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

[milewilda]

No one as of today is rich enough to create create enough ASICs to control 51% of the network. Moreover in fact you need a bit more than that.

A Government could do it quite easily. Or as someone pointed out earlier in the thread, the Chinese government could march in to mines in its country and take over more than 75% of the hashrate anyway, which is a risk with bitcoin.

My view is that most Governments are simply not interested enough to do this.

I dont think its easy as you say. If you think abot the enery to be wate in this hashrate and the atual "enery crise"(coal...) the govern will not incentive/force this expensive activity only to destroy a cryptocurrency.

I said they could do it quite easily. I qualified that at the end of my post with the point that you make that they are not interested enough. Lets look at facts. The European bank is printing 60 billion euros a month - and its currency is strengthening, that means they are printing more than the entire value of bitcoin every 3 weeks or so. So why would they want to do this? But IF they did, then they would more than have the resources to do so.

But as per my knowledge, in recently have some rumor about Russia government has spend $100 million for support community miner Bitcoin in their country for compete miner in China. This is positive signal about government in some country still interested Bitcoin and cryptocurrency.

Instead on making this kind of attack or plans on destroying on Bitcoin, russia have been decided to go in mining field which is really a nice thing and about on the 51% attack on bitcoin wont really be sufficient enough considering on the hashrate its too big and even government do have the power i dont think they will jump in to this aims or goals on controlling or blocking bitcoin. Its not possible its soo damn vast.

[vapourminer]

I don't really know what to say to your mindset either you don't own Bitcoins or simply say you know nothing op. If government were to do that, it would be regulated and one would have to pay taxes, what's the point of using such thing. Then again government would have full record of this and it would be suicidal to use it, what if they suspected you of cheat and they could take away all your coins.

heh. been in bitcoin since 2011. its already more or less regulated here in the usa; I claim it on my taxes.

quite happy with crypto, its paid for many vacations and toys over the years. i want to to prosper.

and the object for such a government doing such a thing is to destroy bitcoin (and thus by trickle down theory other crypto), not make its own blockchain based currency. bitcoin and crypto as it exists now can be a threat to (some) governments based fiat.

[Tanaka Osato]

I don't really know what to say to your mindset either you don't own Bitcoins or simply say you know nothing op. If government were to do that, it would be regulated and one would have to pay taxes, what's the point of using such thing. Then again government would have full record of this and it would be suicidal to use it, what if they suspected you of cheat and they could take away all your coins.

heh. been in bitcoin since 2011. its already more or less regulated here in the usa; I claim it on my taxes.

quite happy with crypto, its paid for many vacations and toys over the years. i want to to prosper.

and the object for such a government doing such a thing is to destroy bitcoin (and thus by trickle down theory other crypto), not make its own blockchain based currency. bitcoin and crypto as it exists now can be a threat to (some) governments based fiat.

Whilst people still talk about bitcoin in terms of dollars, and how its going to make them rich, its not a threat to fiat. Its when people start valuing things in bitcoin that fiat will be at risk. The dollar remains the "gold standard".

[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.

That's right. The price of the national currency would fall down towards other currencies and became cheaper and cheaper. Add to that nobody can even predict that this insider would be popular among citizens. And only the demand is that instrument that make the price of the new crypto-currency. What if people would prefer to stay with expansive Bitcoin rather to move on cheap national crypto? Too many if.

the government that tries to attack bitcoin by gaining enough percentage of the hashrate to make it useless (my premise in the op) is not trying to make its own crypto, it is to destroy crypto in general by proving it unreliable. thus keeping their national currency as the only option.

[vapourminer]

Whilst people still talk about bitcoin in terms of dollars, and how its going to make them rich, its not a threat to fiat. Its when people start valuing things in bitcoin that fiat will be at risk. The dollar remains the "gold standard".

for now that is correct.

at some point things may indeed be priced in bitcoin, at the moment its to volatile so once its settles down that could happen.

at that point fiat is in trouble. the time for a government worried enough about that to happen is to destroy crypto now (well, soonish). 

[Last of the V8s]

There are at least two schools of thought that say roughly the attack you describe is already in progress.

bitcoin cash could be the Chinese govt's attempt and bitcoin segwit the USG's

[Tanaka Osato]

Whilst people still talk about bitcoin in terms of dollars, and how its going to make them rich, its not a threat to fiat. Its when people start valuing things in bitcoin that fiat will be at risk. The dollar remains the "gold standard".

for now that is correct.

at some point things may indeed be priced in bitcoin, at the moment its to volatile so once its settles down that could happen.

at that point fiat is in trouble. the time for a government worried enough about that to happen is to destroy crypto now (well, soonish). 

