[mikeblackson]

I have seen no evidence that central banks are as agile as you claim. Changing a number on a central database is not impressive and doesn't prove they can execute a much more technical attack on a well defended network.

Central banks are more fragile than the Bitcoin network and they definitely don't have the support of the masses. I expect they would lose a lot more than just money in this attack.

Bitcoiners would love to pull these institutions out of the shadows and I don't think central banks survive when exposed to sunlight. Just a small community of coders caught wind of how CBs operate and constructed powerful platforms to carry out large scale speculative attacks on them. Imagine what happens when a few billion people understand how CBs operate... their days are numbered.

[michaniskin]

Running a 51% attack is not rocket science. It doesn't involve inventing anything new. When they can print the money to fund it it doesn't even require a business plan. All they need to do is buy up enough hash power and they win. Come on now, if there's anything we can learn from 2020, it's that the Fed is extremely efficient at printing money to buy things to shore up their fiat monetary regime.

[mikeblackson]

Wrong, a 51% attack by itself will not take down Bitcoin. There is follow up work that I don't think they are competent enough to complete.

[michaniskin]

Ok, assume I can make this 51% attack on bitcoin. I will then mine blocks all day, and I won't let anyone else make transactions on the blockchain.

Now consider that any investor who owns bitcoin can't sell it, because they can't get the transaction onto the blockchain. What is the market value of bitcoin? It's exactly zero.

Bitcoin is taken down. No follow-up work required.

[mikeblackson]

You seem to believe that in the face of an attack Bitcoin will not adapt, that is a fatal error. There are many methods of reaching consensus available in the toolbox and the number is only growing. Proof of work failing does not equal Bitcoin failing, you might be a bit confused about this point.

---Responding here due to rate limit...

Variations of POW, POS, POK, etc....are easy drop in replacements that are actively being developed as we speak. Most of those alts you speak of have Bitcoin DNA at their core.

>And even if it does, nothing prevents me from 51% attacking that one, too.

Good luck attacking Bitcoin with a proof of stake hybrid that requires owning 51% of the supply to succeed, when the majority of the supply is already issued and is not available for sale. That's why I keep stating that a 51% attack/defeating POW is just the beginning of the work the Fed has to do...

---Rate limit response part 2....

>Finally, this is all kind of irrelevant to the article.

I think you are admitting defeat in long form. The article itself is irrelevant because it doesn't consider the 2nd order effect of any attack. Bitcoin is considered anti-fragile for a reason, it gets stronger as it gets attacked. The developer communities (including the devs working on alts) are an inextricable part of its anti-fragility.

>not some imaginary future thing we might or might not be able to invent after the Fed 51%s actual bitcoin to oblivion.

I could hit a target where it was positioned x years ago... Big Whoop. You aren't defeating its current form, so you lose, repeatedly, and debase the currency (USD) further in the process.

After a few trillion dollar USD expended on failed attacks, the currency being issued will be debased enough to be noticeable by consumers. This "infinite money printer" argument is not thought through. The outcome of more debasement is more demand for bitcoin aka undebaseable money.

Bitcoiners know there is a hyper inflationary event coming soon, I'm sure many would love to induce it by getting the fed to burn money attacking bitcoin :D

[michaniskin]

> Bitcoin is considered anti-fragile for a reason, it gets stronger as it gets attacked.

Please explain how bitcoin gets stronger when the Fed successfully deploys a 51% attack on it and either buys or puts out of business all the honest miners?

[mikeblackson]

Study anti-fragilty.

This article is dead. It took me a long time to argue against it because I assumed you knew what "adaptability" of bitcoin meant in practice. It seems you didn't and will need to do a lot more research before discussing viable attacks in the future.

Your attack vector fails and we know Satoshi knew the game theory and outcomes of just this scenario over a decade ago, as it is detailed in his posts on the bitcointalk forums. They are a great starting point for you to learn more about bitcoin's various defense mechanisms.

[michaniskin]

> Proof of work failing does not equal Bitcoin failing.

Ok, so what would equal bitcoin failing? Or is bitcoin just defined to be a success a priori?

> There are many methods of reaching consensus available in the toolbox

Are you saying that someone will come out with some new code that reuses the bitcoin blockchain, but has different characteristics?

If so then I would say there are already plenty of examples: bitcoin cash, zcash, etc. etc.

Are these altcoins really substitutes for bitcoin? Why should we expect your new altcoin that's banged out under duress to perform better than bitcoin cash has in terms of maintaining value? And even if it does, nothing prevents me from 51% attacking that one, too.

> There are many variations...

Sure, and there are already tons of altcoins putting those variations to the test. So far none of them are in the same universe as bitcoin. Also, every one of them that I have seen relies on economic incentives for security. Economic incentives are not a restraint for an entity that prints the world reserve currency.

> Good luck attacking a proof of stake hybrid that requires owning 50% of the supply, when the majority of the supply is already issued and is not available for sale.

If it's really true that there is no market for the majority of coins in a POS network then I would say that this is not a decentralized network anymore, and you are making a very strong claim when you assert that this coin will be able to serve the same purpose as bitcoin currently does. This coin is basically launched with a built-in 51% attack by design, locked in by the majority owners. It's really not so different from a CBDC.

On the other hand, if there is a market for coins in your POS world, the Fed will just buy them all. They can offer 10x, 100x, 1000x what anyone else will pay, it costs them nothing.

Finally, this is all kind of irrelevant to the article. The article merely lays out how the Fed could destroy bitcoin, not some imaginary future thing we might or might not be able to invent after the Fed 51%s actual bitcoin to oblivion.

I would give you 1,000,000 to 1 odds that 24 hours of no transactions on the bitcoin blockchain, nobody able to buy or sell bitcoin, would crash the price of bitcoin forever. What kind of person would pay $40k for such a thing. Anyone who did spend $40k of fiat to buy their bitcoin would then be out of luck, busted. That stings, and people remember the pain.

> After a few trillion dollar expended on failed attacks, the currency being issued will be debased enough to be noticeable by consumers, this "infinite money printed" argument is not thought through.

How long have the sound money people been making this tired argument? At least 50 years since Nixon put the final nail in the gold standard's coffin, but really even before that. Thought through or not, if you have been betting on the demise of fiat you've been on the losing side. After a long track record of being wrong, eventually you need to bring forth some compelling evidence that this time really is different, and I just don't see any.

As an aside, I like how weird the recursive quoting is between our two comments here, LOL.

[andirk]

If you compromised bitcoin, wouldn't you want it to stay high in value? You could still wreck shop but a more realistic example is needed.