The developer compared the cost of a 51% attack on Bitcoin and Ethereum

A 51% attack on Bitcoin would cost about $10 billion, and this is several times less than what is needed to hack the Ethereum network. This was stated to Cointelegraph by leading Ethereum developer Justin Drake.

The number he mentioned roughly coincided with the estimate of Etherealize co-founder Grant Hammer, who considered $8 billion sufficient for a successful attack on the first cryptocurrency.

1. Respectfully, BTC is completely screwed because of its security budget. It would only cost $8B to 51% attack BTC today. When this gets down to $2B (AKA, BTC’s security market cap becomes 0.1% of its asset market cap), a 51% attack is virtually certain to happen. This will…

— gphummer.eth 🦇🔊 (@gphummer) May 14, 2025

“With all due respect, BTC completely messed up its security budget,” he stated.

According to Hammer, when the cost of hacking Bitcoin drops to $2 billion, it will almost certainly happen.

“ETH is the only truly decentralized crypto asset that, by general consensus, can become a means of saving for the internet,” he believes.

Drake noted that to gain control over the chain requires 50% of the staked assets plus 1 ETH. Achieving this is difficult and expensive, but theoretically possible for a wealthy state, the developer acknowledged.

At the time of writing, the volume of locked coins is 34.16 million ETH worth ~$85.4 billion.

The founder and CEO of Lightblocks, Matan Sitbon, highlighted an additional factor that protects Ethereum from similar attacks – “a powerful mechanism of social and economic coordination of the community.”

Drake confirmed this network advantage over Bitcoin. According to him, it allows “to identify the attacker and socially destroy him.”

“This is a super opportunity of Proof-of-Stake that is not available in Proof-of-Work,” emphasized the developer.

The CEO of the Bitcoin Liquidity Protocol, Hassan Khan, noted that the debates regarding the feasibility of a 51% attack remain open only due to its theoretical possibility.

“In practice, the barriers are extremely high,” he emphasized.

Centralization of control over the blockchain of the first cryptocurrency is unlikely due to the necessary volumes of computing power and electricity, while for Ethereum, additional barriers are economic and managerial factors, Khan added.

Recall that the Ethereum Foundation launched a “public ecosystem” initiative called “trillion dollar security.”