someone somewhere is probably spending a boatload of money in research to learn that obvious-to-us fact the hard way.
legendary
Activity: 4326
Merit: 3519
what is this "brake pedal" you speak of?
I can tell you that with certainty

Personal profits are on their minds exclusively. They don't care for Bitcoin, blockchain, or whatever, all what they are actually looking for is money which they could receive as budget financing if they successfully push this idea into the budget plan for the next few years. Whether it will bring anything of substance doesn't in the least interest these dudes. All the buzz words they say with such a serious tone and pompous view are said entirely with this purpose in mind

i must of missed this rumor.. could you clarify or link to it?

you mean russian government wants to mine for itself? ie budget it out (the mining farm) and all profits go to the government?

wonder if they would make it illegal for russians to mine for themselves or use others pools. mine to the russian pool or else..
legendary
Activity: 3430
Merit: 1280
English ⬄ Russian Translation Services
These are just rumors

Well, those might not be quite rumors but rather speculations by some people allegedly close to Putin but regardless, it makes no sense for Russia to mine Bitcoin and compete with China (which would be a losing battle anyway). If anything, Russia would rather try to push their own crypto, but personally, I believe in neither possibility. In other words, these are most likely just empty talks
You do have a point though on which we cant really be sure if those informations are legit or not but thinking of that theres a competition between countries i would like to know what would be the goal if they won such battle? Its a senseless thing to think off that they would fight for the spot on having the biggest mining operations. Most likely maybe they would create their own coin, but well who knows because no one do really have an idea on whats on their minds

I can tell you that with certainty

Personal profits are on their minds exclusively. They don't care for Bitcoin, blockchain, or whatever, all what they are actually looking for is money which they could receive as budget financing if they successfully push this idea into the budget plan for the next few years. Whether it will bring anything of substance doesn't in the least interest these dudes. All the buzz words they say with such a serious tone and pompous view are said entirely with this purpose in mind
hero member
Activity: 1428
Merit: 653
Always Act Smart and Play Safe With Your Funds
Maybe government has some other cheaper ways to curb bitcoin if they intend to do so or maybe they don't see it as a threat and think that government is capable of stopping it when and if they wish so or maybe government still believe that people have more belief and trust in the fiat currency created by the government itself and bitcoin is just a small part of the whole economic system of their country and can be regulated and brought under the law anytime.
legendary
Activity: 3094
Merit: 1127
No one as of today is rich enough to create create enough ASICs to control 51% of the network. Moreover in fact you need a bit more than that.

A Government could do it quite easily. Or as someone pointed out earlier in the thread, the Chinese government could march in to mines in its country and take over more than 75% of the hashrate anyway, which is a risk with bitcoin.

My view is that most Governments are simply not interested enough to do this.



I dont think its easy as you say. If you think abot the enery to be wate in this hashrate and the atual "enery crise"(coal...) the govern will not incentive/force this expensive activity only to destroy a cryptocurrency.

I said they could do it quite easily. I qualified that at the end of my post with the point that you make that they are not interested enough. Lets look at facts. The European bank is printing 60 billion euros a month - and its currency is strengthening, that means they are printing more than the entire value of bitcoin every 3 weeks or so. So why would they want to do this? But IF they did, then they would more than have the resources to do so.
But as per my knowledge, in recently have some rumor about Russia government has spend $100 million for support community miner Bitcoin in their country for compete miner in China. This is positive signal about government in some country still interested Bitcoin and cryptocurrency.
Instead on making this kind of attack or plans on destroying on Bitcoin, russia have been decided to go in mining field which is really a nice thing and about on the 51% attack on bitcoin wont really be sufficient enough considering on the hashrate its too big and even government do have the power i dont think they will jump in to this aims or goals on controlling or blocking bitcoin. Its not possible its soo damn vast.

These are just rumors

Well, those might not be quite rumors but rather speculations by some people allegedly close to Putin but regardless, it makes no sense for Russia to mine Bitcoin and compete with China (which would be a losing battle anyway). If anything, Russia would rather try to push their own crypto, but personally, I believe in neither possibility. In other words, these are most likely just empty talks
You do have a point though on which we cant really be sure if those informations are legit or not but thinking of that theres a competition between countries i would like to know what would be the goal if they won such battle? Its a senseless thing to think off that they would fight for the spot on having the biggest mining operations. Most likely maybe they would create their own coin, but well who knows because no one do really have an idea on whats on their minds.
copper member
Activity: 1330
Merit: 899
🖤😏
But still no body mentions this, an attack with 51% hash power will need to target something substantial and valuable, since if a miner or a mining pool starts acting against the interests of the whole system other miners could abandon that chain and could start flagging every activity of the hostile party for every body to ban and block. since having so much hash power requires if not billions but almost 1 billion dollars, the success of the system will become the success of the biggest miner, they'd earn more if they stay loyal to the system and stay honest, nothing we can do other than joining the mining industry ourselves to compete even if it's a few TH/s. that's what people are doing from the start I believe, that's why Bitcoin mining costs so much and electricity usage is equal of a country using electricity.
member
Activity: 88
Merit: 10
Any attack would be a temporary disruption.

