The Middle East could destroy Bitcoin (if it wanted to)

[Bizmark13]

I was bored the other day and so I did some calculations to see if it is possible for the Middle East to shut down the Bitcoin network if it wanted to.

So the Middle East has about 1 trillion barrels of oil reserves. However, it only produces about 30 million barrels of oil per day (since not all the oil in the ground is taken out at once).

A single barrel of oil can be harnessed to produce about 1.7 megawatts of electricity. Therefore, 30 million barrels of oil is equal to about 51 terawatts.

A current state-of-the-art miner such as the Antminer S5 uses just 0.51 watts per GH/s. If the Middle East decided to shut down oil exports and consumption for one day and instead dedicated it all towards attacking Bitcoin, 51 terawatts of electricity would be enough to supply a total hashrate of exactly 100 billion terahashes. The current hashrate of the Bitcoin network is roughly about 300,000 terahashes. This would give the Middle East about 99.9997 percent of the total hashrate of the entire network.

You can also do the same calculations for other countries and groups of countries too. See how much electricity they consume and then imagine if they dedicated all of that towards attacking Bitcoin. OK, so maybe not all of the electricity used in one day would be used to attack Bitcoin in a hypothetical attack scenario but even if a medium sized nation decided to dedicate only 10 percent of its typical per-day electrical consumption towards performing an attack, the results are still pretty terrifying.

[shorena]

I was bored the other day and so I did some calculations to see if it is possible for the Middle East to shut down the Bitcoin network if it wanted to.

So the Middle East has about 1 trillion barrels of oil reserves. However, it only produces about 30 million barrels of oil per day (since not all the oil in the ground is taken out at once).

A single barrel of oil can be harnessed to produce about 1.7 megawatts of electricity. Therefore, 30 million barrels of oil is equal to about 51 terawatts.

A current state-of-the-art miner such as the Antminer S5 uses just 0.51 watts per GH/s. If the Middle East decided to shut down oil exports and consumption for one day and instead dedicated it all towards attacking Bitcoin, 51 terawatts of electricity would be enough to supply a total hashrate of exactly 100 billion terahashes. The current hashrate of the Bitcoin network is roughly about 300,000 terahashes. This would give the Middle East about 99.9997 percent of the total hashrate of the entire network.

You can also do the same calculations for other countries and groups of countries too. See how much electricity they consume and then imagine if they dedicated all of that towards attacking Bitcoin. OK, so maybe not all of the electricity used in one day would be used to attack Bitcoin in a hypothetical attack scenario but even if a medium sized nation decided to dedicate only 10 percent of its typical per-day electrical consumption towards performing an attack, the results are still pretty terrifying.

#1 "the middle east" is not a single entity and follows different agendas which would be very difficulty to align.
#2 lets assume you manage #1 you cant just deploy 100 billion TH/s (assuming your calculations are roughly correct) in a single day
#3 lets assume you manage #1 and #2 you cant hold a lighter under the 30 million barrels oil and use the electricity, it would take weeks to deploy the needed infrastructure
#4 same as #3 is true for any other use of electricity that is already "available". Its missing elsewhere and what is to gain from this attack? Would it "destroy" bitcoin as you claim? I am not sure about that. Wed have a huge spike in difficulty yes, transactions could be reversed until this is balanced out, but there is no profit to gain. Its a multi billion dollar attack with nothing to gain. How long would "the middle east" or any other attacker be willing to pump money into this to keep bitcoin from functioning for some time?

[franky1]

antminer uses 590watts PER HOUR

thats 14160watts a day..

so thats 121 antminer s5's can be powered by a single barrel of oil.

so for every barrel of oil. they have to spend over $40,000 on the antminer rigs...

$40k x 30 million= $1,200,000,000,000
oil per barrel is $53
53  x 30million=$1,590,000,000
(p.s i rounded the numbers for simple maths but the costs are actually higher)
so now i gave you the maths... ask yourself

30million barrels of oil wasted is $1.6billion a day.. do you really think a country would waste that??
would a country really waste 1.2 trillion on equipment, just to poke and prod at an internet currency for just one day.

bitcoin is only valued at 4billion. so why would anyone waste 1201.6 billion in a single day!

