You sure about that? Because miners can tell you how NVDA, XLNX, AMD, TSMS, INTC, and bitmain will be impacting the hashrate at any given time. If big gov wants to start a secret chip foundry and think they can Manhattan project the hash rate away from miners, they'd be seen a mile away and the project would've already forked by the time gov. miners are online.
US Feds Hack Darkside - Crypto Loses Its’ Kryptonite
- Thread starter bone
- Start date
You sure about that? Because miners can tell you how NVDA, XLNX, AMD, TSMS, INTC, and bitmain will be impacting the hashrate at any given time. If big gov wants to start a secret chip foundry and think they can Manhattan project the hash rate away from miners, they'd be seen a mile away and the project would've already forked by the time gov. miners are online.
We just have to hope the governments don't realize that and shift that money into bitcoin rigs!Well fortunately for us plebeians Bitcoin does not end when the last bitcoin is mined.
Bitcoin is more than code. It is the anti-fragility of the tech teams, the engineers, the protocol experts who adapt to and fight off any and all attacks.
Bitcoin will adapt to threats, especially when many of its profiteers/holders/billionaire activist investors are in positions of power in finance, government and military. There is no lack of imagination entering the DLT and cypto arena. (Israel's best included)
Not looking for an argument with you, as I would risk being on the receiving end of an autistic detailed monologue, which I always enjoy reading. But I have to disagree with the assumption that imagination is lacking in the crypto world. Imagination/Creativity often follows money or vice versa and there is plenty of both in the cryptosphere and more flowing in daily.
BTW, ridiculously over priced 5th generation fighters will most likely end up being defeated by swarms of 50 cent drones.
Just to be clear, even when all 21M BTC have been mined there will still have to be miners verifying transactions and they'll be equally susceptible to a 51% attack. They just get paid via the transaction fee only vs the current transaction fee plus new BTC. A 51% attack is inherent in the very concept of the blockchain. You can add extra algorithms so it becomes an 81% attack, for example, but there will always be a scenario in any blockchain based system where someone who gets enough of the processing power can re-spend coins. There's no getting away from that, no matter how smart you are.
But you're right about getting into the weeds on this particular vulnerability. My broader point is that the virtually infinite amount of money and brains that a Chinese government, for example, can throw at something like destroying trust in a concept like blockchain is not something anyone in blockchain wants to admit. And like regular currency, once trust is gone it doesn't matter how clever and foolproof the new crypto you come up with is, it's not going to be used as a currency by every day people. I would argue that getting the 95% of the population that isn't us and doesn't understand crypto to adopt it is an exceedingly fragile task. One that just one big incident could break for decades.
Just for fun, lets run through that scenario. A government starts buying up hardware, the project forks. What stops the government from repurposing that hardware to the fork or buying up new hardware faster than miners can for the fork? It doesn't take a Manhattan project for China to simply nationalize any foundries/factories they want that are located in China. Not to mention, as I just posted, you don't get your average 50+ year old, the people who control far more than 50% of the wealth by the way, to constantly switch to forks. The fork thing may work if crypto stays what it is, it doesn't work for those imagining it a national/international currency.
well, when we get into hypotheticals, the government can just nationalize internet traffic or destroy its own internet infrastructure to stop crypto, but we know they won't. By the same token, it's very unlikely that they'll nationalize chip foundries or start hoarding equipment to mine. You may be right that 50+ year olds control the wealth. Not so sure 50+ year olds control the crypto hashrate though.
In fact China has nationalized internet traffic to an extent with the great firewall. Again the point is that if you're of the opinion that governments see crypto as an existential threat if it becomes pervasive and replaces the majority of currency, which plenty of folks in crypto (although not you as far as I know) maintain, then its somewhat trivial for them to neutralize that threat by demonstrating how fragile it is. The fact that cryptos could adapt is certainly true, but if they do that by multiple forking then they are condemning themselves to remaining what they are now, which is not anywhere close to replacing currency in day to day use by the majority of day to day users of currency.
It's somewhat humorous to me to hear the fanboys talk about taking the power away from governments and replacing currency while those government impotently stand by or futilely try to ban it's use. That line of thought is oblivious to, or purposely ignoring, fundamental vulnerabilities of the blockchain. It is also oblivious to the concern a government like the U.S., for example, would have to the concept that China could wean themselves off blockchain, as they are doing and have periodically tried to do in the past, then build the ability to hold any new worldwide blockchain economy hostage for what amount to pennies (fen?) in their defense budget. That could well be China's concern as well and one of the reasons they see widespread adoption of any blockchain based currency as a threat. All much bigger picture than the "I want to get rich as a first mover in bitcoin" mentality that suffuses the vast majority of the industry.
Yeah, i'm more of the belief it'll just exist alongside fiat just like swift does. It poses a problem for taxation and laundering, so the government's best served by coming up w/clever ways to fix those two w/o stunting innovation in the space. It may require unconventional thinking that the crypto crowd can come to terms with.
In my mind, the crypto crowd would be content w/cutting out the middle man (stripping banks of power) and dealing w/the government directly (laundering transparency) and taxation. The middle man in that sense becomes an auditable crypto platform.