Solana vs Bitcoin: A Tale of Security & Silliness 🤑

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Well, butter my biscuit and call me confused! Justin Bons, the bigwig CIO of Cyber Capital (that’s Amsterdam, folks, not the moon), has stirred the crypto pot with a claim so bold, it’d make a riverboat gambler blush. He’s declared-with all the gravity of a man who’s read too many spreadsheets-that Solana’s “economic security” outshines Bitcoin’s, trailing only Ethereum’s. 🌟 In a tome of an X post on August 13, Bons unleashed his calculations, claiming Ethereum’s first, Solana’s second, and Bitcoin’s… well, let’s just say it’s third. “Truth cuts through the noise and the BS narratives,” he quipped, as if he’d just solved the riddle of the Sphinx. “PoS is way more secure than PoW, by several orders of magnitude,” he added, with the confidence of a man who’s never met a skeptic he couldn’t ignore. 🤓

Solana Tops Bitcoin? Hold My Crypto Wallet! 💰

Bons, bless his heart, framed his analysis around what he calls the annual “security budget”-a fancy term for how much it’d cost to throw a wrench in the works. For proof-of-work chains, he figured the cost of a 51% attack as a function of miner revenues from issuance and fees. For proof-of-stake chains, he treated the attack cost as a function of market capitalization, fees, and inflation, adjusted by the share of tokens staked and a 33% attack threshold. It’s like trying to compare apples and orangutans, but he gave it the old college try. 🍎🦧

In his snapshot, Bitcoin’s annual economic security came out to roughly $9.7 billion-“(0.4%)” of its market cap by his ratio-versus $24.1 billion for Solana “(23%)” and $52.2 billion for Ethereum “(10%).” He posted his working in-line, as if anyone could follow his math without a PhD in Cryptic Cryptography. “For PoW, the math is the yearly security budget, inflation + fees divided by the attack threshold (51%). For PoS, the math is the market capitalization + fees + inflation divided by the staking participation rate & then divided again by the attack threshold (33%).” Sounds simple, right? 😅

Beyond the rankings, Bons argued the ratio of “security to market capitalization” is the critical lens-because, as we all know, the bigger the bounty, the bigger the fool willing to spend it. In this framing, proof-of-stake benefits disproportionately from rising market value, while proof-of-work relies on an externalized and fluctuating spend on hardware and electricity. “This also clearly exposes PoW as an inferior technology from a security perspective,” he wrote, with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Even with lower market capitalization, ETH & SOL beat BTC’s security, he claims, contrary to “popular belief.” 🧐

The CIO also assigned zero “economic security” to networks he describes as permissioned or “Proof of Authority,” explicitly naming XRP, BNB, and HBAR. “They are based on a different type of consensus algorithm, PoA… which, unlike PoW & PoS, do not rely on economic security!” he wrote, reprising his favorite critique of XRP’s governance and validator model. It’s like he’s got a chip on his shoulder the size of a Bitcoin block. 🪨

Bons’ thread drew immediate pushback and requests for clarification. One commenter asked why, if “PoS offers higher security at lower economic drain,” the market still treats Bitcoin as the safest asset. Bons replied: “Spot on! The majority of the market is ‘wrong,’ at least in relationship to truth… This will shift as we become more knowledgeable on crypto.” In other words, “Trust me, I’m a genius.” 🤯

In a separate exchange, he predicted Bitcoin’s relative security would keep eroding “until the network comes under attack,” unless fee revenue or utility changes the trajectory. Because nothing says “secure” like a ticking time bomb. ⏳

The Bitcoin Security Budget Debate: A Never-Ending Saga 🎭

The broader debate around Bitcoin’s “security budget” has intensified this year as issuance fell again after the April 2024 halving. In May, Ethereum researcher Justin Drake warned that Bitcoin’s fee market remains too small to replace declining subsidies, calling proof-of-work “a ticking time bomb” and noting fees had slipped to multi-year lows. His argument-disputed by many in the Bitcoin community-centers on the idea that persistently low fees imply a shrinking budget to deter 51% attacks over the very long term. It’s like arguing over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but with more math. 👼

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2025-08-14 00:33