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The U.S. Government Can Nationalize the Bitcoin Network at Any Time

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Re: The U.S. Government Can Nationalize the Bitcoin Network at Any Time

#31

Post by michaniskin »

mikeblackson wrote: post #27
michaniskin wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Fed is (nominally at least) a private institution. They are not hobbled by government bureaucracy. Just look at all the things they did in 2020 that everyone would have imagined would have been impossible. All they need is the green light to do it, and the Fed can swoop in ninja style and get stuff done, as they do. There is no oversight, there are no constraints.

I have seen no evidence that central banks are as agile as you claim. Changing a number on a central database is not impressive and doesn't prove they can execute a much more technical attack on a well defended network. Central banks are more fragile than the Bitcoin network and they definitely don't have the support of the masses. I expect they would lose a lot more than just money in this attack. Bitcoiners would l…

Running a 51% attack is not rocket science. It doesn't involve inventing anything new. When they can print the money to fund it it doesn't even require a business plan. All they need to do is buy up enough hash power and they win. Come on now, if there's anything we can learn from 2020, it's that the Fed is extremely efficient at printing money to buy things to shore up their fiat monetary regime.

Re: The U.S. Government Can Nationalize the Bitcoin Network at Any Time

#32

Post by michaniskin »

mikeblackson wrote: post #26
michaniskin wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also consider that the price of crypto is determined by people's expectations of future price; since it pays no dividends the only way to make a return is to sell it or rent it out. What effect do you think this "perpetually moving and atomizing target" would have on investors? How would a rational investor price this completely unpredictable asset? Clearly there would be a discount for risk, like a shitcoin.

That is irrelevant because the main point is, the attack will be unsuccessful. People will pay a premium for a coin/payment network that defeated the Fed and proved its censorship resistance. How long can the fed fight a few hundred million (soon to be few billion) people? In the war of attrition, this small group of people with incentives that are not aligned with the majority of the humans on this planet will lose,…

> How long can the fed fight a few hundred million (soon to be few billion) people?

The same way sovereigns have since the dawn of time--divide and conquer. In the 20th century they discovered the secret, international socialism.

Give millions of people stimmys and enhanced unemployment checks. Destroy the savings of responsible, productive people so they can't afford to take risks without the promise of government bailouts. Make the people dependent on the state in every way.

Deficit spending and the money printer is the only way to fund all of these social programs the people are addicted to. Do you really believe that these millions of people hate the central banks who fund the welfare state?

They are winning. Their power increases every day, and it never decreases. They are ruthless, and I think it's reasonable to expect that they will not think twice about nuking bitcoin from orbit with a 51% attack, and print as many billions as they need to succeed.

Re: The U.S. Government Can Nationalize the Bitcoin Network at Any Time

#33

Post by mikeblackson »

michaniskin wrote: post #30
mikeblackson wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All these coins are funded by the people that adopt them, funding is not an issue for projects that solve the issues Bitcoin does. These projects exist because there is demand for the solutions they offer, attacking any single network does nothing to limit that demand. I disagree with the 2nd part too, the idea that the Fed does anything tech related with a higher level of competency than the private sector has not b…

> funding is not an issue for projects that solve the issues Bitcoin does Funding is far less of an issue for an attacker who has a printing press, and it's the relative level of funding that matters. In order to defend against a 51% attack the defender must be able to spend more resources than the attacker. It's the "who can afford to lose more money game", where one side can just print as much money as they need wh…

They are competing with Bitcoin whether they like it or not. CBDCs are a result of Bitcoin applying pressure to central banks. As long as the money offered by central banks is censorable and heavily debased, they will be in this battle.

And no, they can't destroy something that can be forked and updated an infinite number of times. Not sure why you don't understand that its trivially easy to copy Bitcoin and build an alt. As long as that is the case, Bitcoin cannot be defeated.

If the current POW mechanism is repeatedly attacked and defeated it will adapt or projects will move to another consensus method. This is an arms race that CBs cannot win and they will burn a lot of money in process of losing, which is a beautiful thing.

Realize a successful 51% attack is just the beginning of the war, not the end of it.

*All the arguments you put forth so far are defeated by this simple flip of a consensus mechanism switch.

