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Comment by orf | Hacker News Reader

What’s happening?

The protocol is configured to aim for 10 minute block intervals. If in a 2 week period there too many or too little blocks the difficulty to find a new block is adjusted for the next 2 weeks.

This drop is caused by miners moving from China to other countries.

Governments finally decided to crack down on Bitcoin. Governments are slow so people had time to get super happy initially and now are waking up to reality.

Or that governments just don't want you to use your computer to solve certain equations.

Either way it is good for BTC as China will no longer be able to pull 51% attack.

> China will no longer be able to pull 51% attack

Any major government, the PRC included, has it well within its power to repurpose existing computing hardware to launch a 51% attack on Bitcoin. They don’t, because why would they. What has changed is a small group of private individuals in China can no longer coördinate such an attack.

Governments would have to source the specialised chips used to solve the Bitcoin hash function. While that's possible, it's not as easy as repurposing existing computing hardware.

> would have to source the specialised chips used to solve the Bitcoin hash function

Specialised hardware is more efficient. It is not necessary. A combination of owned computing and purchased general-purpose cloud resources would do the trick, albeit sloppily and a bit more expensively than it would have been with specialist hardware.

One ASIC is the equivalent of 1000 GPUs, and 1 GPU is equivalent to 1000 CPUs. So whilst what you say is possible, it is not likely. Even if the CCCP required every CPU in China to mine bitcoin it would not come close to the required 51%.

Even if we factored in half the country having a GPU to add to the effort it would not be enough. If they wanted to do it they would have confiscated the mining equipment rather than have people send it abroad. Even manufacturing enough ASICs to mount a 51% attack would be difficult for a nation state to achieve. China's best bet was confiscating existing equipment and they pretty much prevented that by forcing it out of their country.

You’re thinking at the scale of individuals, not nation states. Tens of billions of dollars will buy the necessary computing.

There is a huge chip shortage right now so yes it could be bought but it would be inefficient and take a long time. Seizing the existing miners in China would be a simple task for the authorities there but they didn't do it. They are not going to spend tems of billions to attack bitcoin when they could have done it for the cost of the power alone.

> They are not going to spend tems of billions to attack bitcoin when they could have done it for the cost of the power alone

Because they don't want to. Because it's in nobody's interest to blow up Bitcoin. It's a money maker, a tax maker, and nobody has gotten too badly hurt yet.

I was responding to the assertion that China now can't disable Bitcoin. That's not true.

Those ASICs don't evaporate when shut down. China could now seize them and actually pull off a 51% attack.

They are not seizing them, they are being shipped abroad to nations where they can be used to mine bitcoin.

Any idea which countries they will be going to?

It would be great if for example Iceland which can produce surplus base-load renewable power without significant impact to its population.

Kazakhstan has been mentioned due to proximity I believe and also Texas, there has been a lot of interest in using the natural gas flares from oil wells to run them as this is currently a waste product.

Kazakhstan has 1% tax rate for "datacentre services" and extremely subsidised electricity on top of 90% of it coming from co-generation plants.

Not for long https://kursiv.kz/en/news/rynki/2021-05/kazakhstan-plans-can...

In my limited understanding those flares are necessary to preserve the safety of workers and equipment on site. If they were able to provide useful power, they would already be doing so.

You can put the miners in a portable data centre and place them on site, what you can't do is transport the natural gas any significant distance to use it for power generation.

'If the mountain will not come to Muhammad, then Muhammad must go to the mountain'

https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/oil-dr...

https://oilmanmagazine.com/how-and-why-natural-gas-flaring-i...

Funny how the BTC maxis suddenly accept the fact that China could do an 51% attack, now that this is about to change. But in the years and years since China hosted over 50% it was always denied by the same people who know point out why this is good.

You know whats even better. FBA (Federated Byzantine Agreement) instead of PoW/PoS. And nodes all over the globe not just where electricity is cheap.

Pricier energy?

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