How To Stop A 51% Attack Instantly (Bitcoin)

1 year ago
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In this video, I discuss various ways that a 51% attack on Bitcoin could be stopped by Bitcoin Core devs, full nodes, and ASIC manufacturers.

51% attacks are not as dangerous as many people believe. They CANNOT be used to rewrite the whole Bitcoin blockchain, print fake Bitcoin, increase the Bitcoin max supply of 21 million, steal your Bitcoin, or change any of the consensus rules.

They CANNOT be used to make a lot of money from double spends either, so it is unlikely that a profit-minded attacker would ever use it.

All that 51% attacks can do is to annoy people by making Bitcoin transactions take longer, censoring certain transactions, or temporarily stopping all Bitcoin transactions by mining a series of empty blocks.

To do a 51% attack, a government would need to buy, build, or steal a lot of Bitcoin mining rigs (ASICs), which is basically impossible to do without the world noticing.

So what happens when Bitcoiners learn that a 51% attack by the US government is on the horizon or has already started?

Bitcoin Core devs create one line of code that blacklists miners with US-based IP addresses and whitelists miners with overseas IP addresses. These devs cannot force full nodes to run this software, but economically incentivized Bitcoiners running nodes will certainly run it.

Mempools would also back up, leading to much higher transaction fees, that would incentivize more economically minded Bitcoin miners to plug in, thus reducing the attacker's % control of the hash rate.

Bitcoin has a very strong social layer (smart, wealthy) that will do everything in its power to defend Bitcoin. Nobody is just going to sit on the sidelines and watch Bitcoin die.

Once the 51% attack was over and the world saw the Bitcoin network still operating as usual--

There would be a mad rush to get some of this special money that even a nation-state attacker like the US government was unable to stop.

Not investment advice! Consult a financial advisor.

Watch this video first:
Why A Government 51% Attack Won't Work:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYhNNSLWX4g&ab_channel=TraderUniversity

Map of Bitcoin nodes:
https://bitnodes.io/

I am not being paid or otherwise compensated by any company or cryptocurrency project that I mention in my videos.

My opinion is not for sale. Please do not contact me with any affiliate or advertising deals.

#bitcoin
#bitcoinmining

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