why wouldnt a government create its own asic to 51% bitcoin?

[vapourminer]

as per the title.. whats to prevent the government of a large country to designing and using an asic purely for itself? they have the resources, the amount of money is trivial (for a government), power would not be a problem as they could build a power plant just for the mine to use. ultimate goal would be to control bitcoin. and make some money but that would be trivial. they wouldnt recap the investment but thats not the goal anyway.

sure lots of up front money and time but again, a government wouldnt care, and the long term gain in controlling btc might be worth it.

only bottleneck would be fab capacity. maybe buy or build one?

the fact that no government is trying this means my thinking is flawed somehow. so whats the catch?

EDIT:  goal is to for a 51% attack on bitcoin to cause people to lose faith in crypto, thus destroying it.

EDIT 2: i used 51% attack as an example as it is a well known figure. but the government that tries this could just as easily go for 70% or some other number that allows them to roll back the blockchain by an arbitrary amount, say several days worth of blocks.

[Intensity]

I think that it would devalue the currency of the country. People could see it as "This is better than our fiat". From the countries stand point, I think it would do more harm then good.

[HashFace]

At this point, it's mathematically impossible to get to 51% by mining alone.  Per CoinMarketCap, 16.5 million of the 21 million have been mined already. 

[wilwxk]

Its very difficult to ger 51% of all hashrate, andpeople wont like to hear the govern are wastiong millions of dolar to buy/make asics only to destroy a currency wich the people loves.

[vapourminer]

At this point, it's mathematically impossible to get to 51% by mining alone.  Per CoinMarketCap, 16.5 million of the 21 million have been mined already. 

not 51% of the coins, the goal would be to control over 51% of the hashrate. then that government could block transactions, double spend from taht point on, stuff like that. search for "51% attack bitcoin" to see what i mean.

the goal would be to destroy faith in bitcoin and blockchain based cryto currencies.. for some governments bitcoin is a threat to their fiat domination.

[vapourminer]

I think that it would devalue the currency of the country. People could see it as "This is better than our fiat". From the countries stand point, I think it would do more harm then good.

goal is not to promote bitcoin, goal is to destroy it by 51% attacking it. if they control the blockchain, no one will trust bitcoin anymore.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

Not only because governments would have to forsake their own currency--that's debatable--but committing a 51% attack they'd be ruining bitcoin and would therefore defeat the purpose of doing it.  Of course if that was their original intent...

The fbi seized all those silk road coins.  Why would the US government need to mine anything?   That's a cynical view but it's nevertheless true.

[vapourminer]

Its very difficult to ger 51% of all hashrate, andpeople wont like to hear the govern are wastiong millions of dolar to buy/make asics only to destroy a currency wich the people loves.

some governments wouldnt care. since when has things that people like but governments dont like stopped the government from doing things.

might be possible in some countries to hide the mine and associated infrastructure.. very difficult depending on the country though.

one (or more) government finances it, set it up in a third world country maybe.

[Red-Apple]

EDIT:  goal is to for a 51% attack on bitcoin to cause people to lose faith in crypto, thus destroying it.

first of all the hashrate of bitcoin is too big which makes it a very costly attack for anyone. and also 51% is not enough, there needs to be a lot more to successfully pull it off.

secondly it won't destroy bitcoin. it will cause a temporarily issue in one block that said fork happens and as soon as it happens, everyone will be on alert and will require much more confirmation making the attack even harder.
and also eventually it will become hard and expensive enough for them to keep the attack up.

on top of it the government won't gain anything by this in the end. they've just wasted tax payers money on something useless which will disrupt the network temporarily (the effects will be less than the fear of Aug 1st).
there are easier ways to attack bitcoin like simply making it illegal

p.s. if government wants to disrupt anything they will do it with Monero and other anon coins not bitcoin which they can track!

[vapourminer]

Not only because governments would have to forsake their own currency--that's debatable--but committing a 51% attack they'd be ruining bitcoin and would therefore defeat the purpose of doing it.  Of course if that was their original intent...

The fbi seized all those silk road coins.  Why would the US government need to mine anything?   That's a cynical view but it's nevertheless true.

yup destroying bitcoin would be the goal.

usa just prints more money if it needs it no need to mine it..

[seattletu]

I think that it would devalue the currency of the country. People could see it as "This is better than our fiat". From the countries stand point, I think it would do more harm then good.

goal is not to promote bitcoin, goal is to destroy it by 51% attacking it. if they control the blockchain, no one will trust bitcoin anymore.

The main fact is it's impossible for any government to destroy or control blockchain.  The beauty of this bitcoin itself is decentralizing nature.If at all some one wants to control this than, the only means is shut down total Internet, which is certainly impossible task.

[deisik]

as per the title.. whats to prevent the government of a large country to designing and using an asic purely for itself? they have the resources, the amount of money is trivial (for a government), power would not be a problem as they could build a power plant just for the mine to use. ultimate goal would be to control bitcoin. and make some money but that would be trivial. they wouldnt recap the investment but thats not the goal anyway.

sure lots of up front money and time but again, a government wouldnt care, and the long term gain in controlling btc might be worth it.

only bottleneck would be fab capacity. maybe buy or build one?

the fact that no government is trying this means my thinking is flawed somehow. so whats the catch?

