On: Compromise Bitcoin for just $1.2M

I'm not sure there's $1.2M worth of ASIC hardware made yet. Also, for that amount of money you could do a lot of malicious things, even to traditional banks.

ASICminer is a company producing their own, and from what I've read they certainly have the capacity to overwhelm the network if they wanted.

"I'm not sure there's $1.2M worth of ASIC hardware made yet."

I am pretty sure a large government could make its own ASICs...

You don't think the NSA could free up a few machines and have a couple of Terahash/Sec available in a weekend?