[bitcoinmining]

Yeah @franky1 is right, you forgot some other factors which are affected more about the oil in the Middle East. The Middle East is a multi-factor case and nobody can know what will happen in the next day.

[DannyHamilton]

First, you are assuming that they have enough electricity generating stations to actually make use of all that oil.
Second, you are assuming that the entire population of all the "middle east" countries would all go without using any electricity for any other purpose for an entire day (that they could and would some how exclusively re-route all that electricity simultaneously into bitcoin mining operations only)
Third, you are assuming that there is actually enough mining equipment on the market for them to acquire it all.
Fourth, you are assuming that acquiring that much mining equipment wouldn't create a demand spike that would shoot the price of the mining equipment through the roof to ridiculously high prices.
Fifth, you are assuming that it won't cost anything to actually build mining farms that can draw and make use of all that electricity.
Sixth, you are assuming that they will cut off all exports of oil for at least a full day without any repercussions from any other countries.
Seventh, you are assuming there are no costs or infrastructure issues with getting all that oil to the electricity generating stations in a timely enough manner to make use of it all in a single day.
Eighth, you are assuming that cutting off oil exporting for a day won't create a supply shortage that would shoot the price of oil through the roof to ridiculously high prices, or that such a spike in oil prices won't create an incentive for some of the "middle east" countries to cheat and sell their oil for incredible profits instead of participating in the bitcoin destroying scheme.
Ninth, you are assuming that having 99+% of the hashing power for only one day will allow them to do enough damage to the faith that people have in bitcoin that when they stop their attack on bitcoin exactly 1 day later, things won't quickly return to normal.


That's an awful lot of assuming you are doing there.  If we do that much assuming, I suppose we can just pretend that aliens from Jupiter will see what the "middle east" is doing and will come to earth to stop them and instill peace.  There.  Problem solved.

[General_A]

Well I enjoyed it so I thought I would do some quick calculations on the UK.

UK demand averages out at 35.8GW per 30 minutes (according to wikipedia), times that by two to get the hour:

35.8 x 2 =  71.6

so that's 71.6GW per hour. Times that by 24 to get the daily:

71.6x24 = 1718.4

so that's 1718.4GW per hour.

Using OP's figures

A current state-of-the-art miner such as the Antminer S5 uses just 0.51 watts per GH/s.

that's
1718400000000 /0.51 = 3369411764705.88GH's.

which
3369411764705.88 x (10^9) = 3369411764705880000000h's

then
3369411764705880000000h's / (10^12) = 3369411764.70588TH's

So if the UK also decided to allocate its energy consumption use towards attacking the bitcoin network for one day, the UK would have an attack with a magnitude of 3.36billionTH's.  
Using OP's figures again

The current hashrate of the Bitcoin network is roughly about 300,000 terahashes.

Which means the UK would own roughly 99.711% of the network.

[shorena]

Well I enjoyed it so I thought I would do some quick calculations on the UK.
-snip-
Which means the UK would own roughly 99.711% of the network.

Read Dannys post, its sums up nicely all the critical points the calculation misses.

To make it easier:

First, you are assuming that they have enough electricity generating stations to actually make use of all that oil.
Second, you are assuming that the entire population of all the "middle east" countries would all go without using any electricity for any other purpose for an entire day (that they could and would some how exclusively re-route all that electricity simultaneously into bitcoin mining operations only)
Third, you are assuming that there is actually enough mining equipment on the market for them to acquire it all.
Fourth, you are assuming that acquiring that much mining equipment wouldn't create a demand spike that would shoot the price of the mining equipment through the roof to ridiculously high prices.
Fifth, you are assuming that it won't cost anything to actually build mining farms that can draw and make use of all that electricity.
Sixth, you are assuming that they will cut off all exports of oil for at least a full day without any repercussions from any other countries.
Seventh, you are assuming there are no costs or infrastructure issues with getting all that oil to the electricity generating stations in a timely enough manner to make use of it all in a single day.
Eighth, you are assuming that cutting off oil exporting for a day won't create a supply shortage that would shoot the price of oil through the roof to ridiculously high prices, or that such a spike in oil prices won't create an incentive for some of the "middle east" countries to cheat and sell their oil for incredible profits instead of participating in the bitcoin destroying scheme.
Ninth, you are assuming that having 99+% of the hashing power for only one day will allow them to do enough damage to the faith that people have in bitcoin that when they stop their attack on bitcoin exactly 1 day later, things won't quickly return to normal.


