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Why Chinese Miners Won’t Perform a 51% Attack on Bitcoin

China accounts for more than half of the world’s Bitcoin mining capacity, but Jameson Lopp, co-founder and CTO of Casa, has repressed fears that Chinese miners pose a threat to Bitcoin in a post blog held on August 9.

Although many people have raised concerns about the large concentration of hashing power found in China, Loop pointed out that even In the event of a 51% attack on Bitcoin, the attackers would be limited in what they could actually do.

Explained that attackers cannot steal people’s Bitcoin arbitrarily or change consensus rules. They cannot roll back valid transactions. The only thing they can do is spend double their own Bitcoin.

The best way for a 51% attacker to get the most out of it is by withdrawing from cryptocurrency exchanges with “censorship-resistant cryptocurrencies or stablecoins.” However, this presents big problems in terms of withdrawal limits and know-your-customer requirements between exchanges. It also doesn’t make much economic sense for attackers to ditch a large chunk of Bitcoin at once:

“The value of the Bitcoin they still have after the attack will likely have decreased substantially, so a large successful attack could result in a shot in the foot. You better not make a mistake while accessing the exchange you are targeting. For example, a hacker returned $ 25 million in stolen funds after filtering your IP address“.

Bitcoiners al rescate

Loop believes that it would be nearly impossible for a nation state to have full control of mining facilities and for Bitcoin stakeholders not to take immediate emergency action against such an act.

Even if the attack goes from targeting individual mining facilities to an easier mining attack, 70% of the hash power in China is coordinated through less than 10 mining pools, changing mining pools is incredibly easy for miners. It is also difficult to achieve it discreetly, since there are many independent companies that they issue alerts on social media against malicious actors.

“It is difficult to imagine a scenario in which a state actor is able to quickly and unobtrusively seize enough hashing power to carry out a continuous attack lasting more than a few hours.”

Según Lopp, The reason hash power has been concentrated in China since 2015 is due to the fact that most of the mining chips are produced in Asia. The most important is that China also has “an abundance of cheap energy”, it has the political and economic stability to facilitate mining infrastructure.

Loop concluded by pointing out thatAny large-scale mining attack will be “limited in its effectiveness.” How reported Cointelegraph anteriormente, In the long run, competition in the production of semiconductors and cheaper power sources will continue to increase globally and China’s mining dominance will not last.

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