Threat probability? 1 state controls >70% of miners. Other states go to war with them This is almost certainly a silly question, but there are a lot of new bitcoin owners like me and a specific threat was made today which sounds credible to those of us who lack deep knowledge of bitcoin.
The specific threat is this one:
1: China controls 70% of the miners. SOURCE
2: They are using Hydroelectric and Nuclear Power reactors to do this. SOURCE
3: The United States (and allies) are seeking to destroy bitcoin in a war with China.
4: Bitcoin will go to 0 and US regulated coins will survive. SOURCE
So it's kind of 2 threats rolled into 1 and I'm trying to come up with a &quot;probability of threat number&quot; to determine if I should even devote time to considering this.
My guess is that the probability is less than 1% but it's just a guess and I have a high amount of uncertainty due to my current depth of knowledge.
Again, please forgive the silliness of the question, but any assistance to help improve my confidence that the threat is not to be taken seriously would be appreciated.
China has dominated mining due to cheap power and hardware expertise. However, other than mining the US has been much friendlier to Bitcoin companies, startups, investors, open source developers etc than China. In addition, there are recent US based mining initiatives to attempt to decentralize mining and reduce Chinese dominance. A decentralized and censorship resistant protocol does not gel particularly well with China's surveillance and Great Firewall philosophy to digital communications and its renminbi currency controls.
With regards to probabilities, obviously no one can quote probabilities because it is purely speculative. It seems to me though that the probability of the US government banning Bitcoin or in some way attempting to destroy it via multi m/billion dollar attacks is extremely small (especially for the suggested motivation of hurting China). China holds over a trillion dollars of US government debt denominated in dollars which massively dwarfs any Bitcoin it may hold. Fiat currency wars and monetary policy are far more impactful than any attempt to devalue a country's Bitcoin holdings. The majority of attacks on the network would only achieve short term disruption at best and would be very costly when compared to using that investment to generate Bitcoin block rewards.
The US regulates the fiat to Bitcoin onramps and may seek to impose more burdensome regulation. However, it has funded and put in place a regulatory regime that has allowed internet companies to thrive over the past two decades and there is little reason for it to not to do the same for Bitcoin.