Imagine a situation where the US adopts Bitcoin as its monetary standard. Why couldn’t a hostile nation build their own ASICs and launch a 51% attack to undermine the cryptocurrency, effectively rendering it worthless? How much would such an attack cost? While they might not profit from a double spend, couldn’t they potentially devastate the US in this scenario? This is the last concern holding me back from fully embracing Bitcoin.
A 51% attack wouldn’t work well in this scenario because the attackers need to control 51% of the network’s computing power and create a competing blockchain that matches the main one precisely. Additionally, they must out-hash the main network, which requires immense computing resources and is very costly.
Miners aren’t the only ones who keep the network safe. People who use bitcoin should all set up their own node on their laptop or computer… Even more so if it’s on all day and night.
Nodes check that network activities are valid. Yesterday, between 18,000 and 19,000 nodes from around the world and satellites also checked.