Cost of a 51% attack for different cryptocurrencies?
There is <i>absolutely no way</i> to 51% attack a major coin like Bitcoin for as little as $700k an hour. They are extrapolating from Nicehash&#x27;s mining rental prices, but Nicehash doesn&#x27;t have anything like the capacity you&#x27;d need.<p>You can see here[1] that nicehash has about 500 PH&#x2F;s (500,000 TH&#x2F;s) available for rent. However, Bitcoin&#x27;s total hash rate right now is 100,000,000 TH&#x2F;s[2]. This means that if you rented out the entire nicehash market, you&#x27;d have 0.5% of the hash rate you need.<p>Could you get the other 99.5% by buying lots of mining hardware? Theoretically yes, but realistically no. Bitmain is a major supplier of this kind of hardware, so let&#x27;s use their prices as a reference. They&#x27;re currently promoting a 67 TH&#x2F;s unit for $1585 [3]. You would need more than 1.4 million of these units, at a cost of over <i>$2.2 billion dollars.</i> Not that any supplier can fill an order like that quickly.<p>And we haven&#x27;t even gotten to the power and operations costs. You&#x27;d need dozens of huge data centers to run all this hardware, each one consuming astronomical amounts of electricity. You&#x27;d probably pick your data center locations based on availability of cheap power and labor, and you&#x27;d become a major commercial presence in each of those towns. The local papers would have photos of you shaking hands with the mayor as your data centers open up. Everyone would know what you&#x27;re doing, including the FBI.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nicehash.com&#x2F;my&#x2F;marketplace&#x2F;SHA256" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nicehash.com&#x2F;my&#x2F;marketplace&#x2F;SHA256</a>
[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.blockchain.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;charts&#x2F;hash-rate" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.blockchain.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;charts&#x2F;hash-rate</a>
[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;shop.bitmain.com&#x2F;product&#x2F;detail?pid=00020200117151322700cA9h5cat0694" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;shop.bitmain.com&#x2F;product&#x2F;detail?pid=0002020011715132...</a>