Exactly mate. Although Governments do not have a good record of making correct judgements on such things.

[vapourminer]

Your logic relies on the public losing faith in cryptocurrencies just because a government has over 51% of hashrate.

However, having 51% of hashrate certainly does not mean you can destroy the network.  An attacker can only reverse their own transactions or prevent new transactions from being confirmed.  All of people's transactions with a reasonable number of confirmations would be perfectly fine.

so they build it enough to be 70% or some other figure that allows them to rebuild the chain from 20 or 30 blocks back. it allows them to blacklist transactions, reverse transactions (with enough hashpower they can rebuild the blockchain back 10 or 20  or whatever blocks, nullifying any transactions they want in that time frame).

point would be to have people lose faith in bitcoin. if no transaction can be guaranteed until days/weeks later because the government mine can roll it back that far who will trust it?

[vapourminer]

There are at least two schools of thought that say roughly the attack you describe is already in progress.

bitcoin cash could be the Chinese govt's attempt and bitcoin segwit the USG's

yeah thats kinda what led me to post this tread.

bitcoin is still in its infancy and is fairly vulnerable at this point. and i want bitcoin to succeed.

[Last of the V8s]

There are at least two schools of thought that say roughly the attack you describe is already in progress.

bitcoin cash could be the Chinese govt's attempt and bitcoin segwit the USG's

yeah thats kinda what led me to post this tread.

bitcoin is still in its infancy and is fairly vulnerable at this point. and i want bitcoin to succeed.

it will. it's a pretty bonny baby by now, with parents, family, guardians/godparents and a whole village all around.

it's some of these adults in the analogy that cannot thrive.

[Ucy]

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.

I think some governments (especially ones in open societies/countries) could easily find (or may have found) a way around this.  The use of Private Companies or intelligence Agencies would be the easiest options

[vapourminer]

Everyone would just fork to a new algorithm that screws whichever government invested tons on controlling Bitcoin.

and thereby render all existing asics useless. all those existing heavily invested private mines.. just so much landfill material..

still.. might be better than having a bitcoin controlled by a government. a new asic arms race will begin.

[deisik]

No one as of today is rich enough to create create enough ASICs to control 51% of the network. Moreover in fact you need a bit more than that.

A Government could do it quite easily. Or as someone pointed out earlier in the thread, the Chinese government could march in to mines in its country and take over more than 75% of the hashrate anyway, which is a risk with bitcoin.

My view is that most Governments are simply not interested enough to do this.

I dont think its easy as you say. If you think abot the enery to be wate in this hashrate and the atual "enery crise"(coal...) the govern will not incentive/force this expensive activity only to destroy a cryptocurrency.

I said they could do it quite easily. I qualified that at the end of my post with the point that you make that they are not interested enough. Lets look at facts. The European bank is printing 60 billion euros a month - and its currency is strengthening, that means they are printing more than the entire value of bitcoin every 3 weeks or so. So why would they want to do this? But IF they did, then they would more than have the resources to do so.

But as per my knowledge, in recently have some rumor about Russia government has spend $100 million for support community miner Bitcoin in their country for compete miner in China. This is positive signal about government in some country still interested Bitcoin and cryptocurrency.

Instead on making this kind of attack or plans on destroying on Bitcoin, russia have been decided to go in mining field which is really a nice thing and about on the 51% attack on bitcoin wont really be sufficient enough considering on the hashrate its too big and even government do have the power i dont think they will jump in to this aims or goals on controlling or blocking bitcoin. Its not possible its soo damn vast.

These are just rumors

Well, those might not be quite rumors but rather speculations by some people allegedly close to Putin but regardless, it makes no sense for Russia to mine Bitcoin and compete with China (which would be a losing battle anyway). If anything, Russia would rather try to push their own crypto, but personally, I believe in neither possibility. In other words, these are most likely just empty talks

[bitcoinvestor]

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

People will demonstrate when a govt spend million dollars to create Hash 51%. What is the reason a govt destroy bitcoin. And the bitcoin community will not be silent to prevent attack from the gov. Bitcoin developers are able ask million bitcoin users to mine bitcoin to stop the attact from the govt. it is proof the hardfork of BCH that fail. BCH supported by big capitalist and big media, in fact the scheme failed and after that the bitcoin price is unstopable.

