[joatmon-snoo]

That was sort of the idea of BTC, that a decentralized currency would mitigate this. Nakomoto's original paper actually devotes some attention to this, discussing why they don't want to rely on a centralized authority, and in the introduction he writes:

> What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party.

The thing that jumps out to me the most at this point is that Nakomoto also wrote:

> The system is secure as long as honest nodes collectively control more CPU power than any cooperating group of attacker nodes.

And with Heard's article, presuming that the facts are true, which seems to very much be the case, this seems to me the most serious risk to the system.