Thank you very much for your reply, and appreciate the high-IQ simulation,
but hereâs the problem:
Youâre assuming this is a clean trade in a frictionless market.
In realityďź51% attack â profitable trade.
Itâs an existential attack, not a money-making arbitrage.
Shorting BTC while attacking the network sounds cleverâuntil you realize:
1ď¸âŁMarkets freeze.
Exchanges halt trading. DEX liquidity evaporates. Vols spike. ETF redemptions break. You donât just âprint billionsâ like itâs a button.
2ď¸âŁCounterparty risk explodes.
If youâre shorting MSTR or miners, whoâs filling your order book mid-attack? Whoâs buying your puts? TradFi hates chaosâvolatility crushes trade execution.
3ď¸âŁReputation risk is real.
No major fund survives being exposed as the actor who nuked BTC. This isnât a backroom poker gameâitâs geopolitics, public markets, and the global financial system.
And lastly: If BTC truly drops 70%+ on chain trust collapse, the rest of crypto dies with it.
ETH doesnât âwinâ that dayâit bleeds out next to the corpse.
A 51% attack isnât a trade. Itâs an act of war. And wars are never clean, never controlled, and almost never profitable for the initiator.
So yesâETH may be the better SoV long term, but not because someoneâs going to assassinate BTC on purpose and ride off with a suitcase of profits.
I will give you credit - this is a significantly higher IQ response than 99% of American Bitcoin holders could write đ
Your critique boils down to the operational complexity of executing this attack. I would argue that if a fund (or coordinated group of funds) can 10-100x their capital and make billions of dollars by doing 51% attacking BTC and shorting it, it is very likely to happen, even if they have to jump through a lot of hoops. Even if some exchange withdrawals get frozen after the attack, there will still be tradfi ways to short BTC (ETFs, MSTR, miner stocks), it will be shortable on DEXes, and other crypto-assets will likely plunge in tandem, which will be shortable as well. Options are another great way to execute this trade.
Once a 51% is successfully executed, BTC is finished. It doesn't matter if the software soft/hard forks, or anything else - its SoV meme will be permanently wrecked, and I would expect it to immediately plunge in price by 70% or more.
I would also argue that "attacking the soil you depend on" doesn't matter, since this attack can be executed by outside actors who don't care about that "soil."
I think BTC and ETH are in direct competition to be the internet's primary SoV, and ETH is the only rational, sustainable choice out of the two.