QUESTIONS 51% attack possible? Is BTC dead for good?

[themandillion]

With the giant asic mining operations about to go belly up.
I see nothing stopping a super rich person or group from picking up their equipment dirt cheap at liquidation and running a 51% attack to wrek the whole network.

Thoughts please

[Wind_FURY]

Yet another useless "mining death spiral" topic that will be deleted by a mod.

OP, yes! Nothing will stop a super rich person from throwing, or wasting, millions in a hole to attack Bitcoin and "kill" it.

I propose an emergency hard fork to a new mining algorithm now! Who's with me?

 

[nutildah]

Taking a quick look at the mining pool hash rate distribution, BTC is looking more decentralized than ever.



There's a ton of new tiny pools that are entering the mix, plus the biggest percentage of mined blocks is coming from "unknown," which is a bunch of independent miners not registered with blockchain.com.

Old equipment is constantly being outdated by new -- its not going to do much good in mining BTC. Maybe other coins.

[themandillion]

Yet another useless "mining death spiral" topic that will be deleted by a mod.

OP, yes! Nothing will stop a super rich person from throwing, or wasting, millions in a hole to attack Bitcoin and "kill" it.

I propose an emergency hard fork to a new mining algorithm now! Who's with me?

 

Sorry. It was something I started to think about at work today and well..I have no where else to ask.
Im under the impression that banks and governments hate BTC/crypto.  Would be nothing for them to create some fiat in exchange for all the mining equipment that will be liquidated when 90% of the giant operations close up shop.  Then they can wreck it to less than a penny and say "see." You folks cannot have a crypto not run by us because things like this will happen.

[mu_enrico]

In theory, 51% attack is possible. But in practice, 51% attack will cost a lot of money and enormous effort to collude between miners. Therefore, the real probability of 51% is minuscule.

Let's say, even if BTC experience a short 51% attack, the damage wouldn't be so severe. See BTG for example, this coin still alive after all this time.

[Zin-Zang]

With the giant asic mining operations about to go belly up.
I see nothing stopping a super rich person or group from picking up their equipment dirt cheap at liquidation and running a 51% attack to wrek the whole network.

Thoughts please

Your Concern is Valid.

A lowering hashrate is more vulnerable to a 51% attack.

Any 51% attack on BTC, will destroy it's Market price.

All one has to do is observe Bitcoin Gold after their 51% attack, their price went down by a factor of 4X and still dropping.

[BitcoinGirl.Club]

I propose an emergency hard fork to a new mining algorithm now! Who's with me?

Count me in!
What if we both plan for a 51% attack   

<snip>

As off today...



Time for a Chicken dance LOL

[KingScorpio]

in my oppinion yes, with BTC dead, we can seriously improve the condition of the cryptoindustry and improve it.

till we get a global recognizable standard again, bitcoins death will help local communal cryptocurrency capitalists doing their work,

its a more people with people interaction then. the companies will have to decide weather they will accept a crypto and help a certain person

[Yurkov]

With the giant asic mining operations about to go belly up.
I see nothing stopping a super rich person or group from picking up their equipment dirt cheap at liquidation and running a 51% attack to wrek the whole network.

Thoughts please

The mining difficulty has dropped, but still too little for a 51% attack to be possible. Network still has such a huge strength that it is not possible to collect for one pool.
Ps. However, in theory it will be always possible.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Oh, this again.

Not sure how many times we have to debunk this nonsense. The hashrate is currently sitting at 41 EH/s. That's higher than it has been for the entire time bitcoin has existed, except the last 5 months. We were below this level for 9.5 years without a 51% attack. At peak prices this time last year, when a 51% attack would have been the most profitable it has ever been, the hashrate was less than one third of what it is now at 13 EH/s.

[kamBlanV]

BTC will live for good, BTC always has great potential to make the bull market. 51% of attacks are only temporary.

I know BTC will recover again in a long time, and we must balance between spreading and volume.

[Wind_FURY]

With the giant asic mining operations about to go belly up.
I see nothing stopping a super rich person or group from picking up their equipment dirt cheap at liquidation and running a 51% attack to wrek the whole network.

Thoughts please

Your Concern is Valid.

Yes, it is valid.

A lowering hashrate is more vulnerable to a 51% attack.

Any 51% attack on BTC, will destroy it's Market price.

All one has to do is observe Bitcoin Gold after their 51% attack, their price went down by a factor of 4X and still dropping.

But comparing a 51% attack on Bitcoin, and BTG, and considering them to be the same would be stupid. Bitcoin, with its already reduced hashing power, is a world apart from BTG's hashing power. Plus the ASIC manufacturing infrastructure has a special interest for Bitcoin to be a success than to fail.

[Pursuer]

when you start something based on an assumption first you have to explain where you came up with that assumption and then explain your reasons for it. and then continue with making a conclusion!
your assumption here is that "big mining farms are going to stop mining". so explain how you came up with that first. otherwise you are just a troll spamming this board... and people who have been posting so far are wasting their time talking to a wall!

