How secure is bitcoin, REALLY?

[that1guy]

Obviously bitcoin is a threat to the large banks.  What happens when bitcoins becomes noticed by these banks?  They'll do stuff to protect their empire.

I see people on here talking about requiring so much hashing power in order to throw off the bitcoin economy, and they're acting like it's so difficult to do.  And they're right!  It'll be difficult to do something like that if you don't have very much money.  But what do banks have?  Lots and lots of money.  Hell they just print more whenever they feel like it!

What stops the banks from plopping down 250 million dollars worth of hardware to attack the bitcoin network?  In the investing world, 250 million isn't THAT MUCH, and nothing at all if it means protecting your empire.  Hell what stops them from pumping in 1 billion into a research project to develop a new chip/system for themselves that'll put out more ghashs than we could ever dream of computing?


Ultimately, my question is, what stops the banks from buying their way out of bitcoins (via computing performance)?

[Puppet]

Ultimately, my question is, what stops the banks from buying their way out of bitcoins (via computing performance)?

I suppose they could. But then we could just fork the blockchain and carry on with an alternative algorithm and banks would have spent  $250M on what amounts to little more than bad PR for bitcoin. Im sure they can get better bang for their buck.

[malevolent]

With current hashrate (21.312 TH/s) less than $800k is needed assuming they bought Avalons at $2k each and decided to mine in China (to avoid paying duties, etc.).

Apart from that, Bitcoin is as secure as you want it to be, proportional to your knowledge and efforts to be secure.

[phatsphere]

What stops the banks from plopping down 250 million dollars worth of hardware to attack the bitcoin network?

If one of them does that, their intelligence network would already have propagated that to other big banks. If several ones do that, it's just fine ^^
Also, hardware isn't available instantly, it needs to be produced first.

Hell what stops them from pumping in 1 billion into a research project to develop a new chip/system for themselves ...

have you heard of http://mintchipchallenge.com/ ?

[CryptoFreak33]

What stops the banks from plopping down 250 million dollars worth of hardware to attack the bitcoin network?  In the investing world, 250 million isn't THAT MUCH, and nothing at all if it means protecting your empire.  Hell what stops them from pumping in 1 billion into a research project to develop a new chip/system for themselves that'll put out more ghashs than we could ever dream of computing?

Ultimately, my question is, what stops the banks from buying their way out of bitcoins (via computing performance)?

IMHO, there's nothing financially prohibiting banks from doing so. It would be fairly trivial and cheap (as someone said, around $800k at current hash rates. What I think stops them is that an attack that large would be assumed to come from 1) the intelligence community or 2) the financial community. An attack from either of those automatically lends Bitcoin a good measure of legitimacy in the eyes of the public.  It's much safer to simply pretend it isn't a threat, maybe hack an exchange or site here and there, keep interests low and pump out FUD.

[Jutarul]

It's also worth noting that cryptocurrencies in general are an idea whos time has come. Whether bitcoin survives or not doesn't really matter in the long run. If it dies, successors will fill the gap. E.g. ppcoin already offers a different type of network security model. I expect more diversity in the coming years with respect to network security.

[nevafuse]

Just like AOL bought up all of the broadband lines?  Banks are in the business to make money.  Destroying bitcoin is temporary (another cryptocurrency can pop up tomorrow).  There's no reason banks & bitcoin can't work together.  Those that see the future will find ways to work with bitcoin.  Others will cease to exist.

[allthingsluxury]

The crypto currencies will continue to grow and evolve as time progresses. They just make sense in todays age.