Re:ShadowBrokers: The NSA Compromised the SWIFT Network
by andirk on Sunday April 16, 2017 @04:19PM
(#14127311)
The difficulty is according to the amount of miners, right? So it's supposed to not matter if China shuts down their pools. And local police? Complete speculation, my friend.
Re:ShadowBrokers: The NSA Compromised the SWIFT Network
by foepys on Monday April 17, 2017 @02:43AM
(#14129575)
You obviously don't know enough about Bitcoin to argue the way you did.
If there is X hashing power and you need X/2 to control the network, then reducing X by 50% means that you only need X*0,5/2 to control the network. The difficulty is only adapted every 2010 blocks which equals around 2 weeks but if you suddenly cut the hashing power in half, this will take up to around 4 weeks and slow the network down immensely.
The anarcho-capitalists who think that Bitcoin exists outside of government control and will be able to replace national currencies are wrong. China can at any point order the top miners to shut down their pools. Bitcoin is simply not relevant enough to be attacked by more than the local police that is underfunded for those endeavors anyways.
Always remember this old XKCD: https://xkcd.com/538/