SCIS graduate student, Mireya Jurado, co-wrote “The Looming Threat of China- An Analysis of Chinese Influence on Bitcoin” which is getting attention by a few major tech media outlets.
The paper states that China has both “mature capabilities” and “strong motives” to perform a variety of attacks against Bitcoin. Bitcoin’s network is powered by miners, who employ a vast amount of computing power to process transactions and create new bitcoins in the process. The paper continues that “over 80 percent of Bitcoin mining is performed by six mining pools,” with five of those managed directly by individuals or companies based in China.
“As the value and economic utility of Bitcoin has grown, so has the incentive to attack it,” the researchers explain. “We singled out China for analysis because they are the most powerful potential adversary to Bitcoin, and we found that they have a variety of salient motives for attacking the system and a number of mature capabilities, both regulatory and technical, to carry out those attacks.”
In addition, the paper was also cited in a congressional hearing held by the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs titled “Exploring the Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Ecosystem.”
Mireya Jurado is pursuing a Ph.D. in Computer Science under Dr. Geoffrey Smith. She has interned for the Secure Resilient Systems and Technology Group at MIT Lincoln Laboratory. In 2015, Ms. Jurado received her BA from the University of Miami in International Studies and Anthropology and in 2016, she became the first female to receive the SCIS Director Award Fellowship at Florida International University.
Read more:
TheNextWeb: Research: China has the power to destroy Bitcoin
Mashable: China is capable of destabilizing or destroying Bitcoin, new research suggests