Peter Wuille provides one answer to this in the first link I shared: > SPV nodes (such as some mobile clients, and Multibit) place a blind trust in the majorit

Peter Wuille provides one answer to this in the first link I shared: > SPV nodes (such as some mobile clients, and Multibit) place a blind trust in the majority of miners, without checking validity of the blockchain they produce. It still requires a majority of miners to mislead an SPV node, but they can make it believe anything (including "You received 10000000 BTC!"). The reason why this does not happen is because full nodes would not accept such blocks, and assuming a large portion of the ecosystem does rely on full nodes, miners who do this would not see their blocks accepted by the larger economy, resulting in them wasting money. Further, on this page, you can read about security considerations between light clients and full nodes: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Thin_Client_Security https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Thin_Client_Security Basically, a network comprised of only SPV nodes and miners places the SPV nodes at the mercy of the miners. Because of how centralized and state-controlled mining is (see Russia and China), this would be a very easy way for states to attack bitcoin.