{"id":58954,"date":"2025-11-17T21:01:32","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T21:01:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/?p=58954"},"modified":"2025-11-17T21:01:32","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T21:01:32","slug":"computer-scientist-drops-bombshell-bitcoin-could-fall-to-nation-state-attacks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/?p=58954","title":{"rendered":"Computer Scientist Drops Bombshell: Bitcoin Could Fall To Nation-State Attacks"},"content":{"rendered":"
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According to comments from longtime researcher and computer scientist Nick Szabo, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are trust-minimized, not trustless, and that difference matters for how states and private actors can push back.<\/p>\n

Szabo warned that while the layer one of a strong trust-minimized system can endure many kinds of interference, legal routes remain a meaningful vulnerability.<\/p>\n

He said financial rules are one set of risks the ecosystem has learned to handle, helped by developers and an expanding legal profession focused on crypto<\/a>, but that laws tied to arbitrary data create a much wider and less predictable attack surface.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Trust Minimized Not Trustless<\/h2>\n

Szabo told readers that the technical design reduces the need to trust single parties, yet it does not eliminate the need for trust entirely.<\/p>\n

According to his view, losing the phrase \u201ctrustless\u201d and using \u201ctrust-minimized\u201d is important because it points to real limits. Developers must keep the protocol informed by careful choices.<\/p>\n

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Anarcho-capitalism is a wonderfully abstract ideal that can inspire innovation. It helped inspire me to help invent cryptocurrency.<\/p>\n

But real-world cryptocurrencies are not trustless \u2014 they are trust-minimized. Each cryptocurrency has a legal attack surface, representing the\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2014 Nick Szabo (@NickSzabo4) November 16, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Lawyers have become part of the defense too, he said, and that legal work has made financial law attacks manageable in many cases.<\/p>\n

The claim is not that Bitcoin<\/a> is fragile; it is that the threats are not only technical \u2014 they are real, legal, and those threats change with new laws and court decisions.<\/p>\n

Regulators Face Practical Limits<\/h2>\n

Not everyone agrees. One critic, Chris Seedor, who runs a Bitcoin seed storage company called Seedor, pushed back and called some legal fears \u201cboogeymen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Based on reports of his remarks, Seedor argued that states can try to use law to stop tools and protocols, but history shows limits.<\/p>\n

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Respectfully, I think you\u2019re giving too much weight to speculative legal boogeymen.<\/p>\n

Bitcoin\u2019s resilience was never about predicting every possible domain of law \u2013 it was about minimizing technical points where coercion can bite. If regulators could shut down general-purpose data\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2014 Coinjoined Chris \"\u26a1\" (@coinjoined) November 16, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

He pointed to PGP and Tor<\/a> as two technologies that have been unpopular with some regulators yet remain available. His point: when code lacks central points of control, courts and agencies have less practical leverage to fully shut it down.<\/p>\n

Arguments From Different Angles<\/p>\n

The debate is partly about emphasis. Szabo focuses on open legal questions and new kinds of laws that could be used to target content or arbitrary data placed on-chain. Seedor highlights how technical design can remove the lever points that make enforcement easy.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Both are talking about the same problem from different directions: one looks at the legal map and sees many untested routes; the other looks at past enforcement and sees that states rarely win against widely distributed protocols.<\/p>\n

Featured image from Yagi Studio\/Flavio Coelho\/Getty Images, chart from TradingView<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to comments from longtime researcher and computer scientist Nick Szabo, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are trust-minimized, not trustless, and that difference matters for how states and private actors can push back. Szabo warned that while the layer one of a strong trust-minimized system can endure many kinds of interference, legal routes remain a meaningful […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3,4,5],"class_list":["post-58954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-crypto","tag-doge","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58954\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}