Re: The U.S. Government Can Nationalize the Bitcoin Network at Any Time

#34

Post by mikeblackson »

michaniskin wrote: post #31
mikeblackson wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have seen no evidence that central banks are as agile as you claim. Changing a number on a central database is not impressive and doesn't prove they can execute a much more technical attack on a well defended network. Central banks are more fragile than the Bitcoin network and they definitely don't have the support of the masses. I expect they would lose a lot more than just money in this attack. Bitcoiners would l…

Running a 51% attack is not rocket science. It doesn't involve inventing anything new. When they can print the money to fund it it doesn't even require a business plan. All they need to do is buy up enough hash power and they win. Come on now, if there's anything we can learn from 2020, it's that the Fed is extremely efficient at printing money to buy things to shore up their fiat monetary regime.

Wrong, a 51% attack by itself will not take down Bitcoin. There is follow up work that I don't think they are competent enough to complete.

Re: The U.S. Government Can Nationalize the Bitcoin Network at Any Time

#35

Post by michaniskin »

mikeblackson wrote: post #33
michaniskin wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> funding is not an issue for projects that solve the issues Bitcoin does Funding is far less of an issue for an attacker who has a printing press, and it's the relative level of funding that matters. In order to defend against a 51% attack the defender must be able to spend more resources than the attacker. It's the "who can afford to lose more money game", where one side can just print as much money as they need wh…

They are competing with Bitcoin whether they like it or not. CBDCs are a result of Bitcoin applying pressure to central banks. As long as the money offered by central banks is censorable and heavily debased, they will be in this battle. And no, they can't destroy something that can be forked and updated an infinite number of times. Not sure why you don't understand that its trivially easy to copy Bitcoin and build an…

They don't need to compete with a thing they can destroy. And they can destroy bitcoin with a 51% attack that is funded by their ability to print as much fiat as it takes.

Re: The U.S. Government Can Nationalize the Bitcoin Network at Any Time

#36

Post by mikeblackson »

michaniskin wrote: post #32
mikeblackson wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is irrelevant because the main point is, the attack will be unsuccessful. People will pay a premium for a coin/payment network that defeated the Fed and proved its censorship resistance. How long can the fed fight a few hundred million (soon to be few billion) people? In the war of attrition, this small group of people with incentives that are not aligned with the majority of the humans on this planet will lose,…

> How long can the fed fight a few hundred million (soon to be few billion) people? The same way sovereigns have since the dawn of time--divide and conquer. In the 20th century they discovered the secret, international socialism. Give millions of people stimmys and enhanced unemployment checks. Destroy the savings of responsible, productive people so they can't afford to take risks without the promise of government b…

They are not winning. The fiat standard is imploding as we speak, have you not recognized that yet? Any attack on a popular network exposes a larger audience to the fraud that central banks engage in. Hence, central banks don't survive in the sunlight.

Re: The U.S. Government Can Nationalize the Bitcoin Network at Any Time

#37

Post by mikeblackson »

theamk wrote: post #28
mikeblackson wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This will just fuel the rise of background mixing and decentralized exchanges. Many Bitcoin holders and devs will consider it an honor to make as much of the Bitcoin supply as "dirty" as possible and the community will mostly support it. Layer 2 also further hinders easy tracking of "dirty" addresses/transactions. The FBI wants to interact with and attack the 200M+ people that will eventually hold "dirty bitcoin"? Mu…

Oh, the FBI is secondary. The primary method id carrot: do you want your to buy bitcoin via Paypal? Do you want to pay bitcoin everywhere where the VISA is accepted? Do you want touse US based firms like coinbase? Do you want to invest into bitcoin via tax-free retirement saving program? Then avoid “bad bitcoin”. People may want to participate in mixing, but then they won’t be able to get their money back in the US.…

>People may want to participate in mixing, but then they won’t be able to get their money back in the US.

I see the issue here, you think the endgame is for bitcoiners is to own more fiat. That is not the goal, fiat is dead to most bitcoiners, they will hold until fiats currencies implode like they constantly do.

You seem to think the choice of money originates with banks or governments, it doesnt. The primary form of money is chosen by the masses. Good luck stopping billions of people that choose to opt out of bad money.

Re: The U.S. Government Can Nationalize the Bitcoin Network at Any Time

#38

Post by michaniskin »

mikeblackson wrote: post #34
michaniskin wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Running a 51% attack is not rocket science. It doesn't involve inventing anything new. When they can print the money to fund it it doesn't even require a business plan. All they need to do is buy up enough hash power and they win. Come on now, if there's anything we can learn from 2020, it's that the Fed is extremely efficient at printing money to buy things to shore up their fiat monetary regime.

