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Comment by smitop | Hacker News Reader

> If 51% militantly attack the treasury and fed it won't exist either.

It is significantly harder to convince 51% of the population of something than to convince >51% of Bitcoin hashpower: the top 4 mining pools control 51% of the hashpower, so you'd really only need to convince a handful of people to execute a 51% attack.

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If 51% of the militants are allied with four factions (a la Libyan civil war) then you also only need to convince a 'handful' of people. But I think this also ignores that the factions and mining pools themselves are made of people with their own interest, including that of maintaining the value of their bitcoin by not sabotaging the entire system.

It's genuinely absurd to try to map the Libyan civil war onto crypto currency. There was nearly a "51% attack" on Bitcoin, though it's not accurate to call it an attack (and it was far more than 51% of the hash power.) The SegWit2x upgrade almost went through despite upsetting many Bitcoin enthusiasts, but was ultimately squashed by the loose coalition of miners that proposed it when faced with fierce opposition. They could've forced the unpopular change, and only chose not to.

But I wasn't mapping the Libyan civil war onto crypto. I was mapping it onto a factional attack on the systems maintaining a government fiat currency. My whole point is a fiat systems are weak to 51% attack too. I didn't say the factions that destroyed Libyan government could or wanted to destroy bitcoin or any other crypto.

I think we're both acknowledging reality of 51% attack.

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