That's an awful lot of assuming you are doing there.  If we do that much assuming, I suppose we can just pretend that aliens from Jupiter will see what the "middle east" is doing and will come to earth to stop them and instill peace.  There.  Problem solved.

[Meuh6879]

... Asia shutdown miner BTC ...
... OK ...

... and the exchange of BTC in Asia ...
... Always OK, well ...

and ?

nothing.

Bitcoin is worldwide ... like the miners.
Difficulty must fail ... but it's the only the noticable thing.

https://getaddr.bitnodes.io/




Will win for ever against human.
Revolution Serie - Saison 2  

[Lethn]

It's extremely funny when people make trash talk posts and comments like this, it's the equivalent of someone picking a fight with you claiming how they could beat the shit out of you if they wanted to and you should watch out but of course, it never happens because they're full of shit. Don't bother making crappy posts like this if you haven't even got a real plan to do it you pussy, I don't really need to add much else to this thread because people have already pointed out how poorly you've thought about this.

It's like saying America or China could easily shut down Bitcoin, what are they going to do? Arrest us all? Shut down the internet? There would be a global wide revolution within a week if they tried something like that and they know it, this is just posturing and nothing more. What I personally would really like to see is an organised 51% attack to demonstrate whether this sort of thing is really possible on the cryptocurrency networks, but yet again the people constantly ranting about this sort of thing never fail to cause me disappointment.

Using oil to attack Bitcoin would not only cripple their own infrastructure which is already in terrible condition in most middle eastern countries because of all the bombing it would also simply raise the Bitcoin price to ridiculous levels causing all of us to profit. Oh and that's not even taking into account the political ramifications of pissing away the countries oil on something so pointless when the current middle eastern powers have very few friends as it is.

[JoelKatz]

antminer uses 590watts PER HOUR

thats 14160watts a day..

That's wrong. Watts is already a measure of power. Watts per hour would be a measure of the rate of change of energy consumption, which isn't relevant in any way. The 14160 number makes no sense and has no relevance either.

590 watts is, by definition, 590 joules per second. That's 50 MJ/day. A barrel of oil contains 6.1x10^9 joules, which would be enough to run a 590 watt device for 120 days (at 100% efficiency, which is not possible).

[General_A]

Well I enjoyed it so I thought I would do some quick calculations on the UK.
-snip-
Which means the UK would own roughly 99.711% of the network.

Read Dannys post, its sums up nicely all the critical points the calculation misses.

To make it easier:

First, you are assuming that they have enough electricity generating stations to actually make use of all that oil.
Second, you are assuming that the entire population of all the "middle east" countries would all go without using any electricity for any other purpose for an entire day (that they could and would some how exclusively re-route all that electricity simultaneously into bitcoin mining operations only)
Third, you are assuming that there is actually enough mining equipment on the market for them to acquire it all.
Fourth, you are assuming that acquiring that much mining equipment wouldn't create a demand spike that would shoot the price of the mining equipment through the roof to ridiculously high prices.
Fifth, you are assuming that it won't cost anything to actually build mining farms that can draw and make use of all that electricity.
Sixth, you are assuming that they will cut off all exports of oil for at least a full day without any repercussions from any other countries.
Seventh, you are assuming there are no costs or infrastructure issues with getting all that oil to the electricity generating stations in a timely enough manner to make use of it all in a single day.
Eighth, you are assuming that cutting off oil exporting for a day won't create a supply shortage that would shoot the price of oil through the roof to ridiculously high prices, or that such a spike in oil prices won't create an incentive for some of the "middle east" countries to cheat and sell their oil for incredible profits instead of participating in the bitcoin destroying scheme.
Ninth, you are assuming that having 99+% of the hashing power for only one day will allow them to do enough damage to the faith that people have in bitcoin that when they stop their attack on bitcoin exactly 1 day later, things won't quickly return to normal.


That's an awful lot of assuming you are doing there.  If we do that much assuming, I suppose we can just pretend that aliens from Jupiter will see what the "middle east" is doing and will come to earth to stop them and instill peace.  There.  Problem solved.

