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One thing to keep in mind is that if someone were to do an operation this big, you would have to factor in more than cost per TH/s to the total cost. You need a physical location to house all of the equipment, cooling equipment to keep all the equipment at a functioning temperature, electricity cost to run everything, probably a significant and expensive amount of bandwidth, shipping cost for all of the equipment, and possibly more (that's just what I thought of off the top of my head). It is interesting to think about how much it would cost, though in reality I think purchasing enough equipment to do this and actually take over the network would be near impossible. If someone were to take over the network, the best way would probably be to use "zombie" computers like in DDoS attacks (except mining bitcoins), and amass an army of "zombie" computers large enough to gather 51% of the mining network, although this is probably impossible too.
How it's done wouldn't be that important.
I've updated my OP with the concern. To execute a hostile takeover of a corporation, you would need to purchase just over 50% of the company's stock.
To execute a "hostile takeover" of bitcoin, you would only need 2.4% of the bitcoins in existence.
I'm not trying to be alarmist, I would like to see the Attacker Index approach 51%.
Someone please prove me wrong, so I can sleep better.
No sir, that isn't how it works. Around these parts we adhere to strict rules of Socratic dialogue. One need not prove that you are wrong. You must give compelling evidence that you are right. You have not yet done so. You have demonstrated, in a simplified system that does not take into account the dimension of time, with grievous assumptions that there will be no supply-demand market reactions to the actions you propose, that 2.4% of the market cap of Bitcoin could acquire hashpower equivalent to >50% the current network hashrate.
You have far, far, far more to do to even approach an acceptable level of logical support for your premise. Right now, you aren't much better than, "If I could create an airframe with 0.02 Cd, and if I could make it structurally sound and weigh 500 lbs, I could fly from Texas to New York using a propeller fitted to a lawn-trimmer on a single tank. I'm considering being a commercial pilot, but if that's possible, I shouldn't waste my time. Someone prove to me that one cannot make a flying machine from a lawn trimmer as described, or I will stop my flying lessons."
No offense, but I do not care whether you do or do not carry on with your foray into piloting, and it is not my job to prove it profitable against all possible assertions regardless of merit. The only thing I will do, as a participant in this good forum, is engage in a give-and-take logical debate based on the use of well-formed logical structures.
"Given X and Y, if we assume L and M based on supporting evidence Q, R, S, and the logical inferences W and V, I propose C. Discuss."
That is how this works.
Regards,
-J
Mother of god. I usually just lurk via Zeroblock and read what pops up, but I met Fenix IRL at the texas conference (I was in the circle listening to you and Vitalik chat after the etheruem presentation). I've seen his (FenixRD) posts for a long time, and I just had to register to say: You are fucking scary, man. You're like... idk, maybe Seven from Voyager. Or Spock? One of those fucks with unasailable (afaict) debate skill. But not like "always wins arguments" or something... just "always right" (also afaict lol). I'm glad you're on our side and involved, and thanks for popping into bitcointalk here and there still. I'm roughly trollbox-skill in debate, I didn't know what I thought about ethereum cuz that stuff is more complex than bitcoin which I barely grasp. At least I understand now as much as, it may not work, but it could, and has reason to, and in any case, I can confidently ignore the trollbox etc accusations that ethereum is a scamcoin. (Hopefully it works as designed too!) Anyway, sorry for the bro-lovefest. Hope you stick around for a long time.
