December 30, 2025
Futures, forks, and flame wars
Sabotaging Bitcoin
Wall Street-style bets could crash Bitcoin — and the comments are on fire
TLDR: Researchers claim price bets could make short-term Bitcoin rewrites profitable, rattling trust. Comments explode over energy horror, legal gray areas, and “do something real” cynicism—showing the fight isn’t just technical, it’s about vibes, ethics, and whether any of this matters.
Bitcoin drama alert: a new analysis says Wall Street-style bets (options and futures) could make it profitable to knock Bitcoin off balance by briefly rewriting recent payments, even without owning all the mining power. Price crash fears? The paper suggests a deep fork—think undoing six recent “receipts”—could shatter trust. Cue comment chaos.
The energy crowd showed up first: gerdesj dropped the Cambridge Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index with a “quite horrifying!” and even linked Gridwatch for comparison. Legal vibes got spicy too—will5421 asked, “Is it illegal to attack cryptocurrency?” and suddenly half the thread was role‑playing internet lawyers. Meanwhile, the orange site regulars predicted a flame war: DJBunnies deadpanned, “I look forward to more open and earnest conversation,” and everyone read it with max sarcasm.
Then came the whataboutism: OutOfHere argued the U.S. military burns more fossil fuel defending the dollar than Bitcoin ever will, and somehow we swerved into a wood‑stove PSA about carcinogens. Finally, observationist went full “touch grass,” insisting crypto drama doesn’t matter and people should do something real. The hottest split? One camp says Bitcoin’s security game is shakier than advertised; the other says the outrage is misdirected—or just plain boring. Popcorn secured, blocks uncertain, vibes volatile.
Key Points
- •A 2024 study by Farokhnia and Goharshady argues Bitcoin derivatives can incentivize block-reverting or majority attacks and that such attacks may not require majority hash power.
- •The study estimates acquiring majority Bitcoin hash power would cost roughly $6.77 billion.
- •Bitcoin processes around $17B/day across ~450K transactions (avg ~$38K); an average block holds ~3.2K transactions (~$121.6M), totaling ~144 blocks/day (~$17.5B).
- •A 2021 study by Makarov and Schoar found ~90% of Bitcoin transaction volume is not economically meaningful, with exchanges accounting for 75% of real volume.
- •Selfish Mining research (Eyal & Sirer, 2018) indicates vulnerability when a pool exceeds one-third hash power and that at least two-thirds honest participation is needed; deep forks (6 blocks) could damage trust and trigger price declines.