Blockstream (and by proxy Bilderberg) has control of Blockstream's mining pool, they host colocation for a considerable portion of miners (which they could decide to seize and take control of if they needed to), and Blockstream's leadership has strategic private meetings with other large pool operators.
While it may not be as obvious as what Qubic is doing with their pool here, it does mean that not only can they pick exactly which transactions get recorded if they really wanted to, but they can also have their devs make any protocol change (even literally taking away someones BTC) and the only ones who could stop them are the majority of the miners, which they control either directly or indirectly.
For sure it could happen, but I don't think they're close to 51% yet. I'm also not sure how long anyone would be able to maintain 51% control through a mining pool because once it's noticed that bad blocks have been confirmed by this pool the value of the coin will plummet and miners may decide it's no longer profitable to mine or decide it's better to leave that pool than help it continue to hurt the price.
Blockstream (and by proxy Bilderberg) has control of Blockstream's mining pool, they host colocation for a considerable portion of miners (which they could decide to seize and take control of if they needed to), and Blockstream's leadership has strategic private meetings with other large pool operators.
While it may not be as obvious as what Qubic is doing with their pool here, it does mean that not only can they pick exactly which transactions get recorded if they really wanted to, but they can also have their devs make any protocol change (even literally taking away someones BTC) and the only ones who could stop them are the majority of the miners, which they control either directly or indirectly.
For sure it could happen, but I don't think they're close to 51% yet. I'm also not sure how long anyone would be able to maintain 51% control through a mining pool because once it's noticed that bad blocks have been confirmed by this pool the value of the coin will plummet and miners may decide it's no longer profitable to mine or decide it's better to leave that pool than help it continue to hurt the price.