Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: Ethereum could afford a 51% attack on Bitcoin, and profit greatly from it
by
mjdamgaard
on 29/07/2024, 11:01:38 UTC
you think 1–4% is not enough to crash a market.. but here is the thing.. not all coins circulating are on the market.. only a small proportion of coins crculating are on market orders so a sudden increase of coins hitting the market supply would cause change

take for instance bitcoin, there are over 19m coins in circulation.. but there are not 19 m coins on the market. most market orders are 0.0X coins per order.. so if there was a sudden period where people were colluding to sell for instance 190,000(just 1%) coin the market orders would flood with sell orders compared to the norm.. now translate that to the numbers of ethereum circulation amount and market supply and see some scenarios of then dumping 1-4% of that circulation on the market supply.. you will soon see how it affects the markets

we seen it many times in the bitcoin market when the market orders were <1btc each. but then whales created walls and orders of just 1000 coin order lumps.. it had enough impact on the markets

This seems surprising to me. According to https://bitinfocharts.com (today), the transaction volume is roughly 0.6% each day. So I have a hard time wrapping my head around the proposition that transfers of 1%-4%, potentially over several days or months, would crash Ethereum?

Also, I think the context for why these transfers happen is important, i.e. whether they happen because investors lose interest, or if they happen simply as part of making payments.

By the way, have you considered the eventuality that I describe in my preprint where the stakeholders simply locks Ether to a smart contract instead, which is then automatically pays the participating miners in case of a successful 51% attack? Here the transfers only happen once the 51% attack has already taken place.

To your other points of your reply, yes it is true that it would require more than 51% for such an attack, ideally, and it is also true that the attackers have to weigh the profits of being honest miners against the rewards of an attack. But in the end, all this is a matter of money. And if the funding Ethereum stakeholders are willing and able to part with enough, then they should be able buy the miners for their malicious cause, assuming that the miners act selfishly, of course.