201–210 of 278 posts
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I wonder if at some point Bitcoin might become important enough that nation states will work together to ensure that no one state has more than a 51% hashrate as a matter of national security.
This will happen
Basically btc might get too big to fail... then they may have international laws in place?
You don't need a DoS attack under the assumptions of this project. It's already assumed that you control ~80% of hash rate, so you execute a 51% attack that mass double-spends coins and destroy all confidence in the integrity of the currency. Poof, nobody uses it. Note that China already controls ~65% of Bitcoin hash rate, so if they wanted to execute this right now, they probably could. That they haven't is one reas…
You vastly overestimate the command and control capability of China. China and Chinese people are not a Borg.
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> rather, it'll be because the U.S. has destroyed the dollar. There's value in cryptocurrency simply in it being an alternative that's readily available, so that civilization doesn't stop if the U.S. does end up miscalculating and hyperinflating the dollar. Even before Bitcoin, we had plenty of other alternative currencies that could have replaced the dollar. I’ve been reading headlines speculating about the dollar b…
US monetary dominance is up for grabs. This doesn't mean the US is necessarily supplanted as the world reserve currency, but it does mean lots of trade may dedollarize to some extent. My bet is there will be two major currency zones. Dollar/Euro in the West + Middle East + India, Renmimbi in the East + Australia + Africa. Given the explosion of debt to GDP in the west vs the east, I see no way the Renmimbi will not c…
I’m not a fan of the current inflation in the US, but the idea that the US currency is being destroyed has been blown out of proportion online. People like to quote M1 money supply as if it’s the only measure of wealth, while ignoring that investors weren’t keeping investments in cash in the first place. Inflation drives up the value of assets, by definition.
Assuming that the Chinese government can exercise control of the top 5 Chinese companies that control > 50% of the hash rate, what's stopping the Chinese government from corrupting the blockchain? E.g. only transactions from whitelisted wallet ids (e.g. CCP-approved institutions) go through, extortion, etc.
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This is just silly, US military dominance is not anywhere close to up for grabs. They US might not have total dominance anywhere on earth anymore due to asymmetric weapons, but in a big fight the US is far and away the biggest dog still. It is not that it is not close, it is not even close to being close.
Edit: You may have misread. I said US /monetary/ dominance not military. Nonetheless, there is a thesis that military dominance dictates monetary dominance, which I do not subscribe to. Below is why. The idea that the US can use its military to reassert financial dominance in the modern age is silly especially after having exported near all manufacturing capacity to China. US aircraft carriers are worthless in the pa…
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I'd make a wild guess that when parent is talking about 'control', they mean that if a miner is located within China, the Chinese government has the ability to put a gun to that miners head and tell them what to do.
"The mountains are high and the Emperor is far away". Neither mining pools (who practically have the actual power over transaction inclusion an ordering) nor the miners are cooperating. I'm also certain the CCP wouldn't be practically able to locate and control all of them that easily.
I never understood why empty blocks is allowed... you can start immediately and get a head start over other mining pools. Granted it is just the time to load in transactions from the mempool and hash the result of appending them to the blockchain, but still... if you're in a race, why not take any advantage you can get? I've monitored the chain for years, and empty blocks are very very common. I know there is a civil…
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> China gains no benefit from destroying Bitcoin; Citation needed on this one I'm afraid. If nothing else, a currency that the Party cannot control would be A Problem. China did not have much economic benefit in halting the ANT IPO, yet it did not go through all the same. There _might_ be a benefit in allowing bitcoin to continue to exist of course, if they think it advances their cause more than it hurts it. But as…
Why haven’t they destroyed it then?
2. Traceable currency.
3. Soft power / control of narrative? Bitcoin seems to symbolize people's loss of faith in fiat system, and their governments.