Comment by __MatrixMan__
4 days ago
I dislike bitcoin, but you gotta admit that that's a rather clever aspect of it: Anybody with the power to destroy it is better off participating in it instead.
We'll need to find our way out of that logic eventually. Scarcity in general and proof of work in particular are terrible bases for an economy. But it is a respectable foe.
it is a prisoner dilemma where the defector controls when the final round is. If you know of a flaw you can win more long term by not exploiting it - but if someone else exploits it bitcoin becomes worthless. Thus if you know of a flaw there is pressure to exploit it first before someone else gets the benifits of defecting and ends the game
It depends on the flaw, for most of the attack surface that bitcoin has, your "flaw" is just an unfair advantage against the other miners, which you'll likely keep secret and keep on mining. That's not exactly a "bitcoin becomes worthless" scenario, it's not really that different from a halving, which are block-height-scheduled events built into the protocol.