You are viewing a single comment's thread from:
RE: How Expensive is it to Take over the (PoW) Network of Bitcoin, Ethereum or Monero? Why We Might See More 51% Attacks in the Future
I think we will see more of them for sure.
I'm not entirely sure what is behind the attacks in terms of motivation. I can think of several reasons to attack:
- the most obvious: monetary gain, because it's relatively easy to attack small networks
- To strengthen BTC, big miners/pools could attack smaller, competing chains to destroy them and make the wealth flow into BTC. After all, when everybody sells their XVG and BTG it will all be convertered into BTC. Attacking each fork individually could be a good way to 'annex' the market cap of smaller coins into Bitcoin, as a new way to grow BTC
- To strengthen the reputation of Bitcoin's security it could be wise to expose the vulnerabilities of all competitors. Each 51% attack that happens elsewhere but not on Bitcoin, further solidifies Bitcoin as the most secure and decentralized
Truthfully, I think it's actually good that these attacks are happening. It is a great filter to weed out all the shitcoins from the good coins. A good coin should not be 51% attackable, after all.
Great point, could definitely be the case. The latter two are quite 'conspiracy-ey' though. Have you recently been listening to what Roger Ver is telling? He speaks a lot about how deep censorship and manipulation is done by the Bitcoin Core people. Sounds a bit like your last 2 points :-P
Yes, I think you mean the interview with Ivan on Tech? I saw it and have heard him speak of it before. I actually don't think it's untrue. I'm pretty sure there is actual censorship against BCH and there actually is a lot of BTC (price/market/media/sentiment) manipulation going on.
But.. the same can be said for BCH obviously.
Still I wouldn't underestimate the power of whales and influencers to work to manipulate the price and market. Quite frankly, I firmly believe that people are willing to spend money in order to use game theory to drive people to do what they want.
When I first entered the crypto space I believed the conspiracy theories were just that too: fun conspiracy theories to entertain us. But as time progresses I find that I have been switching camps and the longer I am in crypto the more convinced I am getting that manipulation is not only real, but potentially a lot bigger than even the theorists are theorizing about. Sometimes I wonder if the price graphs are even price indicators, or rather carrots-on-a-stick.
Also, if we wanna go total tinfoil hat.. let's not forget who owns Blockstream, the company that pays the BTC (core) developers: AXA (insurance), owned by the Bilderberg group.