How much money would it take to destroy Bitcoin?

[fightfear]

2014 account, still here.

I was there the night GHash.IO crossed 51%.
The IRC channel froze.
One guy typed: “It’s over.”
Another just posted a screenshot: red line kissing the ceiling.
No one spoke for 47 seconds.
The only reply was a single word: “fuck.”

I didn’t sleep.
I refreshed Blockchain.info every 30 seconds, heart in my throat, waiting for the line to drop.
When it finally did, I exhaled so hard I fogged my screen.

...

Fast forward.
Same dread, new skin.

Miners are ghosting Bitcoin for AI contracts.
Galaxy Digital just dropped $460M to turn a Texas farm into a GPU cathedral.
Halvings keep coming like clockwork.
Fees? Flatlined.
BSI sliding to 0.21% by 2032.
ESR stuck at 4.8%.
We’re building a fortress with a $10–40B moat around a septillion-dollar castle.

I thought I’d seen every “solution”:
* Tail emissions? Tax the future.
* Holder tax? Steal from HODLers.
* Merge-mining? Trust another chain.
* Fork? Civil war.

Then, one day at 3:17 AM; Half-dead on cold coffee; I tripped over something that made me sit up straight.
No emissions.
No tax.
No merge.
No fork.
Just a clean, live, already-running fix that’s been received by miners since block 885588 without touching the code.

I spent several nights trying to kill it.
Poked the economics.
Traced the code.
Ran the numbers backward in the dark.
It just… worked.

So I wrote it down.
Not to preach.
To throw it in the arena with the wolves who’ve sniffed out every scam since Mt. Gox.
read it here for free with no paywall or sign-up (TL;DR is available under the article but I really urge you to read the whole thing for the sake of ALL of your crypto investments ESPECIALLY if you're a miner):

https://medium.com/@marqs90/bitcoins-security-budget-dilemma-an-innovative-fix-emerging-from-the-shadows-e51309201f8d


Your move.
Tear it apart.
Or tell me I’m late to the party.

fightfear (Newbie by post count, OG by blood)

[philipma1957]

"Some Bitcoin investors mistakenly believe that an increasing hashrate alone guarantees greater security, but this overlooks a critical truth: the output of Proof-of-Work isn’t hashrate — it’s economic cost. What matters is not how many hashes are produced, but how expensive they are to produce. A growing hashrate means nothing if it’s powered by cheaper hardware or cheaper electricity. If BTC-denominated rewards drop, miners may still produce high hashrate, but with fewer incentives to stay honest. That opens the door to cheap attacks, especially if the cost of hardware or electricity falls. It’s not about how much hash you see — it’s about how costly it is to fake."


I bolded an error cheaper power alone is not enough and cheaper hash rate alone is not enough.

You need to have :
1) cheap power
2)cheap efficient gear
3)an abundance of power
4) adequate cooling lots of it.

By say cheap power or cheap gear

you paint a lessor scale of what is needed.

But you are spot on about the weakness and BTC price will only double so many times before the numbers stop working.

I estimate 2056 there will be issues. that you are talking about.

Note the quotes are for your article.

I could also pick apart the known 51% attacks.

 the ones on lesser sha 256 coins  do not count with BTC for reasons that are very obvious.

BTC has 1069 EH
BCH has  2.37 EH.   the gear is identical so the attack is easy to do.

If Chinese pools tried to attack large farms not in china can shift to usa farms or the other way around.

The attacks on ETC happened because they share the ETH  al-gore-rythm  and ETH had 100 to 1 ratio of gpus.

I do not worry much about 50% attacks at the moment> I do worry about miners stopping mining down the road and price of BTC does seem to be able to work for 20-30 years tops. time will tell.

Still reading your fix part.

I read the fix over and over and over . I will check  the natgmi.com link

[ABCbits]

4 * 2025 Snapshot (Current):

    Current State: As of October 2025, no single pool exceeds 30% (e.g., AntPool ~25%, Foundry ~20%). However, the top 3–4 pools (AntPool, Foundry, F2Pool, ViaBTC) often hold ~60–70% combined.
    Context: Total hashrate is ~700 EH/s, but miner revenue pressures (post-2024 halving, 3.125 BTC/block) and pivots to AI (e.g., Galaxy Digital’s Helios conversion) keep centralization risks alive.
    Impact: While no single pool currently exceeds 50%, the trend of miners exiting for AI could reduce hashrate growth, making 51% attacks more feasible, especially if a few pools collude.

