- A mining CEO explains Bitcoin’s 30-gigawatt energy backbone makes it practically insurmountable to a Monero-style 51% attack.
- Attacking Bitcoin would require controlling 440 EH/s, a feat deemed economically irrational and logistically monumental for any entity.
In an interview with Aydin Kilic, CEO of Hive Digital Technologies, the conversation turned to the recent events surrounding the Monero network. Kilic, an electronics engineer with a sharp ability for rapid economic and energy calculations, did not hesitate to draw a clear comparison with Bitcoin.
Kilic described Bitcoin as a system mathematically determined by physical equations. He emphasized that Bitcoin operates on a decentralized energy infrastructure of 30 gigawatts. This scale, according to him, makes the network practically insurmountable to attacks like the one currently threatening Monero, where a single pool approaches majority hashrate.
The difference lies in sheer size. Bitcoin’s hashrate currently measures 867 exahashes per second. To attempt a 51% attack, an entity would need to control at least 440 exahashes. This would require immense capital investment and ongoing energy expenditure.
Even if technically possible for large mining pools or nation-states, such an attack would be economically irrational. The market would likely react by devaluing Bitcoin, undermining the attacker’s investment. Mining pools also have a long-term business interest in maintaining network trust.
The input to the system is joules of energy. The hash power is the output of the system and correlates to a specific amount of bitcoin reward, as stipulated in the white paper. The number of hashes per block in Bitcoin is the difficulty, which is currently an integer of approximately 129 trillion, multiplied by 2 to the power of 32, which is approximately 4.3 billion. All of this is mathematically determined, and that is how Bitcoin mining works. We are experts in this field, and that is where we focus our attention.
- Aydin Kilic, CEO and President of Hive Digital Technologies.
Kilic views Bitcoin as the global digital currency backed by energy, a system with a real cost of production rooted in thermodynamics. He believes this energy input provides intrinsic value, a feature he considers lost in proof-of-stake systems like Ethereum.
For Hive Digital, which once mined Ethereum, this mathematical and physical certainty is where they now focus their expertise. The company’s operations are dedicated to understanding and participating in this energy-based security model.
