​​Here Are the Ways Governments Could Attack Bitcoin – and Non | Gimme The Coin

​​Here Are the Ways Governments Could Attack Bitcoin – and None of them Sound Hot

Experts are starting to muse about the possible strategies governments could use if they ever decided to wage war on Bitcoin (BTC) – and derail an asset whose rise in the past few months has been nothing short of meteoric.

PayPal’s crypto plunge last year (set to expand in 2021) and Tesla’s decision to purchase USD 1.5bn worth of bitcoin have arguably been watershed moments for the token – bringing it to mainstream conversations around the world. But some undoubtedly feel that the BTC movement has grown too big for its boots, and could plot its demise.

Should a government decide to side with this latter group, how could it go about attacking BTC?

Per a Quillette opinion piece, Alex Gladstein, a prominent BTC advocate and the chief strategy officer at the Human Rights Foundation, a non-profit that claims to support civil liberties in authoritarian societies, governments may have limited options when it comes to fighting BTC, as it appears strong on the protocol level.

However, governments are far from powerless, and could attempt to seize power through taking “control of a majority of the bitcoin hashrate” – a little stunt that would cost a government some USD 5bn in hardware purchases alone.

But Gladstein all but discounted this possibility, noting that it would not enable governments “to change the bitcoin consensus rules, or print more bitcoin or steal anyone’s holdings.”

Such an “exotic assault,” would also disrupt the “world’s few semiconductor manufacturers” – already flat out at work on other projects, requiring them to instead contribute “to this very speculative purpose,” he wrote.

However, BlockTower Capital founder Ari Paul has a different opinion.