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https://www.crypto51.app/ https://www.crypto51.app/ Bitcoin has long since passed the stage where you could 51%-attack it for piddly amounts of money. Most ot

• hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
  Those numbers are pretty inaccurate, though, for cases where the NiceHash capacity is well below what is needed to mount an attack. I.e. the $768k for an hour of bitcoin attack actually vastly under estimates the cost, because to mount that attack you would need to purchase the hashing power large enough to mount that attack.
  • solveit 7y ago
    Yes. Also, an attack would be fairly obvious and miners invested in the future of the blockchain (i.e. everyone using ASICS, which is everyone that matters) would increase their hashrate to mount a defense, increasing the cost by some hard-to-predict but significant amount.
    • lonelappde 7y ago
      How can anyone increase their hash rate? They're dependent on getting supply from ASIC manufacturers. That takes time. Or are ASICs capital expense cheap and available and already over provisioned compared to operational costs, like dark fiber optics?
      • solveit 7y ago
        Kind of. ASICs aren't exactly super available, but the manufacturers are also players, so if the attack is severe enough to be an existential threat to Bitcoin, I expect Bitmain (largest ASIC manufacturer) will fire up their unsold inventory which amounted to more than a billion dollars worth as of last year. Separate from the manufacturers, relatively easy courses of action I can see are buying hashing power from marketplaces like nicehash, and temporarily concentrating their machines on BTC and not mining BCH. This can only get you so much though since BTC hashrate dwarfs BCH hashrate.