Quote from: Melbustus on February 10, 2015, 01:00:06 AM

Quote from: smooth on February 10, 2015, 12:53:52 AM

Quote from: Melbustus on February 10, 2015, 12:44:05 AM

Quote from: smooth on February 10, 2015, 12:16:16 AM

Quote from: justusranvier on February 10, 2015, 12:08:23 AM

Quote from: smooth on February 10, 2015, 12:07:28 AM

That's an interesting line of reasoning.

It suggests that Bitcoin can only succeed if no such attackers exist.

Bitcoin can only succeed by growing larger than all attackers.

"Growing" implies a stage of being smaller, at which point such attackers can and will destroy it. How can anything grow if it is already destroyed?

Kinda the unlikely miracle of Bitcoin's current size, perhaps.

Bitcoin is already too large for "entities that both care about Bitcoin and want to end it (and have sufficient motivation and resources)" to destroy it?

No, but it's not easy anymore. And we're not that far off a technical attack being feasible only for highly motivated nation-states....which, as JR points out, seems like a bad choice of attack vector for a motivated sovereign, given the legal and regulatory tools available to them.

Yes legal and regulatory strangulation seem more obvious methods both in theory and practice, but that still doesn't answer the question of how it can ever grow to be too large to attack if adversaries want to end it while it's small enough to successful attack (by whatever method), and have the ability to do so.

JR's arguments seem to lead to the logical conclusion that Bitcoin can't succeed.