Comment on Paul Krugman. Former Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
khannie@lemmy.world 10 hours agoI can’t even fathom what the cost of trying to implement a 51% attack on bitcoin would be.
Comment on Paul Krugman. Former Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
khannie@lemmy.world 10 hours agoI can’t even fathom what the cost of trying to implement a 51% attack on bitcoin would be.
Warl0k3@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
Among the many feasible vectors you could accomplish that: Bitmain’s HQ is in Beijing, and while there is some scrutiny on the subject there has never been a (public) investigation into what’s actually baked into the silicon. Antminers are a fucking stunning percentage of the nodes out there, and although nothing like 51% of all nodes are just antminers, it still wouldn’t be difficult (for a powerful nation-state) to repeat the process across multiple manufacturers and get that kind of distributed influence.
It’s completely possible that the classically imagined 51% attack has never occurred, but having that kind of large influence over the blockchain would trivially allow for subtle manipulations that would have world-spanning impacts. We have no way of demonstrating that it’s happened, nor preventing it if it does, which is a big part of why bitcoin is regarded as such a joke by everyone that isn’t part of the cult. And to be clear, I have no idea if this has happened - that’s the problem, there’s by design no way of checking or verifying integrity on that scale.
Bitcoin was a half-baked idea that’s only stuck around because of the speculative market.
HumanOnEarth@lemmy.ca 9 hours ago
I just bought another $100, thank you
Warl0k3@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
Why would you think I care? The audience I’m writing for isn’t you, one of the above referenced “cultists” they were talking about screaming in the comments, it’s for anyone who isn’t already firmly entrenched within this strange little cult. Your poor financial decisions are your own burdens to bare, don’t try to offload the burden for your choices onto me…
HumanOnEarth@lemmy.ca 8 hours ago
Remember this conversation. Seriously. Don’t forget it.
Obviously so you can laugh at my misfortune later, no other reason.