How much money would it take to destroy Bitcoin?

[fightfear]

2014 account, still here.

I was there the night GHash.IO crossed 51%.
The IRC channel froze.
One guy typed: “It’s over.”
Another just posted a screenshot: red line kissing the ceiling.
No one spoke for 47 seconds.
The only reply was a single word: “fuck.”

I didn’t sleep.
I refreshed Blockchain.info every 30 seconds, heart in my throat, waiting for the line to drop.
When it finally did, I exhaled so hard I fogged my screen.

...

Fast forward.
Same dread, new skin.

Miners are ghosting Bitcoin for AI contracts.
Galaxy Digital just dropped $460M to turn a Texas farm into a GPU cathedral.
Halvings keep coming like clockwork.
Fees? Flatlined.
BSI sliding to 0.21% by 2032.
ESR stuck at 4.8%.
We’re building a fortress with a $10–40B moat around a septillion-dollar castle.

I thought I’d seen every “solution”:
* Tail emissions? Tax the future.
* Holder tax? Steal from HODLers.
* Merge-mining? Trust another chain.
* Fork? Civil war.

Then, one day at 3:17 AM; Half-dead on cold coffee; I tripped over something that made me sit up straight.
No emissions.
No tax.
No merge.
No fork.
Just a clean, live, already-running fix that’s been received by miners since block 885588 without touching the code.

I spent several nights trying to kill it.
Poked the economics.
Traced the code.
Ran the numbers backward in the dark.
It just… worked.

So I wrote it down.
Not to preach.
To throw it in the arena with the wolves who’ve sniffed out every scam since Mt. Gox.
read it here for free with no paywall or sign-up (TL;DR is available under the article but I really urge you to read the whole thing for the sake of ALL of your crypto investments ESPECIALLY if you're a miner):

https://medium.com/@marqs90/bitcoins-security-budget-dilemma-an-innovative-fix-emerging-from-the-shadows-e51309201f8d


Your move.
Tear it apart.
Or tell me I’m late to the party.

fightfear (Newbie by post count, OG by blood)

[philipma1957]

"Some Bitcoin investors mistakenly believe that an increasing hashrate alone guarantees greater security, but this overlooks a critical truth: the output of Proof-of-Work isn’t hashrate — it’s economic cost. What matters is not how many hashes are produced, but how expensive they are to produce. A growing hashrate means nothing if it’s powered by cheaper hardware or cheaper electricity. If BTC-denominated rewards drop, miners may still produce high hashrate, but with fewer incentives to stay honest. That opens the door to cheap attacks, especially if the cost of hardware or electricity falls. It’s not about how much hash you see — it’s about how costly it is to fake."


I bolded an error cheaper power alone is not enough and cheaper hash rate alone is not enough.

You need to have :
1) cheap power
2)cheap efficient gear
3)an abundance of power
4) adequate cooling lots of it.

By say cheap power or cheap gear

you paint a lessor scale of what is needed.

But you are spot on about the weakness and BTC price will only double so many times before the numbers stop working.

I estimate 2056 there will be issues. that you are talking about.

Note the quotes are for your article.

I could also pick apart the known 51% attacks.

 the ones on lesser sha 256 coins  do not count with BTC for reasons that are very obvious.

BTC has 1069 EH
BCH has  2.37 EH.   the gear is identical so the attack is easy to do.

If Chinese pools tried to attack large farms not in china can shift to usa farms or the other way around.

The attacks on ETC happened because they share the ETH  al-gore-rythm  and ETH had 100 to 1 ratio of gpus.

I do not worry much about 50% attacks at the moment> I do worry about miners stopping mining down the road and price of BTC does seem to be able to work for 20-30 years tops. time will tell.

Still reading your fix part.

