Bitcoin Forum

Peter Todd announced he has sold 50% of his Bitcoins due to the GHashIO situation, citing political biases in the system controlled by (i assume) Bitcoin core dev team and others refusing to address it.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/281ftd/why_i_just_sold_50_of_my_bitcoins_ghashio/

My suggestion was this:

This is a decentralized system.  But sometimes the question will arise:  Who manages the project in a decentralized system?  I suppose the community should be the most powerful influence in a decentralized system, yet there seems to be zero method by which the community can vote / influence the course of the code.  Obviously we don't want votes on every tiny issue, but on major issues like this, yes.  

Why doesn't someone institute a worldwide consensus voting system?  Bitcoin is perfect for such a thing, and being the first fraud-proof voting system on earth, this would be ideal.  In the end, powerful people and organizations are going to try to influence the bitcoin core code.  There should be a system put in place that doesn't allow any major changes without worldwide consent.  In this case, miners may be opposed to the proposal.  That wont matter because they will only have so many votes.

I am new here so be gentle.  This is just my idea from a newbie outsider perspective.  Its strange to see everyone just sitting around throwing their hands up doing nothing.  Very weird.

If change is needed.  Someone do something to make it happen.

Even if you don't think its that big of a threat, im pretty sure even you would agree it wouldn't hurt to institute limitations anyways.

-B-

If I were you I would not base anything on that guy's post.  He is just a guy, on the internet, with an opinion, which happens to be wrong.

I tried to be as gentle as possible.

He has a very valid point that the incentives in place are not strong enough to prevent a 51% threat

People who think GHASH.io is a legitimate threat to Bitcoin fail to understand the organic nature of this network.

yes yes I understand this would never happn and evn if someone did no one ould use the new code, but it would be cool if the algo was changed so the other 99% of the bitfcoin community could go back to mining and makinf minimal profits... kinnnddaa bit to commercial these days.

anyways more importantly how much did this  bitcoin dev make  $ :) ?

Can u plz substantiate your claim with proper logic ?

Bitshares is creating DPOS (delegated POS).  The delegates are voted on and they do the equivalent of miners.  I believe they use system metrics to change votes by default.  IE a Delegate/miner is misbehaving or not performing to expecttations, then the vote is automatically changed.  However, there will be a way to override it.

As far as ignoring Peter Todd as some guy on the internet.  LOL.  Peter Todd is probably one of the better BTC core devs.  You people need to wake up.  Stuff like this will keep BTC from ever growing past the current market cap.

I wonder what will make him sell another 50% next time.

When he is kicked out of the dev team.

I told him to put at least half of his fiat into NXT, since NXT cannot be practically 51%-attacked. He hasn't replied yet, probably thinking about it.

it should be explained why the op is wrong for another guy on the internet with an opinion!. I happen to think the op has a good point and proposal but would like to hear the exact argument against rather than a superior dismissive.  My perspective on btc from the beginning was to precisely avoid political interferences as well as financial ones in a single persons autonomy over these factors. I have read the technical arguments that seem to minimise the effect of a 51% attack as well as means to overcome it -but political decisions override technical  ability in the current systems and I would not want it to be so in the btc sphere? thoughts.

But he claimed on LTB that NXT is not truly a decentralized currency. So as a purist like him, I doubt it.

The "organic nature" of the network? Could you elaborate on what you mean? Centralized mining is always a problem and a threat. And a pool doesn't need 51% to be a threat either, it just increases the probability of successful double spending.

He might change his opinion now that he started doubting Bitcoin. It's who put most efforts into achieving decentralization is more decentralized. All is relative.

Yes, all is relative, but I am sure he'll find something else to complain about NXT.

That's a problem when people become too smart  ;)

So he's going to implement his tree chain on NXT?    ;D

I'm pretty sure that the bitcoin dev team(and almost certainly the mining community) are extremely resistant to change and might just be straight up inflexible. I can't imagine a situation where the current bitcoin devs would push forward with any major protocol change. And I think it makes it reasonably likely that an altcoin with totally new technology will eventually surpas bitcoin. (note: I own no altcoins)

NXT could use his coding skills for sure, whatever he would like to implement on it. Since it's extendable and can plug services on top of it, opportunities for software engineers are limitless.

I would like to extend a hefty "Fuck you" to Peter Todd.

This is a market failure plain and simple, not a Bitcoin failure. This will be resolved in due time, sans hard fork.

Then why does Bitcoin allow such a market condition in the first place?

Because it's a young, fledgling technology.

