Quote from: tgsrge on April 15, 2013, 07:19:51 AM

Quote from: cdog on April 15, 2013, 07:01:06 AM

The only real threat to cryptocurrencies on the scale of BTC is a state actor - or several state actors acting in unison.

if we start talking state actors then unless we're taking about pacific ocean island nations, or some of africa and a very few others you hardly need more than 1. in fact for most of the countries out there, except for the "lose face" aspect of it, it would take little to no effort (in terms of a country) to do it. i would actually hazard that most subnational entities could easily do it if it's in their interest as well. In fact, i could actually see a national governments "outsourcing" it to subnational entities just because that way if it came out it was a state actor, they lose next to no face at all, as well as being able to go "sorry, nothing i can do for you bro, they have their autonomy"

It is an issue. Can you see the same type of effort that was put behind Stux being put to work against BTC's SHA256 with 22nm premium ASICs. All 50,000 ASICs lighting up the network at once?

LTC and scrypt at least make this type of thing quite a bit harder and much more expensive, but not impossible.