There is a serious problem that is not much discussed. Bitcoin is susceptible to a 51% hash rate double-spend attack. As Bitcoin has grown, this has never been a practical issue. No miner or consortium has had that much hash-rate compared to the rest of the market.
But when the hashrate drops below 50% of its previous maximum, that means that there are idle mining resources enough to carry out the attack. And owners of those resources may not mind throwing the whole Bitcoin system into chaos if they can get one last big payday.
The lower the active hashrate grows, the smaller the consortium required to make an attack.
So watch for chain forks and double-spend attacks. Maybe not this month or this year, but my expectation is it will be part of the eventual Bitcoin downward spiral.
In some sense bottom buyers wait for the worst news possible, and then calculate if the financial object can go to zero. This sounds like it might be the kind of news those kind of buyers would be waiting for.
But when the hashrate drops below 50% of its previous maximum, that means that there are idle mining resources enough to carry out the attack. And owners of those resources may not mind throwing the whole Bitcoin system into chaos if they can get one last big payday.
The lower the active hashrate grows, the smaller the consortium required to make an attack.
So watch for chain forks and double-spend attacks. Maybe not this month or this year, but my expectation is it will be part of the eventual Bitcoin downward spiral.