# The Attacker's Dilemma > If a greedy attacker is able to assemble more CPU power than all the honest nodes, he would have to choose between using it to defraud people by stealing back his payments or using it to generate new coins. He ought to find it more profitable to play by the rules, such rules that favour him with more new coins than everyone else combined, than to undermine the system and the validity of his own wealth. > > \- Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin Whitepaper ![](https://bitcoinsv.academy/storage/photos/1/Incentive_0107-0130.gif) To conduct a double spend attack on the network, the attacking node must accumulate enough hash power to overrule more than half of the other nodes on the network, and must then pay to maintain that hash power for an indefinite period of time, while it tries to convince the remaining nodes on the network to support its illegal actions. Maintaining the attack as a single malicious actor is tremendously expensive due to the cost of performing proof of work, yet the attacker must break the law in plain sight using the Bitcoin ledger in full view of the public and law enforcement. It is easy to see that it is far less risky and much more lucrative for a node controlling such a large quantity of hash power to participate as an honest actor securing the network to legitimately win honest rewards as income. --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://hub.bsvblockchain.org/higher-learning/bsv-academy/bsv-theory/incentive/the-attackers-dilemma.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.