A speculative thread led by Bitcoin Journal CEO David Bailey on July 23 ignited a contemporary dispute between Bitcoin advocates and Ethereum supporters over how the proof‑of‑stake (PoS) safety mannequin may work together with conventional capital markets. The alternate unfolded in opposition to a backdrop of publicly listed Ethereum treasury corporations steadily accumulating and staking Ether—an rising pattern.
Wall Road 51% Assault on Ethereum?
Bailey’s state of affairs hinges on that focus: if a cluster of company stability sheets holds a cloth share of staked ETH, fairness‑market ways might, in his view, substitute for direct token purchases in assembling validator management. Bailey opened: “If sufficient eth validators have been owned by public ethereum treasury corporations (~20% of whole eth provide), you possibly can 51% assault the general public equities (ie take majority management, some ways to realize that through capital markets) – and also you’d have governance management over ethereum. In different phrases securities legislation would change into eth’s consensus mechanism.”
Extending the concept, he claimed the technique “opens fairly an fascinating funding technique,” including: “since Ethereum just isn’t a safety then ethereum holders don’t have any authorized rights… You may reorg the chain, slash different customers, screw up all belongings and L2s issued on prime eth… legally pillage.”
The core of Bailey’s speculation rests on two linked assumptions: first, that publicly listed Ethereum treasury corporations accumulate a sufficiently giant proportion of staked Ether; second, that hostile actors might receive board or managerial management of these firms—through hostile takeovers, activist campaigns, or different capital markets ways—with out immediately buying ETH on‑chain.
Responding to a counterargument that an attacker must purchase huge portions of Ether and thereby enrich current holders, Bailey wrote: “You don’t want to purchase any eth, you simply purchase inventory in corporations that already personal it.”
Critics rapidly challenged each the technical premises and the true‑world feasibility. Pseudonymous commentator Birdnals framed the state of affairs as requiring simultaneous, secret collusion amongst a number of boards overseeing “5+ publicly traded corporations” and “the 100’s of others of workers/brokers it could take to carry out that collusion… lots of that are ETH maxis.”
They warned such conduct might invite “fraud, anti-trust violations, RICO” and different liabilities, making the proposition legally and operationally brittle. Bailey replied that “hostile takeovers is a complete world unto itself in capital markets” and questioned how “social slashing” can be utilized “with out screwing the opposite 49% of shareholders who’re harmless.”
Technical members of the Ethereum neighborhood rejected the framing that validator possession equals governance authority. Former federal agent Tigran Gambaryan responded: “Block manufacturing and mev perhaps, however not governance. That’s not how eth works. ETH governance is off-chain.” Ethereum person nicholasb.eth likewise said: “Whereas there are lots of PoS blockchains that use on-chain governance, Ethereum doesn’t. It’s vital to tell apart this. It’s not simply whoever owns essentially the most ETH (or a coordinated group of holders) can management the community,” calling Bailey’s earlier declare “factually incorrect.”
At press time, ETH traded at $
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