[gentlemand]

The Russia mining news involves two things that are traditional indicators of crypto disaster. One is ICO. The other is Russians.

I'll believe it when I see it.

[BillyBobZorton]

Everyone would just fork to a new algorithm that screws whichever government invested tons on controlling Bitcoin.

and thereby render all existing asics useless. all those existing heavily invested private mines.. just so much landfill material..

still.. might be better than having a bitcoin controlled by a government. a new asic arms race will begin.

PoW change may be inevitable in the future anyway. But the thing is, PoW change are temporal solutions. It's a matter of time that an new ASIC arms race does indeed begin, leading to a monopoly again.

If we change the PoW, it must be something more creative than a mere algo change. Someone spoke about randomly changing algo to stop monopolies or something like that. We must explore better solutions and think long term.

A mere rushed PoW change should be made only if it's the only way out to survive.

[hitlab]

Any attack would be a temporary disruption.

If the Chinese government seized mining farms and controlled over 51% of the hashing power. They could privately mine the chain and reorg massive amounts of transactions. This would cause people to lose trust in bitcoins and there would probably be a huge price crash. However we would change proof of work then fork the chain to fix it. We would suffer financially in the short term from the price crash, however long term bitcoin survives and continues to do it's thing.

So governments can never really control it, only disrupt it. Every such disruption would cost millions of dollars and would not really gain much.

[digaran]

But still no body mentions this, an attack with 51% hash power will need to target something substantial and valuable, since if a miner or a mining pool starts acting against the interests of the whole system other miners could abandon that chain and could start flagging every activity of the hostile party for every body to ban and block. since having so much hash power requires if not billions but almost 1 billion dollars, the success of the system will become the success of the biggest miner, they'd earn more if they stay loyal to the system and stay honest, nothing we can do other than joining the mining industry ourselves to compete even if it's a few TH/s. that's what people are doing from the start I believe, that's why Bitcoin mining costs so much and electricity usage is equal of a country using electricity.

[milewilda]

No one as of today is rich enough to create create enough ASICs to control 51% of the network. Moreover in fact you need a bit more than that.

A Government could do it quite easily. Or as someone pointed out earlier in the thread, the Chinese government could march in to mines in its country and take over more than 75% of the hashrate anyway, which is a risk with bitcoin.

My view is that most Governments are simply not interested enough to do this.

I dont think its easy as you say. If you think abot the enery to be wate in this hashrate and the atual "enery crise"(coal...) the govern will not incentive/force this expensive activity only to destroy a cryptocurrency.

I said they could do it quite easily. I qualified that at the end of my post with the point that you make that they are not interested enough. Lets look at facts. The European bank is printing 60 billion euros a month - and its currency is strengthening, that means they are printing more than the entire value of bitcoin every 3 weeks or so. So why would they want to do this? But IF they did, then they would more than have the resources to do so.

But as per my knowledge, in recently have some rumor about Russia government has spend $100 million for support community miner Bitcoin in their country for compete miner in China. This is positive signal about government in some country still interested Bitcoin and cryptocurrency.

Instead on making this kind of attack or plans on destroying on Bitcoin, russia have been decided to go in mining field which is really a nice thing and about on the 51% attack on bitcoin wont really be sufficient enough considering on the hashrate its too big and even government do have the power i dont think they will jump in to this aims or goals on controlling or blocking bitcoin. Its not possible its soo damn vast.

These are just rumors

Well, those might not be quite rumors but rather speculations by some people allegedly close to Putin but regardless, it makes no sense for Russia to mine Bitcoin and compete with China (which would be a losing battle anyway). If anything, Russia would rather try to push their own crypto, but personally, I believe in neither possibility. In other words, these are most likely just empty talks

You do have a point though on which we cant really be sure if those informations are legit or not but thinking of that theres a competition between countries i would like to know what would be the goal if they won such battle? Its a senseless thing to think off that they would fight for the spot on having the biggest mining operations. Most likely maybe they would create their own coin, but well who knows because no one do really have an idea on whats on their minds.

[Adbitco]

Maybe government has some other cheaper ways to curb bitcoin if they intend to do so or maybe they don't see it as a threat and think that government is capable of stopping it when and if they wish so or maybe government still believe that people have more belief and trust in the fiat currency created by the government itself and bitcoin is just a small part of the whole economic system of their country and can be regulated and brought under the law anytime.