In my last post I looked at the problems around Bitcoins ever increasing hunger for electrical power.
In the future it will be a major liability but right now it may be a major asset.
If one monitors the headlines these past couple of weeks, since the rocket underneath Bitcoin has really been lit, a trend emerges.
The level of FUD from governments, central banks and traditional monetary system players is substantially increased.
Perhaps they are FUD'ing the market to try to keep the price down as they try to enter the market.
More likely, if one analyses the tone of the announcements, it seems that they and their money supply control and dominance is threatened by Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
If truly threatened and the FUD'ing doesn't work they could resort to other methods to destroy confidence in Bitcoin. A simple method would be to orchestrate a 51% attack on the network.
A couple of years back all it would have taken was a couple of million dollars worth of equipment assembled on the quiet.
That is not the case these days. With the amount of mining hardware in circulation and new hashpower being added everyday it would be alot more difficult and expensive for an attack on the network to be launched by a new emerging player.
The fact that Bitcoin's difficulty is so high and that the network is burning so much electricity at the moment actually protects it from attack from established monetary system players.