Quote from: stompix on January 23, 2020, 08:53:10 PM

Quote from: Euro1000 on January 23, 2020, 08:36:32 PM

Following scenario: A government would like to destroy Bitcoin. It buys a significant number of ASICs to build up a huge mining farm and carries out a 51% attack.

First thing, why would a government do that?
And if they are afraid of bitcoin, it means they should be afraid of ethereum once bitcoin is gone, and next about litecoin and them some PoS coins and so on and on. From a government point totally wanting to get rid of cryptos, it makes zero sense to start spending billions in order to pluck only one at a time.

And why kill bitcoin entirely, they could deal with the problem in their country only.
If they are that stupid to plan such an attack first they would put lifetime sentences as punishment people using bitcoin, how many do you think would risk it?

I also dont see any reason why government will do such thing cause they already have enough on their plate rather than focusing on carry out 51% attack on bitcoin and from my experience 51% is usually carry out by miners and i dont see any reason why a miner will want the reason why we are all into crypto today to quench.

Quote from: Euro1000 on January 23, 2020, 08:36:32 PM

Another question: Will it be noticed (how?) that somebody buys a big stack of ASICs and/or are we able to identify such a behavior monitoring the network's hashrate?

If you don't have an insider at the company selling, you won't know it till the hash rate grows and since the hash rate is normally on an upward trend right now because of better gear and the price increase you will need really good clairvoyance skills to realize it's an evil player adding hash power to the network.
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In addition, the work of miners are to maintain/manage the blockchain network and also to get transaction confirm. Which mean they also does the examining job either.