I think you misunderstand the idea of a blockchain. a 51% attack as I understand it could only “cheat” the system by creating a double spend on that block and going forwards. It cannot do anything to the historic blocks that have already been verified. And without your keys to sign the bitcoin transaction they could not take anything from you.
Additionally if they did somehow try to introduce transactions from your address without the correct encryption this would be picked up by anyone running a node
This is the same China which has on and off bitcoin mining bans all the time. A great deal of the mining done in China is done by mining operations outside, that are just renting the units and equipment. It is still absolutely undesirable (as are many practices in China). However the rapid movement of mining outside of china and towards the states, such as Texas and other places where they have reliable hydro and geothermal is an excellent thing.
A single bitcoin transaction consumes about as much energy as a million traditional credit card transactions (that is E2E from Customer account to customer account).
Do you have a source for this Matildaesque assertion, and does this comparison include the costs of banking establishments, regulators, infrastructure and fraud? If not, such selective “comparisons” are quite risible.
In terms of security, it would be more logical to compare on-blockchain transactions with bank/wire transfers and to compare credit card payments with Layer 2 (Lightning, etc.) off-chain payments. Hands-up anyone who has never been a victim of card fraud?
Considering that the gas fee for a single BTC blockchain transaction is a fraction of the real cost of a corresponding bank transfer (source) (though some banks hide transaction fees for political or commercial reasons), it stretches credulity that the total energy cost is a million times more.
US$ is linked to US production, just as Zim$ is linked to Zimbabwe production. Look what happened to it.
UK£ has fallen against US$ in my lifetime.
Bitcoin is linked to nothing except trust in it.
Gold has a reputation history.
Thinks: could I sell my Akkadian bitcoins on eBay? They have Sargon’s URL
Off_Field wrote:
I think you misunderstand the idea of a blockchain. a 51% attack as I understand it could only “cheat” the system by creating a double spend on that block and going forwards. It cannot do anything to the historic blocks that have already been verified. And without your keys to sign the bitcoin transaction they could not take anything from you.
That is partly a misunderstanding. What is absolutely right is that historic data can not be changed. So if you own one etc now it is fact that now and forever everyone can see that you owned this bitcoin at this specific point in time. (With “you” meaning a wallet dress you own).
What is not true, that it takes anything from you to take this one bitcoin away from you. The whole validation process of transactions is purely consensus based: If 50+% of the miners agree to validate a transaction that transfers your btc from your wallet to a different wallet, they can do so and the new truth in the blockchain is that “your” former bitcoin now belongs to somebody else. Again: This transaction is fully transparent and it can “forever” be seen at which point in time your bitcoin was taken away from your wallet. But you can’t do anything against it in the blockchain.
The only thing you could do is to talk to the other 50-% miners and convince them that the majority is not sticking to the rules. Then those 50-% of miners could agree to you and start a completely new virtual currency “honest coin” that starts with the distribution of coins that was documented at the time where the fraudulent transaction was executed. But that is setting up a new currency – and the same can happen there again…
So technically they can not “steal” your bitcoin, but they can just validate an official transaction that transfers it to somebody else – and the truth is what the majority validates.
Again, the only protection against this is the conscious waste of energy! As a miner you have wasted so much energy to earn the right to validate a transaction that a) you might not risk to validate a false trx at the risk that more than 50% of the others do not validate it and b) you are generally not interested in destabilizing the system because you own a (virtual) fortune in bitcoins yourself which could easily loose its value.
Both reasons, however, do not really apply to states like China: They can insure that the majority of miners follow their way and the virtual value they would loose is not that high…
Jacko wrote:
Considering that the gas fee for a single BTC blockchain transaction is a fraction of the real cost of a corresponding bank transfer (source) (though some banks hide transaction fees for political or commercial reasons), it stretches credulity that the total energy cost is a million times more.
Not really if you consider the current reimbursement mechanism for btc transactions: Transactions (to be more precisely the right to validate a transaction) and new bitcoins are always mined together. Therefore the miner not only receives the gas fee but also a certain amount of new btc – it’s like if a bank would get a newly printed 10 dollar bill for each wire transfer in addition to the transaction fee from the customer.
If you compare just the gas fee with the wire transfer cost, then the wire transfer cost is 0 (because in most countries wire transfers are included in the monthly account fee and therefore the “gas fee” for wire transfers is actually 0).
Jacko wrote:
Hands-up anyone who has never been a victim of card fraud?
Waving hands! Obviously I have been target of attempted credit card fraud, but it has never cost my money in the end. So I have never been a victim.
And that is the big difference to layer 2 off chain payments: They are indeed like credit card transfers – but done by a completely unregulated credit card company with a postbox address in Afghanistan based on a credit card that has 3 spelling errors in your name and that you can only load with cash that you hand over to somebody on the backside of you local train station 10pm in the evening…
Jacko wrote:
Do you have a source for this Matildaesque assertion, and does this comparison include the costs of banking establishments, regulators, infrastructure and fraud? If not, such selective “comparisons” are quite risible.
First google hit for a source: here
Many more papers written on this topic already.
And no, it does not include the cost of outlets, regulators, infrastructure, etc. as does the footprint of btc not include the cost of internet infrastructure, hubs, Telkos, regulators, computer/mobile device manufacturers.
You can (try to) invalidate any carbon footprint calculation/comparison by stating: “Yes, but a plane can not take off without ATC giving the clearance and therefore without knowing if the controller had bacon and eggs or porridge for breakfast you can not exactly say how much CO2 this clearance really emitted…”,
Malibuflyer wrote:
What is not true, that it takes anything from you to take this one bitcoin away from you.
How do you think they make the transfer without my private key? It would fail the hashcheck.
Don’t forget that the distribution of nodes is very much not concentrated in China.
Off_Field wrote:
How do you think they make the transfer without my private key? It would fail the hashcheck.
The Hashcheck is a node based thing. Therefore fraudulent nodes do not need to do the hashcheck. All they need is the hash from the TRX that put the 1 btc in your wallet. And this is public in the chain.
It is exactly the point of a 51% attack that more than half of the nodes do not check if the trx is actually authorized by the current owner but just put it as a valid trx in the chain.
What makes today’s bitcoin investors more secure than earlier tulip investors?
as does the footprint of btc not include the cost of internet infrastructure, hubs, Telkos, regulators, computer/mobile device manufacturers.
But that internet infrastructure exists already and is used by the centralised/fiat finance industry and, more importantly, by friends and fellow pilots to discuss Bitcion on EuroGA. 
Incidentally, another fallacy is that all energy used for Crypto mining is “wasted”. On the contrary, my CAD/simulation PC’s graphics card runs almost 24/7 at 0.4 Mh/J and provides background heating (needed in this part of Jockland about 10 months a year). In effect, this dual-purpose PC/space heater earns about 200,000 sats a month while substituting about 100 Watts of hydro and wind power for kerosene which our boiler would otherwise burn.
What makes today’s bitcoin investors more secure than earlier tulip investors?
That’s a very good question. I suppose one could quote Satoshi Nakamoto: “As a thought experiment, imagine there was a base metal as scarce as gold .. and one special, magical property: can be transported over a communications channel".
Some would also say that tokens like BTC, ETH, ADA etc. are effectively unregulated shares in blockchain technology and its myriad unexplored potential uses.
And yes, it’s a bubble. Just like tulips and LastMinute.com – and just like Apple, Google, Cisco and Amazon. Some bubbles burst, and some keep growing. A cautious investor might only put 5% of net worth into such risky ventures.