EDIT:  goal is to for a 51% attack on bitcoin to cause people to lose faith in crypto, thus destroying it.

As they say, it works until it doesn't

They could potentially do all this but to what effect? The catch likely is it is just not worth the effort. If we don't talk about some abstract government but mean, say, the Chinese government specifically, they could just take over the mining farms which are located in their jurisdiction and get done with that (and most likely with Bitcoin too). If we talk about the US government, Bitcoin may in fact be quite helpful to them in tracking down criminals (or who they consider as criminals). Other than that, if they kill Bitcoin, they will have to kill other coins as well, then rinse, repeat ad infinitum

[Emoclaw]

I can imagine a government-sponsored mining farm of an unprecedented scale being at the last stages of construction, only for Bitcoin to fork to X11 or CryptoNote. This would really be the laugh of the century.
This, besides what others have mentioned, is another reason why a government can't do this.

[vapourminer]

EDIT:  goal is to for a 51% attack on bitcoin to cause people to lose faith in crypto, thus destroying it.

first of all the hashrate of bitcoin is too big which makes it a very costly attack for anyone. and also 51% is not enough, there needs to be a lot more to successfully pull it off.

secondly it won't destroy bitcoin. it will cause a temporarily issue in one block that said fork happens and as soon as it happens, everyone will be on alert and will require much more confirmation making the attack even harder.
and also eventually it will become hard and expensive enough for them to keep the attack up.

on top of it the government won't gain anything by this in the end. they've just wasted tax payers money on something useless which will disrupt the network temporarily (the effects will be less than the fear of Aug 1st).
there are easier ways to attack bitcoin like simply making it illegal

p.s. if government wants to disrupt anything they will do it with Monero and other anon coins not bitcoin which they can track!

yes 51% may not be enough but they could easily go for 60% or whatever they need to give enough control to make it unreliable.

as for making it illegal that would be country specific. people would find ways around that.

i use bitcoin as an example as that the one with the most legitimacy and cause people to lose faith in that and they may not trust other crypto also.

good point about monero but that doesnt have enough users compared to bitcoin at the moment. most people have at least heard of bitcoin, hardly anyone outside of crypto has heard of monero. attack the most visible crypto (bitcoin), prove it unreliable and it will trickle down (i would think so anyway).

[Hydrogen]

Bitcoin's current market cap is around $68 billion usd.

Countries like north korea and afghanistan are credited with having as much as $6 trillion dollars in natural resources: metals, rare minerals, etc.

$68 billion is nothing to a big government. Their foreign policy may revolve more around controlling swaths of land which contain trillions of dollars worth of resources rather than focusing on things like bitcoin which are worth exponentially less overall.

[Red-Apple]

good point about monero but that doesnt have enough users compared to bitcoin at the moment. most people have at least heard of bitcoin, hardly anyone outside of crypto has heard of monero. attack the most visible crypto (bitcoin), prove it unreliable and it will trickle down (i would think so anyway).

i said monero as an example and they have their users, it is not as famous as bitcoin because of its specific usage (being highly anonymous and untraceable) and that makes it good for dark market. regular users (the masses) don't care about that.

nice theory you have but in my opinion all these things will "damage" bitcoin, i do not believe any of it can "kill" bitcoin or any other crypto for that matter. that is why i said there are easier and cheaper ways of just "damaging" it with same effect.

[vapourminer]

nice theory you have but in my opinion all these things will "damage" bitcoin, i do not believe any of it can "kill" bitcoin or any other crypto for that matter. that is why i said there are easier and cheaper ways of just "damaging" it with same effect.

it wont kill it but damaging it to the point where hardly anyone would use it is about the same thing. all that needs to happen is people lose faith in it. if you cant trust a transaction what good is it.

what cheaper ways are there to damage it? making it illegal may hinder it but its getting harder to do that as many countries have legalized it, even the usa recognizes it and they would have a hard time reversing that. isps could block bitcoin ports but that can be changed easily enough. block pool ips maybe. but those could be changed too.

offhand i cant think of any way to damage it really. have any examples?

[vapourminer]

Bitcoin's current market cap is around $68 billion usd.

Countries like north korea and afghanistan are credited with having as much as $6 trillion dollars in natural resources: metals, rare minerals, etc.

$68 billion is nothing to a big government. Their foreign policy may revolve more around controlling swaths of land which contain trillions of dollars worth of resources rather than focusing on things like bitcoin which are worth exponentially less overall.

true. not all governments care about crypto. some do as they cant control it. that factor makes some governments uneasy.

countries with unstable currencies dont like people moving funds to crypto. its very easy, probably much easier than moving it to precious metals for example.

[gentlemand]

All they have to do is cut off the banking to all exchanges and anyone they can link to P2P options.

That'll take out 95% of the interest. It'll survive of course but it won't be any type of large scale challenge.

Why mess around building warehouses full of hardware when it can be done with a few threatening phone calls?

[vapourminer]

All they have to do is cut off the banking to all exchanges and anyone they can link to P2P options.

That'll take out 95% of the interest. It'll survive of course but it won't be any type of large scale challenge.

Why mess around building warehouses full of hardware when it can be done with a few threatening phone calls?

that could work, definitely would hurt it. but wouldnt they need to do that for every country?