AFAIK the top pools created by legally registered company. So if they ever decide to use hashrate to perform 51% attack, they face risk losing reputation, sued by miners for misusing hashrate or other risk.

Amid these concerns, an under-the-radar development is gaining traction: Digital Matter Theory (DMT), which introduces DMT-NAT (Non-Arbitrary Tokens) as a potential safeguard for Bitcoin’s security.
--snip--

I briefly read about it, but i doubt such token would be remain to be valuable in upcoming years since i don't unique or good use case that can't be done with Bitcoin itself.

[fightfear]

You need to have :
1) cheap power
2)cheap efficient gear
3)an abundance of power
4) adequate cooling lots of it.

Appreciate the thoughtful reply — and the sharp eye.
You're 100 % right: cheap power alone isn’t enough. You need the full stack:

cheap, abundant power
latest-gen gear (S21, S23, or better)
industrial-scale cooling
low-latency network

I oversimplified in the article but I've updated it accordingly now.

Your 2056 estimate tracks with the math. I ran BSI projections out to 2060 and at current fee growth, it’s 0.06 % by then. That’s $6 B/year defending a $100 T+ asset. Not sustainable. I worry we might see a problem much earlier though.

You’re also correct on the 51 % asymmetry: BTC  is in a different league to BCH, ETC, BTG etc
But the long-term risk isn’t a frontal 51 % attack today as much as the hashrate erosion and decentralization tomorrow.
That’s the real cliff.

If the U.S. government truly wants to rely on Bitcoin, devaluing national debt, replacing USD with BTC as global reserve then we cannot rule out such an attack. A senior Russian advisor to Putin recently warned exactly this: Trump’s plan is to back USD with Bitcoin via stablecoin treasuries. If that’s the strategy, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility for Russia, China, or others to attempt disruption. China still has a decent chunk of global hashrate and majority of ASIC production. With a bit of coordination and time, who knows. If they pulled it off, trust in Bitcoin would vanish overnight. BlackRock, Fidelity, nation-states would all reassess. We need them, whether we like it or not.

And I’m not entirely sure we could rule out a threat within the US either. If the political landscape shifts again with new administration, new priorities we get the same tools (regulation, seizure, or even quiet pressure on pools) which could be turned inward. Bitcoin’s strength is decentralization. Its vulnerability is whoever controls the marginal hashrate.

Either way, even without an attack, the future is not rosy unless we find a viable, non-consensus-changing solution. I’m puzzled how many OGs (including Bitcoin devs) brush this off with "if things get bad, someone will do something". Seriously? That’s the plan?

AFAIK the top pools created by legally registered company. So if they ever decide to use hashrate to perform 51% attack, they face risk losing reputation, sued by miners for misusing hashrate or other risk.

Fair point. Legally registered pools face lawsuits, reputational damage, and miner exodus if they go rogue. But, if a nation-state like China wants disruption, they don’t ask nicely. They pressure the pool via hardware supply, local ops, or regulatory threats. The pool doesn’t “decide” to attack; it complies or gets shut down. Reputation only matters if the state lets it survive.

I briefly read about it, but i doubt such token would be remain to be valuable in upcoming years since i don't unique or good use case that can't be done with Bitcoin itself.

It remains to be seen what happens with any token-based solution. It could go either way. Seeing AntPool, SpiderPool, and F2Pool backing it though is interesting as they aren't doing this out of altruism. They're doing it to attract users and secure their own futures. But if it works, it creates a powerful incentive loop: a more valuable token means more revenue for miners, which means a more secure hashrate, which in turn makes the network (and the token's underlying system) more valuable. It's a potential bootstrapping mechanism to solve the very economic problem we're discussing. We’ll see.

[philipma1957]

You need to have :
1) cheap power
2)cheap efficient gear
3)an abundance of power
4) adequate cooling lots of it.

Appreciate the thoughtful reply — and the sharp eye.
You're 100 % right: cheap power alone isn’t enough. You need the full stack:

cheap, abundant power
latest-gen gear (S21, S23, or better)
industrial-scale cooling
low-latency network

I oversimplified in the article but I've updated it accordingly now.

Your 2056 estimate tracks with the math. I ran BSI projections out to 2060 and at current fee growth, it’s 0.06 % by then. That’s $6 B/year defending a $100 T+ asset. Not sustainable. I worry we might see a problem much earlier though.

