Re: WARNING scammer r0ach now shilling for the Monero hoax
The point is that no matter what proof-of-work algorithm an altcoin employs, those who are protecting Bitcoin will rent enough mining hash rate to fuck your coin forever. They only have to rent it for a short period of time, and your difficulty will be so high that it will never produce a block again. And all the money in the chain will be unspendable for a very, very, very long time.
The "attacker" has the resources to do that to any proof-of-work altcoin which doesn't have the level of hashrate of Bitcoin.
Of course the altcoin can then manually reset the difficulty lower using a fork, but then the attacker can repeat again. It will quickly become clear that the altcoin is fucked.
If Monero starts to approach $1 billion market cap (or perhaps much less if the liquidity is very high, which it is for Monero), this attacker will destroy Monero and profit by shorting.
This doesn't mean I am attacking Monero. I am just speaking factually.
The "attacker" has the resources to do that to any proof-of-work altcoin which doesn't have the level of hashrate of Bitcoin.
Of course the altcoin can then manually reset the difficulty lower using a fork, but then the attacker can repeat again. It will quickly become clear that the altcoin is fucked.
If Monero starts to approach $1 billion market cap (or perhaps much less if the liquidity is very high, which it is for Monero), this attacker will destroy Monero and profit by shorting.
This doesn't mean I am attacking Monero. I am just speaking factually.
But, but, but. I heard Monero has already hired all the botnets of the world, and even invented a new FTP-based one.
What happens when a resourceful adversary starts a bidding war for those botnets?
Usually the price of Monero goes up with the difficulty (less blocks = less xmr supply), so I would welcome such an event!
If the adversary succeeds in driving up the difficulty so high the network gets stuck between blocks when they leave, I'm sure somebody like Risto or Arcticmine (xmr whale types) can light up a data center long enough to get us over the hump.
IIRC Litecoin briefly had a billion dollar cap. Your proposed scenario failed to materialize; ergo it's just paranoid FUD representing your demon-haunted world, not actual reality.