I read the fix over and over and over . I will check  the natgmi.com link

[ABCbits]

4 * 2025 Snapshot (Current):

    Current State: As of October 2025, no single pool exceeds 30% (e.g., AntPool ~25%, Foundry ~20%). However, the top 3–4 pools (AntPool, Foundry, F2Pool, ViaBTC) often hold ~60–70% combined.
    Context: Total hashrate is ~700 EH/s, but miner revenue pressures (post-2024 halving, 3.125 BTC/block) and pivots to AI (e.g., Galaxy Digital’s Helios conversion) keep centralization risks alive.
    Impact: While no single pool currently exceeds 50%, the trend of miners exiting for AI could reduce hashrate growth, making 51% attacks more feasible, especially if a few pools collude.

AFAIK the top pools created by legally registered company. So if they ever decide to use hashrate to perform 51% attack, they face risk losing reputation, sued by miners for misusing hashrate or other risk.

Amid these concerns, an under-the-radar development is gaining traction: Digital Matter Theory (DMT), which introduces DMT-NAT (Non-Arbitrary Tokens) as a potential safeguard for Bitcoin’s security.
--snip--

I briefly read about it, but i doubt such token would be remain to be valuable in upcoming years since i don't unique or good use case that can't be done with Bitcoin itself.

[fightfear]

You need to have :
1) cheap power
2)cheap efficient gear
3)an abundance of power
4) adequate cooling lots of it.

Appreciate the thoughtful reply — and the sharp eye.
You're 100 % right: cheap power alone isn’t enough. You need the full stack:

cheap, abundant power
latest-gen gear (S21, S23, or better)
industrial-scale cooling
low-latency network

I oversimplified in the article but I've updated it accordingly now.

Your 2056 estimate tracks with the math. I ran BSI projections out to 2060 and at current fee growth, it’s 0.06 % by then. That’s $6 B/year defending a $100 T+ asset. Not sustainable. I worry we might see a problem much earlier though.

You’re also correct on the 51 % asymmetry: BTC  is in a different league to BCH, ETC, BTG etc
But the long-term risk isn’t a frontal 51 % attack today as much as the hashrate erosion and decentralization tomorrow.
That’s the real cliff.

If the U.S. government truly wants to rely on Bitcoin, devaluing national debt, replacing USD with BTC as global reserve then we cannot rule out such an attack. A senior Russian advisor to Putin recently warned exactly this: Trump’s plan is to back USD with Bitcoin via stablecoin treasuries. If that’s the strategy, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility for Russia, China, or others to attempt disruption. China still has a decent chunk of global hashrate and majority of ASIC production. With a bit of coordination and time, who knows. If they pulled it off, trust in Bitcoin would vanish overnight. BlackRock, Fidelity, nation-states would all reassess. We need them, whether we like it or not.

And I’m not entirely sure we could rule out a threat within the US either. If the political landscape shifts again with new administration, new priorities we get the same tools (regulation, seizure, or even quiet pressure on pools) which could be turned inward. Bitcoin’s strength is decentralization. Its vulnerability is whoever controls the marginal hashrate.

Either way, even without an attack, the future is not rosy unless we find a viable, non-consensus-changing solution. I’m puzzled how many OGs (including Bitcoin devs) brush this off with "if things get bad, someone will do something". Seriously? That’s the plan?

AFAIK the top pools created by legally registered company. So if they ever decide to use hashrate to perform 51% attack, they face risk losing reputation, sued by miners for misusing hashrate or other risk.

Fair point. Legally registered pools face lawsuits, reputational damage, and miner exodus if they go rogue. But, if a nation-state like China wants disruption, they don’t ask nicely. They pressure the pool via hardware supply, local ops, or regulatory threats. The pool doesn’t “decide” to attack; it complies or gets shut down. Reputation only matters if the state lets it survive.

I briefly read about it, but i doubt such token would be remain to be valuable in upcoming years since i don't unique or good use case that can't be done with Bitcoin itself.

It remains to be seen what happens with any token-based solution. It could go either way. Seeing AntPool, SpiderPool, and F2Pool backing it though is interesting as they aren't doing this out of altruism. They're doing it to attract users and secure their own futures. But if it works, it creates a powerful incentive loop: a more valuable token means more revenue for miners, which means a more secure hashrate, which in turn makes the network (and the token's underlying system) more valuable. It's a potential bootstrapping mechanism to solve the very economic problem we're discussing. We’ll see.