You’re also correct on the 51 % asymmetry: BTC  is in a different league to BCH, ETC, BTG etc
But the long-term risk isn’t a frontal 51 % attack today as much as the hashrate erosion and decentralization tomorrow.
That’s the real cliff.

If the U.S. government truly wants to rely on Bitcoin, devaluing national debt, replacing USD with BTC as global reserve then we cannot rule out such an attack. A senior Russian advisor to Putin recently warned exactly this: Trump’s plan is to back USD with Bitcoin via stablecoin treasuries. If that’s the strategy, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility for Russia, China, or others to attempt disruption. China still has a decent chunk of global hashrate and majority of ASIC production. With a bit of coordination and time, who knows. If they pulled it off, trust in Bitcoin would vanish overnight. BlackRock, Fidelity, nation-states would all reassess. We need them, whether we like it or not.

And I’m not entirely sure we could rule out a threat within the US either. If the political landscape shifts again with new administration, new priorities we get the same tools (regulation, seizure, or even quiet pressure on pools) which could be turned inward. Bitcoin’s strength is decentralization. Its vulnerability is whoever controls the marginal hashrate.

Either way, even without an attack, the future is not rosy unless we find a viable, non-consensus-changing solution. I’m puzzled how many OGs (including Bitcoin devs) brush this off with "if things get bad, someone will do something". Seriously? That’s the plan?

AFAIK the top pools created by legally registered company. So if they ever decide to use hashrate to perform 51% attack, they face risk losing reputation, sued by miners for misusing hashrate or other risk.

Fair point. Legally registered pools face lawsuits, reputational damage, and miner exodus if they go rogue. But, if a nation-state like China wants disruption, they don’t ask nicely. They pressure the pool via hardware supply, local ops, or regulatory threats. The pool doesn’t “decide” to attack; it complies or gets shut down. Reputation only matters if the state lets it survive.

I briefly read about it, but i doubt such token would be remain to be valuable in upcoming years since i don't unique or good use case that can't be done with Bitcoin itself.

It remains to be seen what happens with any token-based solution. It could go either way. Seeing AntPool, SpiderPool, and F2Pool backing it though is interesting as they aren't doing this out of altruism. They're doing it to attract users and secure their own futures. But if it works, it creates a powerful incentive loop: a more valuable token means more revenue for miners, which means a more secure hashrate, which in turn makes the network (and the token's underlying system) more valuable. It's a potential bootstrapping mechanism to solve the very economic problem we're discussing. We’ll see.

I have to look into f2pool. I use viabtc but an extra token may help

[ABCbits]

AFAIK the top pools created by legally registered company. So if they ever decide to use hashrate to perform 51% attack, they face risk losing reputation, sued by miners for misusing hashrate or other risk.

Fair point. Legally registered pools face lawsuits, reputational damage, and miner exodus if they go rogue. But, if a nation-state like China wants disruption, they don’t ask nicely. They pressure the pool via hardware supply, local ops, or regulatory threats. The pool doesn’t “decide” to attack; it complies or gets shut down. Reputation only matters if the state lets it survive.

Such scenario is definitely possible. I recall certain US politician/government worker suggest to make law that force pool to exclude TX. But IMO 51% attack is something they only can do once, before miner switch to different pool in order to stop the attack that negatively affect Bitcoin price.

[philipma1957]

AFAIK the top pools created by legally registered company. So if they ever decide to use hashrate to perform 51% attack, they face risk losing reputation, sued by miners for misusing hashrate or other risk.

Fair point. Legally registered pools face lawsuits, reputational damage, and miner exodus if they go rogue. But, if a nation-state like China wants disruption, they don’t ask nicely. They pressure the pool via hardware supply, local ops, or regulatory threats. The pool doesn’t “decide” to attack; it complies or gets shut down. Reputation only matters if the state lets it survive.

Such scenario is definitely possible. I recall certain US politician/government worker suggest to make law that force pool to exclude TX. But IMO 51% attack is something they only can do once, before miner switch to different pool in order to stop the attack that negatively affect Bitcoin price.

Well I am lucky I am 68 my wife is 69.

All the kids died via miscarriages.

So I do not worry about leaving the coin to anyone.