I struggle to see why anyone would take this post seriously. I was more interested in the power output of the UK vs the power usage of the bitcoin network. A scenario like this is lower on my list of concerns than a nuclear apocalypse, a zombie outbreak or an invasion of aliens. Lighten up

[sandykho47]

In theory it's possible
But, there are too much reason they won't destory bitcoin

They will suffer great loss 

[Q7]

Theoretically they can but by doing it, they will also hurt their own economy. If they are going to shut down oil export, what are they going to do with all the oil that they have? The revenue from the sale of oil is used to import other stuff

[shorena]

-snip-
I struggle to see why anyone would take this post seriously. I was more interested in the power output of the UK vs the power usage of the bitcoin network. A scenario like this is lower on my list of concerns than a nuclear apocalypse, a zombie outbreak or an invasion of aliens. Lighten up

Fair enough, please enjoy your day, Ill go into my grumpy corner.

[General_A]

-snip-
I struggle to see why anyone would take this post seriously. I was more interested in the power output of the UK vs the power usage of the bitcoin network. A scenario like this is lower on my list of concerns than a nuclear apocalypse, a zombie outbreak or an invasion of aliens. Lighten up

Fair enough, please enjoy your day, Ill go into my grumpy corner.

Haha - I suddenly feel guilty for telling you to lighten up. Enjoy your day too

[Flashman]

So the Middle East has about 1 trillion barrels of oil reserves.

That figure should be regarded as at least 30% high, they all started lying when the OPEC production quotas became based on reserves. Plus you've got neighbours each claiming the whole of the field that goes across borders.

Therefore it's plausible that Canada has largest real proven reserves in the world. Unproven and speculative arctic reserves have huge potential also. Add in that they are among the top natural gas producers, top hydro-electricity producers, top nuclear power producers, and have significant coal reserves and wind energy projects, and the prospect of losing an "energy war" to even a united middle east becomes somewhat remote.

And yeah, all the middle east countries working together?

Don't forget also that that oil is all they've got, basically no other significant natural resources, no forests, no rolling prairies full of wheat, no thousands of freshwater lakes, no uranium deposits, limited minerals and metals....

Basically their current policy is enough like an all or nothing game of chicken for them, I doubt they will take any increased risk.

Personally I think they are a day late and a dollar short on this price dump, for a start, with the development of tar sands and shale oil etc, they no longer hold the trump, they're just a large fraction, rather than a majority. Now, they can kill production on those fields in the race to the bottom, their oil is cheaper to get out of the ground. But, too late, infrastructure is there, it will just get mothballed, we'll just freaking buy up  every last barrel, and given their "extremely optimistic" proved reserve numbers, those last barrels will be coming out sooner than they think. Then what, western companies will pour billions into developing marginal resources in middle east? Don't think so, not any more. I think they'd rather spend $3 anywhere else in the world than $2 in middle east again.

But anyway, good luck to them..... as long as they save enough cash to buy some CANDUs

[General_A]

Personally I think they are a day late and a dollar short on this price dump, for a start, with the development of tar sands and shale oil etc, they no longer hold the trump, they're just a large fraction, rather than a majority.

This is presuming that the reason for this dump is Saudi Arabia wanting to crash prices to crash unconventional oil markets. I really doubt the Saudis are that dumb as they can't do it for very long and they're just selling oil for a discount(not very economically feasible). I would suspect there have been some backroom deals with the USA and Saudi Arabia, potentially involving ISIS and Russia. Can't anyone remember in April when the US started selling reserves to bring down the price of oil. I think it went from around $105 to $80 in about a month. They specifically said this was a warning shot to Russia over Crimea. Then ISIS emerged and Saudi needed a tactical ally to stop the advancement towards their boarders.

[Flashman]

That's a possibility, that US is dangling F-35s or something under Saudi's nose as a carrot to play ball for the Russian reasons.

[General_A]

That's a possibility, that US is dangling F-35s or something under Saudi's nose as a carrot to play ball for the Russian reasons.

I think its the most likely scenario out of an unlikely bunch. Just another sign of the times.

[Febo]

I also dont understand OPs thinking why would Middle East want to double spend?
Why would they want to steal?
Do you think world works that way?
Would presidents of countries in Middle East get elected on next elections when medias will tell they organize a theft?