U.S.A. Conspiracy

[zumzero]

I intentionally chose a subject title to grab ones attention and I did this because I am very keen to hear opinions from as wide a variety of people as possible. 

If a government such as the United States government chose to kill Bitcoin would they not simply assign funds for a black project which would see the development of industrial sized bitcoin mining farms so they could take control of the network to kill it?

How much money would this government (or a few people within) need to spend in order to achieve this and what might be their motivation?

ActiveMining and others are developing next generation technology which will see the continued exponential growth in network hash rate, however the development funds involved are surely drops in the ocean compared to the sums available to the G8.

[1715031900]

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[PEBKAC]

Uhm, have you even thought about the magnitude of such an operation?

It's estimated that the total current network hashpower is around 700Th/s. That would translate into 140000 5Gh/s devices like Jalapeno's.
Even if it were 60Gh/s units like KnC is advertising, that would mean 11666 devices, just to have 50% of the current hashpower (and also jacking the total up to 1.4Ph/s (Petahashes per sec)).

Creating that many devices would take ages. Think in terms of several years.
Chips need to be made, PCB's printed, cases built, units assembled and transported to an undisclosed location, etc.

I haven't even factored in the sheer amount of electricity it would need.
And 90% of the power that goes in, comes out as heat, requiring enormous amounts of cooling. I guess a few A/C installers would be very happy and a few people that own stocks in such companies would get rich very quick...

Oh, and ofcourse, since this will take several years, the hashpower of the network will obviously go up in the mean time...
I have no idea by how much, but I wouldn't be surprised if they would need to double the amount of devices...

[zumzero]

Simply look at the VMC advert to discover that 24,576 Gh is available for just under half a million bucks and this is from a company who have only invested $1000000.  Can you see where this is going?

Now consider a motivated group with unimaginable funds at their disposal.  The question is not if but when, and for how long?

[odolvlobo]

Uhm, have you even thought about the magnitude of such an operation?

You are exaggerating, the hash rate currently stands at less than 300 TH/s, and electricity and cooling are much less of an issue than they are with GPUs. Anyway, if a microscopic company like Avalon can sell 3 TH/s to another microscopic company in Switzerland for $300,000, I don't think it would be difficult for an agency of the U.S. government to spend several million dollars to manufacture and run 700 TH/s worth of miners.

I think Bitcoin will be vulnerable to a 51% attack for at least another year.

[Flying Hellfish]

IF the American gov't feels like it wants to go after BTC it will happen at the federal (and state) level and will be fought using new laws (the most harmful I can think of off the top of my head would be to make it illegal to process any transaction involving a digital currency i.e btc to fiat) not some silly idea of covertly 51% attacking the network...

[zumzero]

If I'm not mistaken, it's fair to say that AM we're/are welcoming serious competition and may even be sitting on dormant hashing power for such an eventuality.  Perhaps not able to compete with as great a threat as this thread suggests, at least it's a step in the right direction.  

I can see why the books might compare 2013-2014 in Bitcoins history to the near failed Moon landing in 1969.  How close did we come to disaster?  Time will tell.

[katutidi]

I intentionally chose a subject title to grab ones attention and I did this because I am very keen to hear opinions from as wide a variety of people as possible. 

If a government such as the United States government chose to kill Bitcoin would they not simply assign funds for a black project which would see the development of industrial sized bitcoin mining farms so they could take control of the network to kill it?

How much money would this government (or a few people within) need to spend in order to achieve this and what might be their motivation?

ActiveMining and others are developing next generation technology which will see the continued exponential growth in network hash rate, however the development funds involved are surely drops in the ocean compared to the sums available to the G8.

If the US gov decided to kill bitcoin, they would make it illegal. This would make all businesses stop accepting it, kill almost all demand for it, kill all interest in it, and basically kill it as a whole

[davewr2013]

There are lots of illegal businesses that do very well. Making Bitcoin illegal might make it more popular in some circles -- so it might do the opposite of what is intended.

If you want to slow it down in the USA it would make more sense to use the IRS (Tax Department) -- my understanding is that it can slow some endeavors to a crawl -- and if memory serves me correctly did they not hold up some "charitable and non-profit" organizations for years for some reason? I forget why -- I'm sure it will come back to me...

[pedrog]

It would be very cheap to do that, specially for government like the USA gov, probably something like 50 millions, but, hey, it's a government project 300 millions!