I always have these kind of debates with XRP army on facebook
![Grin](https://bitcointalk.org/Smileys/default/grin.gif)
, .
without any technical aspects of how hard is it to deploy a 51% attack on bitcoin. let us just simply take the economical point of view.
assuming that "XYZ" person/company have access to over 50% of the total hashrate ( which i am pretty sure "XYZ" does or at least had for quite sometime).
what are the financial rewards of performing such a very expensive attack on bitcoin?
pretty much nothing but double spending ! ( there are other benefits which are not financial)
many people think that with 51% you can take everybody else's coins or create
BTC out of thin air which is not the case.
now as we all (inclduing "XYZ") know that an attack on
BTC will sink it's value and there will probably be no going back. so if XYZ have access to 51% hashrate , be it through pools or their own asics what so ever, it only means they are generating a shitload of money at the moment of owning that much of hashrate. should they attempt the attack they will be sitting in a first class of a plane going to rekt city with 1 way ticket. and i am sure someone with access to that much hashrate is only smarter than this.
some people might also argue that a company like bitmain might attempt an attack on BTC only to increase the credibility of BCH which also does not make a lot of sense,
BTC at least for now is the back-bone of crypto, if it fails then every other coin and token is going to vanish.
the only concern of mine is if a few governments combined are willing to pay a lot of money to launch the attack simply because they see BTC as a major threat to their national or economical security.