Forth, ''51% controlling interest in Bitcoin? How can it even be stopped if for example the federal reserve as you brought up would just print money to buy a monopoly on ASICs and in essence buy the votes? '' - an entity, i.e. single Will, i.e. sole Sensus, as opposed to CONsensus, will have to waste resources to disguise itself as non-existent, i.e. to behave exactly as if it does not exist, in order to utilize its position. The presence of such entity can be detected , because it imprints itself on the total pattern of the assets performance. One of the greatest achievements of Satoshi was the economic incentive foundation - BTC is valuable if and only if decentralized. This is conditio sine qua non est BTC. It is valuable if and only if you do not have it. The moment you have it, it loses its value. Takeover-BTC plots are doomed, because once you achieve 50%+ you instantly squeeze all the life outta it. The situation is ''so long and thank you for the fish'' the conqueror is left with nothing, and the happily rich wealthy subsidized by the attack ... rest, just fork out and keep on ahead with all the value you used to 'take over'. Back to your question above: The fed print money to buy asics? Buy from whom? this 'whom' gets immensely rich and the fed ends up with a heap of useless junk asics and totally depreciated dollar. Bitcoin incentive framework is like automated financial aikido - it uses the energy of the attacker to feed the good guys.