Re: Ethereum could afford a 51% attack on Bitcoin, and profit greatly from it
It doesn't really matter: a government entity could order whichever company to do their bidding, or take them over by clandestine means. In the latter scenario, nobody would even know what was happening until they had complete control of the network.
Once again it shows you don't know how mining works. If I see VIABTC starting to do things I don't like my miners are going to be pointed someplace else in a matter of hours or less. Other more diligent miners will probably be quicker to point them elsewhere.
So will a lot of other people. So yes if a bunch of governments that are at least on the surface semi-hostile to each other got together and decided to force a bunch of mining pools in independent parts of the world operating in different countries work together to disrupt BTC then a bunch of other pool operators are going to see a ton more hashrate pointed to them.
So a government has to get to... you. And people like you. Large governments would have no problem doing this through either legal or clandestine means.
There's no point dragging the discussion into the technical details of crypto when all cyphers can be broken with a Rubber Hose / $5 Wrench attack. Russia, China and the US have nuclear weapons and tens of thousands of personnel who can force people to do things, and economic control over millions more.
The only thing stopping a 51% attack on Bitcoin now and always, is... the US government. If another country did this, it would be an act of war and we would retaliate. If a large private entity did this, the FBI would intervene.
And if the US itself did this, then, well, they would control Bitcoin
.The other conclusion from the threads was that Bitcoin is ultimately protected by... the US federal government. Any actor, be it private or national, would have the USA to contend with if it were to try something like this. Indeed, it is undoubtedly the threat of the US government's reprisals that probably keeps a major entity from attacking Bitcoin. (Kind of ironic, given all of the anti-government rhetoric coming from some of the Bitcoin community).
This is a very interesting point to discuss. I admittedly don't know much about the topic, but I did read this blog post by Conklin et al., https://sites.duke.edu/thefinregblog/2022/12/28/legal-liability-of-a-51-goldfinger-cryptocurrency-attack, as part of my research, which concludes that a 51% attack will be hard to prosecute in reality.
Its argument in particular about why the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act would be difficult for a prosecutor to use is quite interesting.
Interesting article. Any takeover would probably need to break other laws though, which would be easily prosecutable, most likely. In other words, hacking, extortion, etc. would be required to pull off a 51% attack. Or in the case of overt move by a state actor, it would be an act of war on US citizens who hold Bitcoin, and the US would respond accordingly, no different than if Russia decided to attack Apple.