If I live to 90 it will be 2047 and I am pretty much sure we can scale until 2048-2056

Ie
 2028 225k  price
2032 450k price
2036 900k price
2040 1800k price
2044 3600k price
2048 7200k price

All of  the above would and or could be workable.

Mining will get more effective.

Ie liquid cooling and transfer of the heat via pipes allows for heating major cities.
More solar.
Possible fusion reactor.

But I still think more solutions are needed then above.

What would have been good was a block every 20 minutes

So the 1/2 rings would have been every 8 years.

Thus
2012 Would have been in 2016 25 coins
2016 would have been in 2024  12.5 coins
2020 would have been in 2032.   6.25 coins
2024 would have been in 2040.    3.125 coins
2028 would have been in 2048.    1.5625 coins
2032 would have been in 2056.     0.78125 coins
2036 would have been in 2064.     0.390625 coins
2040 would have been in  2072.   0.1953125 coins

Pushing the issue far out into the future, but no did not happen.

[fightfear]

...But IMO 51% attack is something they only can do once, before miner switch to different pool in order to stop the attack that negatively affect Bitcoin price.

This is true, but we only need it to happen once to destroy the foundational trust in the system. Since Bitcoin's value is built on that very trust, this remains a critical, existential issue.

If I live to 90 it will be 2047 and I am pretty much sure we can scale until 2048-2056

Firstly, I'm genuinely sorry to hear about your kids.

Secondly, you're right. If everything goes perfectly according to plan, it's not impossible for the price to double every halving until 2048. I admire your relaxed outlook, and I envy it, though not all of us have the 'luxury' of not being worried about the timeline.

However, I'm concerned that even if we set aside the 51% attack risk, we still face other existential threats, like miners' pivot to AI. I truly hope for all our sakes that nothing goes wrong and we're all rewarded for our foresight, patience, and wisdom. That said, I'll sleep much better if we have a working security solution in place, just in case.

My deeper fear is that this is a problem for now, not a distant future. As soon as influential investors and institutions realize these systemic risks and the current lack of a viable solution, trust could evaporate, and capital could flee. This could happen at any moment. It only takes one viral post to be seen by the right people.

Here's an example from today (and I see similar posts daily):

https://x.com/coinbureau/status/1988495046979842086?s=20

This channel for example has over 1M subscribers and is well-respected in the crypto space.

Ie liquid cooling and transfer of the heat via pipes allows for heating major cities. More solar. Possible fusion reactor.

While these innovations will undoubtedly make mining cheaper and more efficient, they will also make attacking the network cheaper. This brings us back to square one: without appropriate economic safeguards, increased efficiency alone doesn't solve the security problem; it just changes the cost basis for everyone, including bad actors.

This is why I included the BSI metric in my article. Think of it this way:

The US has a GDP of ~$29T and protects it with a ~$1T security budget (military, etc.), representing about 3.4% of GDP.

Bitcoin has a market cap of ~$2T and is protected by a ~$10B security budget (miner revenue), representing about 0.5% of its market cap.

Based on your own price projections, that security budget would fall to 0.025% by 2028 and 0.0125% by 2032 and so on. I accept it's not a direct comparison and I'm making assumptions (like the price doubling), but it clearly illustrates the escalating security deficit we're facing.

But I still think more solutions are needed then above.

What would have been good was a block every 20 minutes

So the 1/2 rings would have been every 8 years.

That's a really interesting thought experiment about slowing down the halving cycle. You've correctly identified the core problem: the security budget needs to last.

The challenge is that the 10-minute block time is deeply baked into Bitcoin's security and consensus model. Moving to 20 minutes would significantly increase the risk of chain reorganizations and make the network less secure and much slower to confirm transactions, without actually increasing the block size or transaction capacity.

It would delay the security cliff, but it wouldn't solve it. The ultimate solution still has to be the same: building an ecosystem where on-chain settlement is so valuable that fees can fully support the miners. Your idea highlights just how important it is that we find a solution for that. This is precisely why I'm interested in developments like the NAT token. It's designed specifically to create that valuable on-chain settlement layer, providing a secondary subsidy to miners by tokenizing Bitcoin's own block data without changing a thing for Bitcoin.

[fightfear]

Another one just bit the dust.
Bitfarms (one of the big public miners) just reported a $46 million Q3 loss and announced they will completely wind down Bitcoin mining by 2027 and flip all their facilities to AI/HPC because it’s simply more profitable.
Source: their own November 2025 earnings call.

