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copirate 2 hours ago

If the attacker is waiting for a lucky event to occur (finding more blocks than others while having less than 51% of the mining power) it means that they are constantly wasting mining time. That in itself is a huge cost (operational cost and block rewards thrown away), but it also means that they can't predict when it will happen. A double spend attack must be planned in advance because the first transaction must occur at the beginning of the attack. I'm not sure how they could constantly try double spends without risking losing the money each time the attack doesn't happen.

I don't see how it could be profitable. If it can't be profitable, then the risk of someone doing it is pretty low. If they already have the necessary hardware, they'd be much better off mining.