Corporate takeover - What will you do?

[Kakmakr]

Ok, this is highly unlikely, but still possible if some group of countries or even a bunch of big corporate companies come together and says, let's pool resources together and take over Bitcoin. They dump a shite load of money into it, and they setup say 100 000 nodes and they also shift production into mass production of Asic chips.

They only need to get consensus once, to change some of the core building blocks of Bitcoin, to change it forever. Let's say, one of them will be the Bitcoin cap or the miners reward.

This is just theory and for discussion to identify possible threats and to be preventative. I am playing Devil's Advocate on this one, by saying this is possible. If they can get someone to commit this controversial Bip. ^smile^  

Do not take this too serious, I am just playing around with different scenarios.

[Jet Cash]

It would be cheaper and easier to start an altcoin, and to promote that.

[NyeFe]

Let's say hypothetically, the end result is that bitcoin gets destroyed.

We move on to Litecoin,
Then to dodge,
Then to another copy of bitcoin,
Then to any other available cryptocurrencies

Regardless of what they do to cryptocurrencies,  they'll always be another to replace them. And they'll always be people making profit from the value rises.

bitcoin strengthens altcoins, and altcoins strengthens bitcoin.

[helloeverybody]

If there really was a corporate takeover then i think we would have no choice but to put money into another coin although I'm sure someone would fork ut and we could just go there.  If i had to choose another coin to go to i dont know what it would be.  But for me,  once your in crypto you stay in.

[Kakmakr]

Let's say hypothetically, the end result is that bitcoin gets destroyed.

We move on to Litecoin,
Then to dodge,
Then to another copy of bitcoin,
Then to any other available cryptocurrencies

Regardless of what they do to cryptocurrencies,  they'll always be another to replace them. And they'll always be people making profit from the value rises.

I hope you move before the price drops to $1 and you will not be able to buy any Litecoin. ^heh^ I was hoping someone would suggest that Bitcoin Core developers will not accept such a ridiculous Bip proposal and they would be out of pocket with Billions of dollars. Even if they get a large portion of the hashing power, there will still be miners out there who could prevent a total takeover or even prevent them from hijacking blocks.

As I said, we are just talking about one of the possible threats and how we would deal with it. ^smile^

[Lauda]

They only need to get consensus once, to change some of the core building blocks of Bitcoin, to change it forever. Let's say, one of them will be the Bitcoin cap or the miners reward.

They can't achieve consensus by just increasing the numbers of nodes exponentially and gaining mining power. I'm not sure you know how this works. Besides, the current 'holders', developers, miners, users would reject it.

Do not take this too serious, I am just playing around with different scenarios.

Maybe you should think about more important things instead of wasting your time on improbable scenarios. This reminds me of the people worrying about SHA256 collisions, even though a meteorite that wipes out humanity has a higher probability.

It would be cheaper and easier to start an altcoin, and to promote that.

Exactly.

bitcoin strengthens altcoins, and altcoins strengthens bitcoin.

Some altcoins. 99% of the others are trash.

[chineseprancing]

Let's say hypothetically, the end result is that bitcoin gets destroyed.

We move on to Litecoin,
Then to dodge,
Then to another copy of bitcoin,
Then to any other available cryptocurrencies

Regardless of what they do to cryptocurrencies,  they'll always be another to replace them. And they'll always be people making profit from the value rises.

bitcoin strengthens altcoins, and altcoins strengthens bitcoin.

Yeah thats right, Me too is not sticking in bitcoin only. Im participating in other alt coins that has a great future. Im helping and gaining

[Kakmakr]

They only need to get consensus once, to change some of the core building blocks of Bitcoin, to change it forever. Let's say, one of them will be the Bitcoin cap or the miners reward.

They can't achieve consensus by just increasing the numbers of nodes exponentially and gaining mining power. I'm not sure you know how this works. Besides, the current 'holders', developers, miners, users would reject it.

Do not take this too serious, I am just playing around with different scenarios.

Maybe you should think about more important things instead of wasting your time on improbable scenarios. This reminds me of the people worrying about SHA256 collisions, even though a meteorite that wipes out humanity has a higher probability.

It would be cheaper and easier to start an altcoin, and to promote that.

Exactly.

bitcoin strengthens altcoins, and altcoins strengthens bitcoin.

Some altcoins. 99% of the others are trash.

If you manage to somehow convince/bribe/harass some developers into accepting a new Bip to change a core aspect of the protocol, you would be half way there. <Everyone has their price> Then you pay enough shills to get community support and then you setup loads of nodes to accept the new fork and the new client and you A4away.. right? Consensus are achieved when you have the most nodes accepting the new fork.

Where did I go wrong, with my understanding?

[mobnepal]

Only setting 100000 nodes is not enough to be succes and takeover bitcoin. Decentralized currency are community driven and money can't always buy community support just like how soft fork of ethereum won recently. But private local banks may implement decentralized coin banked by fiat very soon in some of the countries, but i am not seeing any of them will be to replace bitcoin at all.

[Pursuer]

this is such a hypothetical situation that can never happen. because it would require a lot of money and effort to do it then for what reason? just to destroy bitcoin? because taking control or changing bitcoin in anyway that removes its features like decentralization or anything else means bitcoin is no longer bitcoin and since it is open source we can always start a new one, bitcoin 2.0 with previous features and stop using bitcoin-the-old-and-controlled-version, and use that instead to transfer money peer to peer.

or if I am not mistaken , if some agenda like this becomes clear we can easily reject their blocks and nodes and force them to become a fork for themselves which nobody care about

[Lauda]

If you manage to somehow convince/bribe/harass some developers into accepting a new Bip to change a core aspect of the protocol, you would be half way there.

No, that's not how Bitcoin development works. A single developer, can not push anything without consensus. There are only certain people with commit access and those changes would be reverted and their access would be revoked.

<Everyone has their price> Then you pay enough shills to get community support and then you setup loads of nodes to accept the new fork and the new client and you A4away.. right? Consensus are achieved when you have the most nodes accepting the new fork.

That's not how consensus achieved. That's a sybil attack.

Decentralized currency are community driven and money can't always buy community support just like how soft fork of ethereum won recently.

ETH is an example of how you turn a decentralized blockchain into a centralized one.

But private local banks may implement decentralized coin banked by fiat very soon in some of the countries, but i am not seeing any of them will be to replace bitcoin at all.

The idea was to ditch the banks, not wait for them to innovate and then re-join them.