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.
I think this might be true for a Replay attack. But if the participating miners simply rewrites the blockchain ledger and steal a lot of
bitcoin, but doesn't trade these for other commodities, then the trial will only concern the blockchain alone, and whether miners are legally allowed to construct such an alternative fork after
x > 6 confirmations. Am I right in this?
And note that since the attackers true goal is to cause a crash rather than the steal itself, they would actually
want to keep their stolen bitcoin on the chain.