Quote from: justusranvier on April 23, 2015, 11:40:22 PM

Quote from: no-rice-peas on April 23, 2015, 11:14:27 PM

Quote from: justusranvier on April 23, 2015, 10:31:57 PM

Quote from: no-rice-peas on April 23, 2015, 10:27:14 PM

But there are very few people, none in fact, who have even one percent of the computing power of the NSA.

citation needed

http://www.informationweek.com/architecture/nsa-building-$8965-million-supercomputing-center/d/d-id/1097313

One percent of $896.5 million is roughly $9 million.

They have much more than that.

Do you know any people with even $9 million computers loaded with code breaking software?

The point is that the person defending the NSA was offering a false gift, a Trojan horse. Is the NSA secretly trying to help the public learn math? No. That is zero percent of their motive, though a few people may learn a little math by trying to break btc.

If the NSA devoted all that equipment toward Bitcoin mining, what percent of the network hashrate would they acquire?

Probably not much. ASICs are what, a couple of orders of magnitude faster/more efficient than general computing hardware? Unless they've been heavily investing in bitcoin mining hardware specifically I doubt even the NSA could tackle the bitcoin mining system. I'd be open to quantitative analysis though. Personally I'd be more concerned about the Chinese government than the NSA. They would have potentially greater motive and resources (via contracts/strongarming of locally based bitcoin mining hardware companies) for an attack on bitcoin.