With all the recent talk about 51% attacks on cryptocurrencies one important issue seems to be left out. What are the legal ramifications of pulling off, attempting, or even planning such an attack? Fines, legal costs, and jail time are factors not being taken into consideration in these attack costs. Most people and articles just talk about dollar values of such attacks. Some do discuss the hit a businesses (mining pool) would take for trying such an attack. But what would happen to someone attempting or pulling off an attack?
Let's face it 51% attacks are always a possibility in POW. Security is based on miners acting in their own best interests. Sometimes that interest lies in forking a coin. Most of these forks are simple upgrades and the old chain dies due to most if not all miners switching to it. Sometimes there is a chain split that is planned and announced. Bitcoin/Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum Ethereum classic are 2 such examples. None of these are hostile acts (although some may see them as such). What happens when such a fork is a hostile action against the majority of the community?
Smaller coins have been attacked and destroyed this way in the past. It was long believed that this was a normal thing in POW. A majority chain using it's power to attack and destroy a minority fork to preserve the integrity of the original chain. I don't know if an attack in the best interest of a chain has ever happened though. The only attacks I have heard of were just to destroy a coin because they could.
Now these coins were not worth much if anything. What happens when million or even billion dollar coins are attacked maliciously? I have to believe that some laws would be broken in many jurisdictions around the world. Even if exact laws were not violated I would bet some statues exists that could be used to at least arrest the people pulling off and/or supporting such an attack.
So what are your thoughts? Do you think there would be legal ramifications to attempting and/or pulling off a 51% attack on a coin?
Source: news.bitcoin.com
Hmm you bring up a good point here. Does this go in favor of regulation of cryptos or would it be possible to punish someone or a group for performing a 51% attack?
Is it possible to find the bad actor in the case of something like this? My guess would be it depends on the privacy of the coin and a host of other things.
I think it is unethical and wrong, but I’m not sure if it is illegal. If they are breaking a law of some sort they should be punished
You would think there would be a lot of potential crimes. Stealing from the exchanges for one. Is disrupting a financial network a crime?
As for tracking them if they did it for theft it could be possible even with privacy coins. They have to spend them somehow. Someone all of a sudden acquires millions some alarms will go off somewhere. Only takes them getting sloppy. Then there is the bragging aspect. Few too many drinks.......
That is very true about someone spilling the beans about doing it! I guess it wouldn’t be too difficult to catch someone!
I’m not sure if disrupting a financial network is! I would imagine it is!
There would be no law broken in a 51% attack, in my opinion.