[mu_enrico]

Any 51% attack on BTC, will destroy it's Market price.

All one has to do is observe Bitcoin Gold after their 51% attack, their price went down by a factor of 4X and still dropping.

Bitcoin price has dropped from $20K to $3K without 51% attack and still down. Don't forget that the market is irrational. It's not a mere binary function but influenced by a lot of factors --which tech people failed to understand--

If we talk about a short 51% attack, some holders who are tech-savvy people might become panic and start selling. But, some who are not, would not sell.

However, if we talk about a long 51% attack --about attackers who continuously mine empty blocks-- then it will render BTC useless. It's a whole different situation that could make BTC die.

[dupee419]

With the giant asic mining operations about to go belly up.
I see nothing stopping a super rich person or group from picking up their equipment dirt cheap at liquidation and running a 51% attack to wrek the whole network.

Thoughts please

A newbie account and a weirded out topic to bring up just because the price is continuously going down, it doesn't matter, I don't think that with the 51% attack should be completely feared because it will not kill BTC as what you haters are saying, gonna take more than that my friend.

[o_e_l_e_o]

But comparing a 51% attack on Bitcoin, and BTG, and considering them to be the same would be stupid. Bitcoin, with its already reduced hashing power, is a world apart from BTG's hashing power.

Just to put some numbers on it:

When Bitcoin Gold was successfully 51% attacked back in May, it had a hashrate of 40 MH/s. The last time Bitcoin had a hashrate of 40 MH/s was in 2010. Bitcoin's current hashrate is around 41 EH/s, which is 41,000,000,000,000 MH/s. So you know, only out by a factor of a trillion or so.

Still, the hashrate has been increasing pretty steadily for the last 4-5 days. I wonder if it has hit the bottom for now.

[randythered]

Plus the ASIC manufacturing infrastructure has a special interest for Bitcoin to be a success than to fail.

This is a point that many people neglect. The mining power has to come from somewhere and that's going to be ASICs. If they release too many or develop them too quickly then they make the potential for a 51% attack higher. It's no coincidence they're rolled out slowly and with incremental increases. It's good business.

[btc-room101]

With the giant asic mining operations about to go belly up.
I see nothing stopping a super rich person or group from picking up their equipment dirt cheap at liquidation and running a 51% attack to wrek the whole network.

Thoughts please

This is another MORON theme here right?

As a matter of 'fact' bitmain ASIC antminer class machines are the 90% gorrilla who all along have had the BTC monopoly, and they all call home to MOM (CHINA)

+51% has been in the hands of Jack Ma ( alibaba ) and CCP for 4+ years, why would they wreck the golden-goose that brings real US dollars home to China??

The s-9 is already dirt cheap, but why buy it when you lose $2/day to run it, its just a load household heater, and only a moron would tolerate the 99db jet engine in his living room to heat his/her chinese flat

The deal is that all the mining hw is made by one chinese company, and they also own all the mining pools, so the entire narrative that 51% of good makes btc good is bullshit, as the chinese have had +90% under the house since 2014.

Fleeces hairlips in the west has made billion's of US dollars, hell lets remember that in the last few months close to ONE Trillion US dollars has 'evaporated' in crypto, that a nice way of saying the west is $1T fiat more poor, and the east is $1T richer to buy real-estate and gold from the west.

But talk of 51% when you ignore 90% is the ultimate example of the bitcoin community being a cult of morons.

[Indamuck]

It's quite easy for the low cap coins to be 51% attacked but bitcoin's sheer size makes it nearly impossible.  The amount of money that would be needed to generate enough hashrate wouldn't even make sense financially.  Maybe if a group of billionaires wanted to see bitcoin die it could be done but they would not make any money off their attack.

[Zin-Zang]

It's quite easy for the low cap coins to be 51% attacked but bitcoin's sheer size makes it nearly impossible.  The amount of money that would be needed to generate enough hashrate wouldn't even make sense financially.  Maybe if a group of billionaires wanted to see bitcoin die it could be done but they would not make any money off their attack.

The amount of money required may not be as much as you think.

One needs a little less than 1 hour to 30 minutes to double spend their entire btc amount.

So all one would need to do is rent the needed hashrate for 1 hour, to devastate btc.

IE:
https://www.coindesk.com/this-college-freshman-is-out-to-51-attack-your-cryptocurrency

While going through the exchange process costs more,
the 51% attack has still become quite economical due to the rise of cloud computing.
According to geocold51, without access to cloud mining, an attack like he did on bitcoin private would have cost him about $100,000 in hardware.
Geocold51 estimates he spent $100 to get to the point where he could have done a demonstration double spend on bitcoin private,

“Nicehash and the ability to rent hashing power fundamentally changes the landscape of 51% attacks,” geocold51 told CoinDesk, adding:

“If there’s not a lot of hashing power to secure it, but there is a lot of value associated with it, that’s where you can do a 51% attack.”

As BTC Hashrate drops , a rented 51% attack becomes more feasible every day.
One only needs to rent for 1 hour to pull one off.