Comment by bluGill
4 days ago
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.