[legohead]

What if a country, like Russia, decided it wanted to destroy bitcoin because of a threat to its currency? They have the resources to build up huge mining power and attack the chain for majority, and cause havoc. Is there any kind of protection for this scenario? Would all the other miners just decide to ignore these new jerky miners?

[ganwar]

The quickest solution in such a case would be a POW change that can put Russian miners at a significant disadvantage. Significant could be a factor of 10 or larger.

Also, any attempt to kill one decentralized value system would prove to be a wasteful process in the long run since the cost to create another such system is disproportionately smaller than the cost to attack/destroy them.

[tveita]

> The quickest solution in such a case would be a POW change that can put Russian miners at a significant disadvantage.

As in changing the POW algorithm? That puts everyone at the same disadvantage - the attacker just has to keep outspending the legitimate miners, who will also have lost their mining power. If the miners make new ASICs, the attacker can do so as well, at presumably the same or lesser cost.

> the cost to create another such system is disproportionately smaller than the cost to attack/destroy them.

I think it's the opposite. The defenders have to keep mining power up all the time, and may have trouble coordinating on one system - the attacker only has to spend their power while they are attacking, and they can wait until any system gets popular until they mount the attack.

And if the attacker shows they're motivated and capable of outspending the defenders, they don't have to actually attack. The defenders will see that any attempt at mining is futile and never try. At least in game theory, in practice things aren't resolved that easily. :)

[SkyMarshal]

This doesn't work when the attacker is a nation state, b/c the PoW change damages all miners equally but the nation state is not playing by the same economic rules, is politically motivated rather than financially, does not need to remain profitable to continue attacking, and is better able to absorb the loss and continue the attack with new hardware.

[michaelchisari]

> The quickest solution in such a case would be a POW change

That may be the quickest solution, but do you think it would be anywhere near quick enough?

[saosebastiao]

Control stratification is a legitimate threat to bitcoin, but I think your fears of threats to a national currency are overblown. There are significant advantages to floating currencies, and there isn't much a cryptocurrency can do to attack it. Russia has magnitudes more control over the Ruble's future than any competing currency ever could.