Wrong, a 51% attack by itself will not take down Bitcoin. There is follow up work that I don't think they are competent enough to complete.

Ok, assume I can make this 51% attack on bitcoin. I will then mine blocks all day, and I won't let anyone else make transactions on the blockchain.

Now consider that any investor who owns bitcoin can't sell it, because they can't get the transaction onto the blockchain. What is the market value of bitcoin? It's exactly zero.

Bitcoin is taken down. No follow-up work required.

Re: The U.S. Government Can Nationalize the Bitcoin Network at Any Time

#39

Post by mikeblackson »

michaniskin wrote: post #38
mikeblackson wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong, a 51% attack by itself will not take down Bitcoin. There is follow up work that I don't think they are competent enough to complete.

Ok, assume I can make this 51% attack on bitcoin. I will then mine blocks all day, and I won't let anyone else make transactions on the blockchain. Now consider that any investor who owns bitcoin can't sell it, because they can't get the transaction onto the blockchain. What is the market value of bitcoin? It's exactly zero. Bitcoin is taken down. No follow-up work required.

You seem to believe that in the face of an attack Bitcoin will not adapt, that is a fatal error. There are many methods of reaching consensus available in the toolbox and the number is only growing. Proof of work failing does not equal Bitcoin failing, you might be a bit confused about this point.

---Responding here due to rate limit...

Variations of POW, POS, POK, etc....are easy drop in replacements that are actively being developed as we speak. Most of those alts you speak of have Bitcoin DNA at their core.

>And even if it does, nothing prevents me from 51% attacking that one, too.

Good luck attacking Bitcoin with a proof of stake hybrid that requires owning 51% of the supply to succeed, when the majority of the supply is already issued and is not available for sale. That's why I keep stating that a 51% attack/defeating POW is just the beginning of the work the Fed has to do...

---Rate limit response part 2....

>Finally, this is all kind of irrelevant to the article.

I think you are admitting defeat in long form. The article itself is irrelevant because it doesn't consider the 2nd order effect of any attack. Bitcoin is considered anti-fragile for a reason, it gets stronger as it gets attacked. The developer communities (including the devs working on alts) are an inextricable part of its anti-fragility.

>not some imaginary future thing we might or might not be able to invent after the Fed 51%s actual bitcoin to oblivion.

I could hit a target where it was positioned x years ago... Big Whoop. You aren't defeating its current form, so you lose, repeatedly, and debase the currency (USD) further in the process.

After a few trillion dollar USD expended on failed attacks, the currency being issued will be debased enough to be noticeable by consumers. This "infinite money printer" argument is not thought through. The outcome of more debasement is more demand for bitcoin aka undebaseable money.

Bitcoiners know there is a hyper inflationary event coming soon, I'm sure many would love to induce it by getting the fed to burn money attacking bitcoin :D

Re: The U.S. Government Can Nationalize the Bitcoin Network at Any Time

#40

Post by michaniskin »

mikeblackson wrote: post #36
michaniskin wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How long can the fed fight a few hundred million (soon to be few billion) people? The same way sovereigns have since the dawn of time--divide and conquer. In the 20th century they discovered the secret, international socialism. Give millions of people stimmys and enhanced unemployment checks. Destroy the savings of responsible, productive people so they can't afford to take risks without the promise of government b…

They are not winning. The fiat standard is imploding as we speak, have you not recognized that yet? Any attack on a popular network exposes a larger audience to the fraud that central banks engage in. Hence, central banks don't survive in the sunlight.

How are they not winning? They have repeatedly exceeded even the most paranoid fears of people who value sound money. They are increasing the scope and magnitude of their interventions every day. They are continually eroding any checks or balances that were in effect historically. Sovereign debt is at levels that have never been experienced in the history of mankind, and they continue to bask in the glow of favorable public opinion. The average person is thankful that the Fed is here to save the economy from disaster. In America we have a treasury secretary who is literally a Fed chairman.

The fiat standard may be imploding, but the central banks are definitely winning. The Weimar hyperinflation, for example, did not destroy the Reichsbank; it empowered it. When the currency collapsed they did not replace it with sound money, they replaced it with new fiat of a different color with less zeroes on it. It's the same with all the other hyperinflations we've seen in the past century. The mantra of "this time is different" makes a pretty bold claim and requires some evidence to back it up.

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