[philipma1957]

You need to have :
1) cheap power
2)cheap efficient gear
3)an abundance of power
4) adequate cooling lots of it.

Appreciate the thoughtful reply — and the sharp eye.
You're 100 % right: cheap power alone isn’t enough. You need the full stack:

cheap, abundant power
latest-gen gear (S21, S23, or better)
industrial-scale cooling
low-latency network

I oversimplified in the article but I've updated it accordingly now.

Your 2056 estimate tracks with the math. I ran BSI projections out to 2060 and at current fee growth, it’s 0.06 % by then. That’s $6 B/year defending a $100 T+ asset. Not sustainable. I worry we might see a problem much earlier though.

You’re also correct on the 51 % asymmetry: BTC  is in a different league to BCH, ETC, BTG etc
But the long-term risk isn’t a frontal 51 % attack today as much as the hashrate erosion and decentralization tomorrow.
That’s the real cliff.

If the U.S. government truly wants to rely on Bitcoin, devaluing national debt, replacing USD with BTC as global reserve then we cannot rule out such an attack. A senior Russian advisor to Putin recently warned exactly this: Trump’s plan is to back USD with Bitcoin via stablecoin treasuries. If that’s the strategy, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility for Russia, China, or others to attempt disruption. China still has a decent chunk of global hashrate and majority of ASIC production. With a bit of coordination and time, who knows. If they pulled it off, trust in Bitcoin would vanish overnight. BlackRock, Fidelity, nation-states would all reassess. We need them, whether we like it or not.

And I’m not entirely sure we could rule out a threat within the US either. If the political landscape shifts again with new administration, new priorities we get the same tools (regulation, seizure, or even quiet pressure on pools) which could be turned inward. Bitcoin’s strength is decentralization. Its vulnerability is whoever controls the marginal hashrate.

Either way, even without an attack, the future is not rosy unless we find a viable, non-consensus-changing solution. I’m puzzled how many OGs (including Bitcoin devs) brush this off with "if things get bad, someone will do something". Seriously? That’s the plan?

AFAIK the top pools created by legally registered company. So if they ever decide to use hashrate to perform 51% attack, they face risk losing reputation, sued by miners for misusing hashrate or other risk.

Fair point. Legally registered pools face lawsuits, reputational damage, and miner exodus if they go rogue. But, if a nation-state like China wants disruption, they don’t ask nicely. They pressure the pool via hardware supply, local ops, or regulatory threats. The pool doesn’t “decide” to attack; it complies or gets shut down. Reputation only matters if the state lets it survive.

I briefly read about it, but i doubt such token would be remain to be valuable in upcoming years since i don't unique or good use case that can't be done with Bitcoin itself.

It remains to be seen what happens with any token-based solution. It could go either way. Seeing AntPool, SpiderPool, and F2Pool backing it though is interesting as they aren't doing this out of altruism. They're doing it to attract users and secure their own futures. But if it works, it creates a powerful incentive loop: a more valuable token means more revenue for miners, which means a more secure hashrate, which in turn makes the network (and the token's underlying system) more valuable. It's a potential bootstrapping mechanism to solve the very economic problem we're discussing. We’ll see.

I have to look into f2pool. I use viabtc but an extra token may help

[ABCbits]

AFAIK the top pools created by legally registered company. So if they ever decide to use hashrate to perform 51% attack, they face risk losing reputation, sued by miners for misusing hashrate or other risk.

Fair point. Legally registered pools face lawsuits, reputational damage, and miner exodus if they go rogue. But, if a nation-state like China wants disruption, they don’t ask nicely. They pressure the pool via hardware supply, local ops, or regulatory threats. The pool doesn’t “decide” to attack; it complies or gets shut down. Reputation only matters if the state lets it survive.

Such scenario is definitely possible. I recall certain US politician/government worker suggest to make law that force pool to exclude TX. But IMO 51% attack is something they only can do once, before miner switch to different pool in order to stop the attack that negatively affect Bitcoin price.