If the Chinese government seized mining farms and controlled over 51% of the hashing power. They could privately mine the chain and reorg massive amounts of transactions. This would cause people to lose trust in bitcoins and there would probably be a huge price crash. However we would change proof of work then fork the chain to fix it. We would suffer financially in the short term from the price crash, however long term bitcoin survives and continues to do it's thing.

So governments can never really control it, only disrupt it. Every such disruption would cost millions of dollars and would not really gain much.
legendary
Activity: 1204
Merit: 1028
Everyone would just fork to a new algorithm that screws whichever government invested tons on controlling Bitcoin.

and thereby render all existing asics useless. all those existing heavily invested private mines.. just so much landfill material..

still.. might be better than having a bitcoin controlled by a government. a new asic arms race will begin.



PoW change may be inevitable in the future anyway. But the thing is, PoW change are temporal solutions. It's a matter of time that an new ASIC arms race does indeed begin, leading to a monopoly again.

If we change the PoW, it must be something more creative than a mere algo change. Someone spoke about randomly changing algo to stop monopolies or something like that. We must explore better solutions and think long term.

A mere rushed PoW change should be made only if it's the only way out to survive.
legendary
Activity: 2590
Merit: 3008
Welt Am Draht
The Russia mining news involves two things that are traditional indicators of crypto disaster. One is ICO. The other is Russians.

I'll believe it when I see it.
hero member
Activity: 812
Merit: 501
Its very difficult to ger 51% of all hashrate, andpeople wont like to hear the govern are wastiong millions of dolar to make asics only to destroy a currency wich the people loves.
People will demonstrate when a govt spend million dollars to create Hash 51%. What is the reason a govt destroy bitcoin. And the bitcoin community will not be silent to prevent attack from the gov. Bitcoin developers are able ask million bitcoin users to mine bitcoin to stop the attact from the govt. it is proof the hardfork of BCH that fail. BCH supported by big capitalist and big media, in fact the scheme failed and after that the bitcoin price is unstopable.
legendary
Activity: 3430
Merit: 1280
English ⬄ Russian Translation Services
No one as of today is rich enough to create create enough ASICs to control 51% of the network. Moreover in fact you need a bit more than that.

A Government could do it quite easily. Or as someone pointed out earlier in the thread, the Chinese government could march in to mines in its country and take over more than 75% of the hashrate anyway, which is a risk with bitcoin.

My view is that most Governments are simply not interested enough to do this.



I dont think its easy as you say. If you think abot the enery to be wate in this hashrate and the atual "enery crise"(coal...) the govern will not incentive/force this expensive activity only to destroy a cryptocurrency.

I said they could do it quite easily. I qualified that at the end of my post with the point that you make that they are not interested enough. Lets look at facts. The European bank is printing 60 billion euros a month - and its currency is strengthening, that means they are printing more than the entire value of bitcoin every 3 weeks or so. So why would they want to do this? But IF they did, then they would more than have the resources to do so.
But as per my knowledge, in recently have some rumor about Russia government has spend $100 million for support community miner Bitcoin in their country for compete miner in China. This is positive signal about government in some country still interested Bitcoin and cryptocurrency.
Instead on making this kind of attack or plans on destroying on Bitcoin, russia have been decided to go in mining field which is really a nice thing and about on the 51% attack on bitcoin wont really be sufficient enough considering on the hashrate its too big and even government do have the power i dont think they will jump in to this aims or goals on controlling or blocking bitcoin. Its not possible its soo damn vast.

These are just rumors

Well, those might not be quite rumors but rather speculations by some people allegedly close to Putin but regardless, it makes no sense for Russia to mine Bitcoin and compete with China (which would be a losing battle anyway). If anything, Russia would rather try to push their own crypto, but personally, I believe in neither possibility. In other words, these are most likely just empty talks
legendary
Activity: 4326
Merit: 3519
what is this "brake pedal" you speak of?
Everyone would just fork to a new algorithm that screws whichever government invested tons on controlling Bitcoin.

and thereby render all existing asics useless. all those existing heavily invested private mines.. just so much landfill material..

still.. might be better than having a bitcoin controlled by a government. a new asic arms race will begin.

Ucy
sr. member
Activity: 2576
Merit: 401
Its very difficult to ger 51% of all hashrate, andpeople wont like to hear the govern are wastiong millions of dolar to buy/make asics only to destroy a currency wich the people loves.

some governments wouldnt care. since when has things that people like but governments dont like stopped the government from doing things.

might be possible in some countries to hide the mine and associated infrastructure.. very difficult depending on the country though.

one (or more) government finances it, set it up in a third world country maybe.


I think some governments (especially ones in open societies/countries) could easily find (or may have found) a way around this.  The use of Private Companies or intelligence Agencies would be the easiest options
legendary
Activity: 1652
Merit: 4392
Be a bank
There are at least two schools of thought that say roughly the attack you describe is already in progress.

bitcoin cash could be the Chinese govt's attempt and bitcoin segwit the USG's

yeah thats kinda what led me to post this tread.

bitcoin is still in its infancy and is fairly vulnerable at this point. and i want bitcoin to succeed.

it will. it's a pretty bonny baby by now, with parents, family, guardians/godparents and a whole village all around.

it's some of these adults in the analogy that cannot thrive.

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