Bitcoin’s $8B Attack Price Tag: Security Myth or Looming Threat?

Could a single deep-pocketed player really hijack Bitcoin for the price of a mid-tier tech startup? The math checks out—but the reality isn’t so simple.

The 51% Attack Blueprint

Rent enough mining power to outgun the network, rewrite transaction history, and double-spend at will. On paper, $8 billion gets you there—assuming you can secretly acquire hardware without spooking the market.

Why Wall Street Won’t Bite

The economics are laughably bad. Even if successful, the attack would crater Bitcoin’s value—turning that $8B ’investment’ into a masterclass in financial self-immolation. But hey, since when has irrational capital stopped hedge funds before?

Bitcoin’s security isn’t perfect, but its real vulnerability isn’t math—it’s human greed. And that, unfortunately, remains priceless.

Ethereum vs. Bitcoin Debate Heats Up

Hummer’s remarks came in response to a widely circulated post by crypto analyst Zayn Rynes, known online as ChainLinkGod. Rynes asserted that “Ethereum is fighting a war on three fronts and not really winning any of them currently,” including its store-of-value (SoV) competition with Bitcoin. Rynes argued that “ETH is not a better SoV commodity money than BTC (fight me),” and questioned Ethereum’s scalability against alt Layer 1s and data availability solutions like Celestia.

While Rynes maintained that “ETH has the best bet to overcome these headwinds,” he was skeptical about the long-term value of LAYER 1 tokens in general, stating, “The entire L1 coin category is massively overvalued.” He added, “BTC continues to dominate as the primary SoV commodity money reverse asset.” Further, Rynes predicted that app chains and stablecoins would eat into the value captured by base-layer tokens.

Hummer fired back, focusing his critique on Bitcoin’s security model under its Proof-of-Work mechanism. “Respectfully, BTC is completely screwed because of its security budget,” he wrote. Hummer added, “It WOULD only cost $8B to 51% attack BTC today. When this gets down to $2B… a 51% attack is virtually certain to happen.”

1. Respectfully, BTC is completely screwed because of its security budget. It would only cost $8B to 51% attack BTC today. When this gets down to $2B (AKA, BTC’s security market cap becomes 0.1% of its asset market cap), a 51% attack is virtually certain to happen. This will…

Is $8B Sufficient to Attack 51% Bitcoin?

Addressing potential skepticism about the feasibility of such an attack, Hummer elaborated: “You could quietly stockpile ASICs, or even build them yourself. Nobody would notice because you could mine an alternate fork silently, then flip your ASICs on and make that the canonical fork of BTC and execute a bunch of double spends.”

He also emphasized the potential financial upside of an attack: “Throw in some short sales for extra fun. The returns from a successful 51% attack + short sale at size are insanely large. A couple billion dollars of spending is peanuts when you’re talking about global scale macro assets.”

A user replied, questioning the plausibility of such a scenario: “Imagine buying 51% of existing hashrate without anyone noticing… worse – imagine deploying 101% of new hashrate without anyone noticing.”

Hummer remained firm in his position, citing the lack of visibility in ASIC accumulation and the systemic risk embedded in Bitcoin’s current economic security model. “This will become blindingly obvious over the next decade,” he warned.

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