This is not a hypothetical 2048 problem anymore.
This is happening right now, in real time, while the subsidy is still 3.125 BTC and hashrate is at all-time highs.
OGs can keep saying “fees will fix it” or “price will double forever” all they want — the market is voting with its rigs.
That’s exactly why we need a second, perpetual subsidy that actually lands in every miner’s coinbase, automatically, without a fork, without inflation, without merge-mining.
DMT-NAT is already doing that today:

live since block 885588
~40 % of global hashrate (AntPool, SpiderPool, F2Pool) already distributing it
no extra energy, no extra hardware, no consensus change
at a $500 M market cap it rivals transaction fees
at a few billion it replaces the subsidy entirely

Miners get paid more → stay on Bitcoin → less centralisation risk → network stays strong.
Token holders who believe in the thesis get rewarded along the way.
Win–win.

Denial doesn’t stop rigs from going offline.

[treesintheforestooh]

I know other mining companies are "pivoting," as well. Perhaps they're currently not interested in completely moving away from Bitcoin at this instant, but the current trends are indeed worrying.

Watching miners, especially someone as big as Bitfarms, sailing away hurts and makes me wonder what's going to happen in terms of decentralization.

At the end of the day, we have something like a "Bitcoin Miner Paradox." Miners are looking to optimize and consume less energy - all the while increasing hashpower. Simultaneously, the network is suppose to, overall, consume more energy since that is the direct relationship with security.

Business 101 ("optimizing" business), yes... but revenues don't drop 50% every 4 years - hopefully. <smh>  

Either Bitcoin continuously doubles or Bitcoin gets centralized.

... Unless we find a way to address this head on. Unless we innovate and not hide heads in holes. Pretending this isn't an issue is extremely problematic. If Bitcoin manages to double in value continuously, Bitcoin's security budget does not grow with the value of the network. Which means that the benefit of attack grows compared to the Cost of Attack.

Referring to Lowery's Softwar (along w/ basic math & Game Theory) the Cost of Attack is foundational to actual and realized security for the network.

Why is this (seemingly) being ignored? Hanlon's Razor comes to mind, I suppose, but considering what's at stake - there are doubts.      

I won't beat around the bush nor attempt to be deceptive here. I've been in Bitcoin longer than my post history here (~2017) may indicate and what is being discussed and shared here with respect to this "Digital Matter Theory" is very, very, very, very intriguing and gives me the same "tingles" Bitcoin itself did all those years ago.

In my opinion, we have less time than we may really, really want to think / believe / realize.

It's time to address this head-on.  

..

(edit: misspelling correction)

[fightfear]

I’m noticing increasing awareness of the fee-market sustainability issue across social channels. This resource gives a solid overview of the problem: https://budget.day/. The author also appears to have since acknowledged the viability of the DMT-NAT approach, as outlined here: https://x.com/nikzh/status/1994480140584456640


Importantly, ViaBTC has now implemented DMT-NAT, bringing aggregate support to well over 60% of global hashrate, including 4 of the 5 largest mining pools. That’s a meaningful threshold for network-wide coordination without protocol changes.

There’s also growing institutional alignment: several investor groups are establishing holding/treasury vehicles designed to stabilise blockspace demand and support DMT-NAT (e.g.,

• https://globalcryptoventures.io/

• https://www.onebitcoin.foundation/

Meanwhile, adoption incentives are emerging on the miner side, particularly in China — see @rometheminer’s recent work on promoting companion-mining and DMA-NAT-aligned fee structures (https://x.com/rometheminer)

If this trajectory continues and coordination persists at the current pace, DMT-NAT has a credible path to fully mitigating the long-term blockspace revenue shortfall.

[treesintheforestooh]

I saw on social feeds that ViaBTC used the Tap Protocol to move a gigantic chunk of DMT-NAT again for one reason or another. There was a user who mentioned speaking to ViaBTC at one of the recent mining conferences, so this may be related to that, along with the other related machinations among their competitors/in the space.

SpiderPool publicly speaking about the issue and integrating this second subsidy within their user dashboard has started a race among miners is my guess.  

There was a post from a few months ago in the main Discussion section on the security budget topic that people here may find interesting and worth the read.

Intriguing and important topic from my perspective. Bitcoin is far too valuable in the now and for the future to pretend and hope nothing is wrong and nothing will ever be wrong.