why wouldnt a government create its own asic to 51% bitcoin? - page 4.

Red-Apple

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Quote from: vapourminer on August 13, 2017, 10:38:49 AM

EDIT: goal is to for a 51% attack on bitcoin to cause people to lose faith in crypto, thus destroying it.

first of all the hashrate of bitcoin is too big which makes it a very costly attack for anyone. and also 51% is not enough, there needs to be a lot more to successfully pull it off.

secondly it won't destroy bitcoin. it will cause a temporarily issue in one block that said fork happens and as soon as it happens, everyone will be on alert and will require much more confirmation making the attack even harder.
and also eventually it will become hard and expensive enough for them to keep the attack up.

on top of it the government won't gain anything by this in the end. they've just wasted tax payers money on something useless which will disrupt the network temporarily (the effects will be less than the fear of Aug 1st).
there are easier ways to attack bitcoin like simply making it illegal Cheesy

p.s. if government wants to disrupt anything they will do it with Monero and other anon coins not bitcoin which they can track!

vapourminer

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what is this "brake pedal" you speak of?

Quote from: wilwxk on August 13, 2017, 10:59:37 AM

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.

The Sceptical Chymist

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Not only because governments would have to forsake their own currency--that's debatable--but committing a 51% attack they'd be ruining bitcoin and would therefore defeat the purpose of doing it. Of course if that was their original intent...

The fbi seized all those silk road coins. Why would the US government need to mine anything? That's a cynical view but it's nevertheless true.

vapourminer

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what is this "brake pedal" you speak of?

Quote from: Intensity on August 13, 2017, 10:48:51 AM

I think that it would devalue the currency of the country. People could see it as "This is better than our fiat". From the countries stand point, I think it would do more harm then good.

goal is not to promote bitcoin, goal is to destroy it by 51% attacking it. if they control the blockchain, no one will trust bitcoin anymore.

vapourminer

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what is this "brake pedal" you speak of?

Quote from: HashFace on August 13, 2017, 10:56:55 AM

At this point, it's mathematically impossible to get to 51% by mining alone. Per CoinMarketCap, 16.5 million of the 21 million have been mined already.

not 51% of the coins, the goal would be to control over 51% of the hashrate. then that government could block transactions, double spend from taht point on, stuff like that. search for "51% attack bitcoin" to see what i mean.

the goal would be to destroy faith in bitcoin and blockchain based cryto currencies.. for some governments bitcoin is a threat to their fiat domination.

wilwxk

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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.

HashFace

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At this point, it's mathematically impossible to get to 51% by mining alone. Per CoinMarketCap, 16.5 million of the 21 million have been mined already.

Intensity

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I think that it would devalue the currency of the country. People could see it as "This is better than our fiat". From the countries stand point, I think it would do more harm then good.

vapourminer

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what is this "brake pedal" you speak of?

as per the title.. whats to prevent the government of a large country to designing and using an asic purely for itself? they have the resources, the amount of money is trivial (for a government), power would not be a problem as they could build a power plant just for the mine to use. ultimate goal would be to control bitcoin. and make some money but that would be trivial. they wouldnt recap the investment but thats not the goal anyway.

sure lots of up front money and time but again, a government wouldnt care, and the long term gain in controlling btc might be worth it.

only bottleneck would be fab capacity. maybe buy or build one?

the fact that no government is trying this means my thinking is flawed somehow. so whats the catch?

EDIT: goal is to for a 51% attack on bitcoin to cause people to lose faith in crypto, thus destroying it.

EDIT 2: i used 51% attack as an example as it is a well known figure. but the government that tries this could just as easily go for 70% or some other number that allows them to roll back the blockchain by an arbitrary amount, say several days worth of blocks.

Topic: why wouldnt a government create its own asic to 51% bitcoin? - page 4. (Read 1728 times)