How difficult (expensive, realistic, etc) would it be for the US gubmint to buy up enough mining power to hijack the network, change the rules, and send it all to zero?
I don't know much about the technical side either, but I followed a simple calculation based on this
website to get a rough estimate.
The current
Target Hashrate on the Bitcoin network is
200,000,000.00 TH/s.
The most powerful hardware currently on the market (although not yet available) is
BITMAIN AntMiner S19 XP Hyd. with Max. Hashrate of
255 TH/s (specified)
Required Equipment = Target Hashrate / Hardware Hashrate = 200,000,000.00 / 255 ≈ 784,300 Units.
Hardware Cost = 784,300 Units * USD 19,890.00 =
USD 15,599,727,000.00Assuming
Electricity Price is
USD 0.01 per kWh :
Electricity Cost = 784,300 circuits * 5.30 kWh * USD 0.01 =
USD 41,567.90/hour or USD 1M/day
So, according to this rough calculation, to carry out a successful 51% attack on the Bitcoin network with said hardware would cost at least $ 16 billion in hardware and at least $ 1 million a day in electricity costs.