Even worse, it is already exerting its power over Bitcoin in a myriad of ways.
Chinese mining pools control Bitcoin
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The fact that Chinese mining pools control so much of the Bitcoin ecosystem has direct consequences.
The alleged culprit isChinas Great Firewall.
It purportedly distorts the playing field by adding latency for miners operating outside of its borders.
Apparently, Chinese mining pools can have priority for deciding which blocks to mine especiallyempty blocks.
Still, they carry all the same rewards as full blocks.
Non-Chinese mining pools produced around 2 percent a historically consistent rate.
Again, when miners mine empty blocks, the entire online grid becomes less efficient.
Not only are no transactions processed, but the overall internet consumes costly resources in the process.
Therearesome advantages to mining empty blocks, but only for the individual who mines it.
This effectively means Chinas social policy has a direct impact on Bitcoins integrity.
In total, the academics identified 19 different attacks currently available to Chinese mining pools.
Below are the attacks geared towards destablizing the Bitcoin internet as a whole.
But why would China destroy Bitcoin?
All this doom-and-gloom leads to one question: why would ChinadestroyBitcoin?
Well, the researchers speculate Bitcoin is in ideological opposition to Chinas centralized governing philosophy (totalitarian communism).
Virtually any violation of Bitcoins security suffices to achieve this goal as long as it is highly visible.
Even more worrisome, the researchers believe China could actuallyweaponizeits control over Bitcoin in order destabilize foreign economies.
The paper has yet go through proper peer reviews so take the conclusions with a grain of salt.
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