> Why would GHash ever want to attack the platform from which it profits and from which it will likely continue to profit, as a leading transaction processor, for many years to come?

There's pretty much an infinite number of reasons people choose short-term profit with apparent long-term opportunity cost above what apparently stable long-term profit streams. Betting that an actor with the power to do so would never do so usually is equivalent to creating a greater incentive for them to do so.

I notice you bring up the exact arguments that the piece addresses explicitly, yet you do not acknowledge this one way or another.

But the meta-reason is: if someone thinks they can get away with it, why wouldn't they do it? With that presumption you could even argue it's the rational choice. If you do it subtly, there's plenty of room for doubt. Furthermore, there are enough people who're invested for ideological reasons that, in the absence of strong evidence, all most people will hear is a lot of he-said, she-said.

More to the point, factor in any monetary investment in the scheme -- the prospect of collapse should a critical mass reach the same conclusion, for instance -- and the people who've invested have an incentive to stay the course. That incentive to maintain a good reputation cuts both ways. Reputation is a matter of popular perception.

Makes logical sense, unfortunately we've seen examples in the past of this logic not being adhered to. Take the poker site "Ultimate Bet", when cheating was suspected the line of reasoning against it (and the strongest line of reasoning at that)was "Why would they cheat when they are running a million dollar profitable business and jeopardise the entire operation for a bit more %?" Turns out they were willing to jeopardise it all.

In the case of Ultimate Bet it turned out that it was an inside job, but the individuals involved didn't necessarily share in the long term profits of the company, so they were able to benefit personally to the tune of millions, while most of the negative effects landed on the company rather than themselves.

Thankfully in at least two other poker companies (hint: the largest one and its sister company) it was made impossible to see someone's hole cards before the hand is over, which is what allowed the cheaters at Ultimate Bet to perpetrate their con.

It's my pretty firm belief that when it seems like an entity is throwing away a pretty obvious economic self-interest, there's probably just a misunderstanding of where the economic self interest lies in the parties involved.

So what if the anonymous maintainer works for the US government or a large banking institution? Running a slick-looking pool seems like the easiest way to get in control of enough hash power to set the bitcoin brand back years. Doing the "wrong" thing at the right time would mean further billions in profit without the effort of re-imagining the whole fincancial sector, assuming it staved off a cryptocurrency revolution.