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Comment by NathanCH | Hacker News Reader

Some of these numbers are very low. $30/h for Bitcoin Private? Seems inexpensive, what am I missing?

You're not missing anything. The coins are literally worthless other than to those who trade them on crypto exchanges, to steal each other's lunch money. Plus, launching an attack isn't just a case of paying $30 per hour. You need to have a client able to perform whatever your aim is for the attack, which requires a level of coding knowledge. And dev's at that level of knowledge are probably earning real money for their time.

No one uses it. So you attack it. Cool. You can't turn it into USD or anything else, so you just spend $30 for nothing.

And, that's exactly why it only costs $30.

But you still get the prestige of having taken down a coin.

What makes you think there would be any such prestige earned?

It’s not very often you get a chance to take down a currency.

In 30 years from now you’ll be able to brag about how back in your day you took down entire cryptocurrencies with 51% attacks.

51% attacks are quite possibly wire fraud so I would refrain from bragging about them. More accurately, trying to double spend the coins is wire fraud.

Not if you have the consent of the counter-parties (or are the counter-parties.) It might be against some other law to manipulate the price like that, though.

Which government will prosecute?

The person they are swindling can go through their own authorities, and if the authorities in the criminal's country are alerted to his activities, they can go after them as well.

Theft and fraud don't take on different meanings just because the currency is digital.

So basically it sounds like you'll never get caught.

In 30 years no one will use crypto and people that invested in crypto will be laughed at.

"prestige" is exactly what smart criminals are attempted avoid.

"Prestige" is how people end up in jail, or otherwise...

It's listed on several exchanges [0], so assuming you can carry out the attack, you could pretty easily profit. Not a ton of volume, but you could make some money.

[0] https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin-private/#market...

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