What is the incentive for a 51% attack (on Bitcoin specifically)
Wouldn't it take a large number of resources and coordinated effort to do this? And then the result of a successful attack means that the value essentially drops to zero ... so why invest the effort?
Seems like the only entity to have this incentive would be central banks / fiat regimes.
Given that Bitcoin has become quite liquid, there might also be ways to short it. But yes, governments doing it for political reasons would seem like the most obvious incentive.
> What is the incentive for a 51% attack (on Bitcoin specifically)
Besides trying to destroy bitcoin, couldn't such an attack be used to simply drive up transaction fees for anyone who wanted to use it? For instance, if they refuse to process transactions with a fee below a threshold, they'd leave money on the table in the sort term, but eventually the higher fee requirement would have to be discovered and transactions reissued to pay it.
Wouldn't it take a large number of resources and coordinated effort to do this? And then the result of a successful attack means that the value essentially drops to zero ... so why invest the effort?
Seems like the only entity to have this incentive would be central banks / fiat regimes.