Does 51% Attack on Bitcoin Network Possible ?

Ethereum Classic has suffered from 51% attack recently, thus the security of the coin has become very questionable. With this case, everyone must be think that there is a possibility the same thing can be happening in other coin, for example Bitcoin.

Can Bitcoin suffer with 51% attack too ? If we look at the global hash rate of Bitcoin network, China has the most hash rate. So China can launch attack on Bitcoin network ? Although we concern about so much hash power concentrate on China, 51% attack on Bitcoin is hard to be done.

The attackers cannot steal other people's Bitcoin, change consensus rules, or reversing the valid transactions. The only thing they can do is double spend their own BTC. The most fit scenario is like this : The attacker deposit and sell their own BTC on exchange and withdraw it, and later they just attack and reverse the block which contain their BTC deposit transaction.

But the problem is, they will need to provide KYC docs in the exchange they want to withdraw. So if the attack success, the exchange can track the attacker using docs that contain the details of the attacker.

That being said, i think it is nearly impossible to do a 51% attack on Bitcoin network, although there is still a possibility.

Author : Juice Shen