“With adequate profit, capital is very bold. A certain 10 per cent. will ensure its employment anywhere; 20 per cent. certain will produce eagerness; 50 per cent., positive audacity; 100 per cent. will make it ready to trample on all human laws; 300 per cent., and there is not a crime at which it will scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged. ” (T. J. Dunning, l. c., pp. 35, 36.)

A series of attacks happens recently, from Bitcoin Gold to Verge and now Litecoin cash. At first, people were shocked by those “accidents”, the price dropped significantly and everyone was worrying about their investment.

However, after the event, those dev teams would make announcements that they had changed their crypto for a safer hash algorithm or adding more confirmation blocks. Investors finally took a deep breath and thanked god, their assets were protected.

This cycle repeats again and again. To be frank, after those three attacks in 2018, I am accustomed to this newly trend. 51% attack is the new fashion in crypto world.

Although a lot of measures have been taken to deal with this problem, most of them are barely procrastinations. They only slow the attackers down and never stop the boom. For those coins which are currently safe at the moment, Great danger is waiting for them ahead.

In order for us to understand the deep reason for those attacks, we have to absorb a criminal or attacker’s motive. Why are they doing this? Money, reputation? When we shift our attention to Money and to be specific, the return ratio of an attack, things start to sort out……

Cost and Profit Analysis

Here, we use a simple cost and profit analysis for a 51% attack. Every one with basic Algebra knowledge will be able to analyze the data and get the result.

The current time is 15:00 Aug 2nd, 2018. All the following analysis is based on this time.

For example, we will use Monoeci……

It is a very small coin but you get the general idea.

First, we want to know Monoeci’s entire netHash. I use whattomine to get its NetHash, 2.47Th/s. And the Block time is 2 minutes.