[MattCruikshank]

Quick question - why hasn't someone 51 percent attacked Satoshi's wallets?

Estimated cost of a 51% attack on Bitcoin, if no one is cooperating, is $6 billion to $10 billion.

Surely the cost goes down if they get some big players to cooperate.

And the reward is... $83 billion. Basically 10x your money.

I mean, this is the kind of thing that we could sell bonds for, to raise the $6 to $10 billion needed.

Other than the fact that you'd be de-legitimizing BTC, the very thing you're trying to steal. Or morals - them, too. Other than that?

[pawelduda]

Once these coins as much as budge, price will crater before the transaction has enough confirmations to settle the deposit on any exchange with enough liquidity. Any second on exchange and the hacker is exposed to having his account frozen.

Nobody would buy OTC as they're tainted and it would be basically throwing away their money for something that is traceable and everyone is watching and reacting to further moves

Then the blockchain could be effectively forked to before the attack, invalidating the heist

[curiousObject]

51% attack allows you to undo a recent transaction (as if it never happened). It does not allow you to change the destination of a transaction or arbitrarily move bitcoins around.

[sanswork]

51% attack on bitcoin doesn't let you remove coins from someones wallet it allows you to change which transaction history is considered the real one. So you could send someone bitcoin then do a 51% attack to make the chain without that transaction longest so you get to keep your bitcoin but you can't use it to just take money out of someone elses wallet.

[sunrunner]

> doesn't let you remove coins from someones wallet it allows you to change which transaction history is considered the real one

Potato potahto.

“You’ve got it all wrong officer, I wasn’t talking money from his wallet, I was changing history such that the money was transferred to my wallet instead.”

[sanswork]

It's not about if one is wrong or not it's about what you can do with it. With a 51% attack you need to have a recent transaction to the wallet you want to attack and have received economic benefit from the transaction already.

It allows you do to a refund it doesn't allow you to take random bitcoins from a wallet.