In last week’s season finale of the fifth season of Silicon Valley, the show’s underdog tech startup has just come off a less-than-spectacular initial coin offering for their company’s cryptocurrency, PiedPiperCoin. To make matters worse, their cryptocurrency is hit with a “51 percent” attack—essentially, a takeover of a cryptocurrency network.
When the finale aired, catastrophic 51 percent attacks were mostly a theoretical bogeyman in the IRL cryptocurrency world despite minor incidents in the past. Only days after the Silicon Valley episode aired, though, a wave of 51 percent attacks hit the cryptocurrencies Verge, Monacoin and Bitcoin Gold. Altogether, these attacks are estimated to have resulted in a loss of more than $20 million USD.
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