They won't as long as a government does not consider btc to be a threat to its sovereignty or its monetary system.

Of course, many btc true believers are attracted to btc for those very reasons. Wiki has repeatedly written that bitcoin will overthrow governments, or something to that effect.

Now that I have learned about the btc 51% self destruct mechanism, I now know bitcoin will exist only as long as it is viewed as a harmless internet fad.

This post was edited on 1/9/14 at 10:24 pm

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Posted by brucevilanch

Fort Worth, Tejas

Member since May 2011

24334 posts

Posted on 1/9/14 at 10:48 pm to LSURussian

quote:
Now that I have learned about the btc 51% self destruct mechanism, I now know bitcoin will exist only as long as it is viewed as a harmless internet fad.

Yeah, it wouldn't be the first time that a 51% attack would destroy a cryptocurrency. The sheer amount of equipment to do it to bitcoin would be ridiculous though, but I really wouldn't be surprised eitherway. I believe that it could be prevented simply by pools capping the hash rate of the pool. If the worker's are distributed over different pool's evenly, then the chances of it happening are even lower than they already are. That won't happen though, just because the pool owner's would be losing out on the automated fee's that they rake in.

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Posted by Poodlebrain

Way Right of Rex

Member since Jan 2004

19860 posts

Posted on 1/9/14 at 11:02 pm to LSURussian

If a government wanted to devastate Bitcoins it would be easier than Wiki admits. First, the government wouldn't have too much difficulty infiltrating the various mining pools and learning the addresses of the pools. With that information it would be possible to launch dns attacks against the various miners and shut down their ability to contribute computational power to the Bitcoin network. Removing the competing computing power reduces the amount of computing power required to achieve >50% of the total computing power to be able to interrupt transaction verification, permit double spending and alter the source code.

For example assume government dedicates enough computer capacity to mining Bitcoins to account for 25% of the network total. If that government launches a successful dns attack against enough mining pools, that could be as few as two pools, to interrupt their communications with the Bitcoin network, then the government could seize control of the Bitcoin network. It could then alter the source code and change the protocols to achieve any objective it desired.

Once those changes were made the Bitcoin community would have to reach consensus to undo the changes. And by Wiki's admission, that is very difficult to do. Meanwhile the confidence in Bitcoins as a secure investment or useful form of money would collapse.

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