&gt;The whole consensus network of Bitcoin is <i>based around burning so much energy&#x2F;space&#x2F;infrastructure</i> on hashing that a single actor wouldn&#x27;t be able to invest a bunch of money and take a controlling majority.<p>If you have the time and you don&#x27;t mind, could you elaborate on that? It just doesn&#x27;t sound right to me. What is the mechanism that discourages big investments? As far as I can tell, there seem to be some economies of scale, that&#x27;s why there are mining farms.<p>From the bitcoin wiki &quot;Attacker has a lot of computing power&quot;:<p>&quot;Since this attack doesn&#x27;t permit all that much power over the network, it is expected that no one will attempt it. A profit-seeking person will always gain more by just following the rules, and even someone trying to destroy the system will probably find other attacks more attractive. However, if this attack is successfully executed, it will be difficult or impossible to &quot;untangle&quot; the mess created -- any changes the attacker makes might become permanent.&quot;<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.bitcoin.it&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Weaknesses#Attacker_has_a_lot_of_computing_power" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.bitcoin.it&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Weaknesses#Attacker_has_a_lot_of_...</a>