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Comment by drcode | Hacker News Reader

As someone involved in this stuff since 2011, the constant "death of Bitcoin" predictions are sooooo tedious.

Bitcoin only died 171 times so far: https://99bitcoins.com/obituary-stats/. The first time was in December 2010 when it was priced at $0.23.

In theory, the governments may try to kill it once it reaches too far (to the point of being considered fiat money). However, the said government will also invite lots of backlash from the people and technically, no single government can stop the blockchain network completely.

> no single government can stop the blockchain network completely

Would you like to place a wager on that?

They cannot. Once the transaction becomes part of the blockchain, its replicated to each and every node in the world (we are talking about thousands) that span the length and breadth of the planet. Thus, its practically impossible.

Quick thought experiment: I just did a quick back of the envelope calculation on the brute force approach. 50% of the current hash rate would be 548 million retail - (current rate 8M TH/s, 1850$ retail Antminer S9 rated 13.5 TH/s). That's a quick thought on naive approach - not sure I have that right, so please check my work. I have a few other ideas as well. edit: of course, the existing hash rate would still be there, so you'd have to double it, not buy half. I still think the retail estimate is on the high side (markup, not leveraging economies of scale). My guess is that an organization like DARPA could buy Bitcoin for <250M$.

I think large states definitely have the resources to launch 51% attacks

But large states cannot do it in a legit manner as they have to follow some constitutional rights of their citizens. Most constitutions of these countries have enough freedom rights paved into them to avoid such blatant action by the government. Besides, the backlash in the media would be unbelievable, the party that does this kind of thing may not find many voters in the next election due to the negative press (at least in technologically advanced nations like USA and Sweden where people are generally aware of online rights).

Where you live sounds very nice.

Which US constitution clause would prohibit the US government from launching a 51% attack?

The fourth amendment?

getting the timing right is pretty much next to impossible. this does not change the fact that it will ultimately end that way.

What about the cryptomarket as a whole, 1-2$ total down from 100-200 billion?

> getting the timing right is pretty much next to impossible. this does not change the fact that it will ultimately end that way

The argument that anything ends at some point is fruitless. Not sure how you are separating BTC out from anything else here

Please, can you guess me the numbers of the EuroMillions lotto?

Things that enable previously impossible use-cases don't just go away.

Yeah, it's a pity that more technocrats don't actually understand how bitcoin works, why it is innovative, and how supply and demand control prices.

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