US crypto mining stocks tumbled at the close of May 28 trading after minutes published by the Federal Reserve signaled its growing uncertainty about the country’s economic outlook.

The crypto market remained unscathed, despite the stock drops among crypto miners.

Uncertainty about the economic outlook looms

The minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee’s meeting on May 6 and 7, released on May 28, stated, “the Committee might face difficult tradeoffs if inflation proves to be more persistent while the outlooks for growth and employment weaken.” 

The Fed had decided after its meetings in early May to keep interest rates steady at 4.25% to 4.50%, with the minutes revealing the reason was due to “a further increase in uncertainty about the economic outlook and a rise in the risks of both higher unemployment and higher inflation.”

Riot Platforms (RIOT) closed the May 28 trading day down 8.32%, CleanSpark (CLSK) tumbled 7.61%, and Mara Holdings closed down 9.61%, according to Google Finance data. 

Meanwhile, crypto exchange Coinbase (COIN) also dropped 4.55%, Michael Saylor’s Bitcoin-buying firm MicroStrategy (MSTR) extended its five-day downtrend, falling another 2.14% following a class-action lawsuit being filed, accusing the company’s officials of having failed to represent the nature of Bitcoin (BTC) investments accurately. 

The S&P 500 declined 0.56% over the trading day.

Tension between Trump and the Fed

It comes after recent tension between US President Donald Trump and the Federal Reserve, following Trump’s public criticism of the Fed Chair Jerome Powell for not cutting interest rates quickly enough. On April 17, Trump said, “Powell’s termination cannot come fast enough!” 

Related: Bitcoin sags below $108K as rate-cut bets evaporate before Fed minutes

The crypto market remained relatively stable over the same period. Bitcoin is down 0.90% over the past 24 hours, trading at $107,942 at the time of publication. 

Market sentiment also improved, with the Crypto Fear & Greed Index climbing three points to 74, moving further into “Greed” territory.

The next Federal Reserve interest rate decision is set for June 18, with 97.8% of market participants expecting rates to remain unchanged, according to the CME FedWatch Tool.

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This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.

]]> https://earlybirdsinvest.com/crypto-mining-stocks-plunge-as-fed-warns-of-difficult-tradeoffs/feed/ 0 38888 https://earlybirdsinvest.com/51-attack-on-ethereum-more-difficult-than-on-bitcoin-justin-drake/ https://earlybirdsinvest.com/51-attack-on-ethereum-more-difficult-than-on-bitcoin-justin-drake/#respond Fri, 16 May 2025 13:55:21 +0000 https://earlybirdsinvest.com/51-attack-on-ethereum-more-difficult-than-on-bitcoin-justin-drake/

Ethereum Merge architect Justin Drake told Cointelegraph that he believes it would be cheaper to launch a 51% attack on Bitcoin than on Ethereum.

Drake said it would be “much cheaper to 51% attack Bitcoin” and that it would cost “on the order of $10 billion.”

Drake led work on Ethereum’s proof-of-stake (PoS) implementation and was a principal architect in the Merge (the full PoS transition event). His remarks echo a May 14 X post by Grant Hummer, the co-founder of Ethereum-focused marketing and product company Etherealize.

In the post, Hummer said that Bitcoin “is completely screwed because of its security budget.”

Hummer claimed it would cost $8 billion to run a successful 51% attack, and he expects a successful attack to be “virtually certain” when the cost slips to $2 billion. A 51% attack occurs when a single entity or group controls over 50% of a blockchain network’s mining or staking power, gaining power over the network. Hummer added:

“This will become blindingly obvious over the next decade. ETH is the only truly decentralized crypto-asset that can become the internet’s [store of value].“

Related: Coin Metrics research shows BTC and ETH are immune to 51% attacks

Ethereum attack would cost much more

Drake explained that “to have 100% control of the chain, you need 50% + 1 of stake.” He said that it would be extremely difficult and expensive, but far from impossible:

“A rich nation state can probably pull it off.“

At the time of writing, there was 34,168,987 staked Ether (ETH) worth nearly $89.6 billion. Consequently, half of all ETH has a current value of almost $44.8 billion.

Still, a much higher investment would likely be needed. Ether has a current market cap of $316 billion and a 24-hour trading volume of $25 billion (just over 8% of the market cap).

The ETH needed for an attack is worth nearly 14.2% of the market cap and 180% of the 24-hour trading volume. An undertaking of that size would likely cause a significant ETH price appreciation, further increasing the cost of the attack.

Related: Big miners pose a growing existential threat to Bitcoin

Ethereum’s last line of defense

Matan Sitbon, the founder and CEO of blockchain interoperability developer Lightblocks, told Cointelegraph that Ethereum has an additional feature to defend against such attacks.

“Ethereum’s ultimate security lies not solely in cryptography or protocol rules, but in the community’s powerful social and economic coordination mechanisms,“ he said.

Drake also highlighted another advantage that he believes Ethereum has over Bitcoin. He explained that “if there is a 51% attack, the social layer can identify the attacker and socially slash it.”

“This is a superpower of PoS that is not available with PoW,“ he added.

Drake’s statement refers to the social layer, meaning the network’s human supermajority, which decides which software to run. Bitcoin’s simpler proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism has a smaller attack surface and longer reliability track record, but it lacks this feature.

Pavel Yashin, Researcher at P2P.org, told Cointelegraph that “if the centralization is detected,” the community could resolve it with a new fork. The old token would end up being delisted, and the compromised chain would fall into irrelevancy.

Hassan Khan, CEO at Bitcoin liquidity protocol Ordeez, told Cointelegraph that “the debate around the feasibility of a 51% attack remains open-ended — largely because while theoretically possible, in practice the barriers are extremely high.”

He said that for Bitcoin, the necessary amount of computing power and energy “makes a sustained attack highly improbable,” while for Ethereum, “PoS introduces additional economic and governance deterrents.”

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