4 ms·

It isn't one business though, it is/was ~40% of the hashrate, spread across the entire country, run by who knows how many operations. We're talking about tens o

It isn't one business though, it is/was ~40% of the hashrate, spread across the entire country, run by who knows how many operations. We're talking about tens of thousands of computers and hundreds of megawatts of power. It is one thing to take it over and shut it down, but a whole another thing to keep it running. It isn't like the people running it will just suddenly want to work for a new (hostile) boss. Like I said before, this stuff isn't trivial to run. You don't just plug a box in and call it good.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> isn't like the people running it will just suddenly want to work for a new (hostile) boss Have you ever done business in China? Everyone already works for that boss. The boss may not be as present yet, but they’re there, and refusing to follow a Party member’s orders is a criminal offense.
- latchkey 4y ago
  Indirectly, yes. One of my large mining operations was based in Vietnam and we used equipment sourced directly from China due to our partnership with a very large crypto company there, with a two letter domain name. You're taking one talking point out of the conversation and then trying to apply that as a whole. The larger picture here is that what you are replying to isn't the point of what I'm talking about, but it sure makes you sound like you know what you're talking about though. The fact is that the govt would likely never take over every single mining operation, when the lowest barrier is to simply ban it. That's exactly what happened. They don't need Bitcoin, when they have their own infinite money printer. Even if they didn't ban it, and still took it all over, they wouldn't have enough hashrate to control the network (~40 < ~51). If they somehow invested even more funds into this massive operation to control more hashrate, what could they do? At most, reorg a few blocks and effectively destroy bitcoin. It would be a very expensive suicide, for what purpose?
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > the govt would likely never take over every single mining operation, when the lowest barrier is to simply ban it. That's exactly what happened. Totally agree. I was contesting the narrow point of the government not being able to seize those operations. They could have. But they aren’t idiots, those rigs are strategically worthless because Bitcoin is strategically worthless.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago

> isn't like the people running it will just suddenly want to work for a new (hostile) boss Have you ever done business in China? Everyone already works for that boss. The boss may not be as present yet, but they’re there, and refusing to follow a Party member’s orders is a criminal offense.

latchkey 4y ago
Indirectly, yes. One of my large mining operations was based in Vietnam and we used equipment sourced directly from China due to our partnership with a very large crypto company there, with a two letter domain name. You're taking one talking point out of the conversation and then trying to apply that as a whole. The larger picture here is that what you are replying to isn't the point of what I'm talking about, but it sure makes you sound like you know what you're talking about though. The fact is that the govt would likely never take over every single mining operation, when the lowest barrier is to simply ban it. That's exactly what happened. They don't need Bitcoin, when they have their own infinite money printer. Even if they didn't ban it, and still took it all over, they wouldn't have enough hashrate to control the network (~40 < ~51). If they somehow invested even more funds into this massive operation to control more hashrate, what could they do? At most, reorg a few blocks and effectively destroy bitcoin. It would be a very expensive suicide, for what purpose?
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > the govt would likely never take over every single mining operation, when the lowest barrier is to simply ban it. That's exactly what happened. Totally agree. I was contesting the narrow point of the government not being able to seize those operations. They could have. But they aren’t idiots, those rigs are strategically worthless because Bitcoin is strategically worthless.