>Also - there is easily $7B of “stranded” energy in flare gas and hydro “rotating reserve” available to secure Bitcoin and similar systems. Besides, the limitin

>Also - there is easily $7B of “stranded” energy in flare gas and hydro “rotating reserve” available to secure Bitcoin and similar systems. Besides, the limiting factor for a successful 51% attack isn’t the energy — it’s the capacity to actually create the hash capacity to execute the attack. Not even the NSA could do that, let alone some non-state attacker. The cost of securing bitcoin is not just in electricity, it is also in the depreciation cost of ASIC hardware. I guess it would be easy for the NSA to pull off the 51% attack if they are able to backdoor the handful of ASIC manufacturers.