Ordinary computers are nowhere near as efficient at the special purpose ASICs used by miners.
You'd have to reserve a huge amount of capacity from semiconductor fabs, get them to make a tremendous number of special purpose chips, then landfill them when you are done.
If the blockheads can tell the difference between their nodes and your nodes they can roll back to before the first block you took over. Worst comes to worst you can force them to become a permissioned blockchain.
I suspect if this happened, there would be some kind of "hard fork" that would let the status quo keep going.
Otherwise I definitely support the sentiment of trying to destroy it, and maybe ongoing attacks like what you propose would help burst the current bubble.
From a tech standpoint, I think all the mining now is done with asics that are orders of magnitude faster at hashing than any general purpose hardware. So I don't know how feasible it is for groups that are not bought into bitcoin to launch such an attack.
There are issues regarding Bitcoin's energy usage, but I think this is the kind of thing that requires, say, a democratic process of debate, followed by an enforcement mechanism that abides by the rule of law. If programmers, as a group, decide to use their professional skills to unilaterally shut down things they don't approve of, it will either:
1) lead to a massive backlash against programmers
2) legitimize the idea of one profession trying to dictate to society what the rules should be (consider how we would feel if military, doctors, bankers, or other professions behaved this way).
If you don't like Bitcoin, write your Congressman, and in the meantime don't buy any.
A - I don't think it would work out like that. Miners and whales would see the attack coming and adjust.
B - You would get better results using "Argentina's" energy to promote a more efficient cryptocurrency. Some use millions of times less energy and are completely mining free.
C - Bitcoin's removal from the top spot is inevitable; the maxis just don't know it yet. Do you have any idea how quickly a crypto can crash?
It seems like the Bitcoin hype squad have already forgotten about whether if Bitcoin would survive a 51% attack via a centralized pool of quantum computers mining it.
Better order many quantum computers and mine Bitcoins on it then. Anyone have spare billions somewhere?
6 comments
[ 232 ms ] story [ 3679 ms ] threadYou'd have to reserve a huge amount of capacity from semiconductor fabs, get them to make a tremendous number of special purpose chips, then landfill them when you are done.
If the blockheads can tell the difference between their nodes and your nodes they can roll back to before the first block you took over. Worst comes to worst you can force them to become a permissioned blockchain.
Otherwise I definitely support the sentiment of trying to destroy it, and maybe ongoing attacks like what you propose would help burst the current bubble.
From a tech standpoint, I think all the mining now is done with asics that are orders of magnitude faster at hashing than any general purpose hardware. So I don't know how feasible it is for groups that are not bought into bitcoin to launch such an attack.
1) lead to a massive backlash against programmers
2) legitimize the idea of one profession trying to dictate to society what the rules should be (consider how we would feel if military, doctors, bankers, or other professions behaved this way).
If you don't like Bitcoin, write your Congressman, and in the meantime don't buy any.
B - You would get better results using "Argentina's" energy to promote a more efficient cryptocurrency. Some use millions of times less energy and are completely mining free.
C - Bitcoin's removal from the top spot is inevitable; the maxis just don't know it yet. Do you have any idea how quickly a crypto can crash?
Better order many quantum computers and mine Bitcoins on it then. Anyone have spare billions somewhere?