Because Bitcoin is a decentralized free market product. GHash.io was not here at the beginning. They come up to here with their credentials. Its the job of the competitors to fight with them. Bitcoin has nothing to do with that.

Except for allowing GHash to do what it's doing right now.

Agree on the rest though.

miners are morons for joining a pool that already has +40% or not switching pools.

you cant fix stupid.

Probably ignoring you and counting it as spam.

That's fine. He will join when he's ready, like many others. There is no hurry and no competition for NXT anywhere on the horizon.

So get off Ghash people.

Here's a 4 day tabulation from [urlhttps://blockchain.info/pools?timespan=4days]Blockchain[/url].


Relayed By    Count Percent
GHash.IO    265  44%
Discus Fish    67   11%
BTC Guild    58  10%
Eligius    46   8%
Slush    21   4%

Discus Fish is 3 blocks ahead (67 x 4 = 268)
BTC Guild is 11 blocks behind (58 x 4.4 = 255.2)
Eligius is 13 blocks behind (58 x 5.5 = 253)
Slush is 34 blocks behind (21 x 11 = 231)

Aside from Slush, the other top 3 pools are basically "even" or ahead with Ghash in terms of mining revenue vs hashrate. Again, this in ONLY 4 days of data. I would speculate that a 30 day window would show even closer results.

miners are not morons-they are maximising profits in their own interests. Also I think most are not altruistic so would stay with a pool even if there are competing pools (a bit like staying with your bank even if others are equally good/bad). In a previous comment btc was not the problem the market was. Basically correct but previous performance ( good handling of the update fork) is no assurance that another fork will be equally well handled and it makes a lot of people nervous-including me!.

People who choose to go with ghash are already voting in a way. They choose to give them so much hashing power.

Bitcoin is more likely to succeed if it's possible that it may fail.  

If it was clear that there were no risks, then earlier adopters would be less inclined to diversify their wealth by divesting.  If these people didn't divest (sell), then coins wouldn't diffuse as quickly into a wide and efficient wealth distribution.  

I don't know how old Peter Todd is, but his linked-in profile (http://ca.linkedin.com/in/petertodd) states the he received his bachelor's degree in 2011.  So I assume he is in his twenties and that five figures¹ was enough that he felt he should diversify (perhaps to sleep more soundly at night).    

So, once again, it seems like bitcoin is evolving as it should.  

¹I'm assuming he means CAD and not BTC.

I'm not sure I understand your point about wealth disfusing. The market price reflects the perceived risk.  The amount of coins is irrelevant really since bitcoin is divisible down to the ten millionth. Maybe I'm not understanding you here.

And what are the incentives to prevent a 51% attack?  Essentially it is the value of all Bitcoins held by those with the >51%, as if any attack occurs due to 51% attack the confidence in Bitcoin evaporates and with it the Bitcoin value.  Who *inside* Bitcoin has any interest in an attack?  Its an external threat from any organisation that wishes to destablise, disrupt or destroy Bitcoin, but to do so is now a very expensive matter.

i'm thinking maybe i should sell some of my coins as well. the 51% issue seems to be bitcoin's biggest hurdle. nevermind government regulation or scammers, this is the real issue.

You can't say it's a "market issue" and it's not Bitcoin's fault.  Bitcoin is totally based on free market principles so yeah there is a Bitcoin problem.  I do believe that if someone WANTED TO they could take down Bitcoin for a relatively smaller amount of money.  This is a problem that needs to be addressed somehow otherwise how could you have major widespread adoption when there is a risk of a terrorist or something taking down the whole system?

Is he concerned about a design flaw within Bitcoin or a design flaw with the open source project system?

ACH/EFT has had numerous attacks against it and numerous design flaws. The responsible team discovers the problem and corrects it, no big deal. That's what needs to happen with the design flaws within Bitcoin. The problem isn't that Bitcoin has a basic design flaw it's that no one is fixing it.

Solutions are already being talked about.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/282j4m/petamine_1150_ths_is_considering_joining_p2pool/

P2Pool with a subsidy provided by the greater community (I'd throw them a couple coins a year) would do wonders. It could very easily become the most profitable place to mine if the community made it so.

I'm anticipating this being the scenario in the not too distant future.

Actually they are morons.  The 1% they save in pool fees is probably lost (in fiat value) due to all the FUD created by the 50% threat of ghash.io.

GHASH has already stated that they will work on implimenting new features that will allow people who buy hash to point to a pool of their choosing. They are working to eliminate the fear that people have.

I don't think the dev team views this as a problem that should be solved by technology and instead one that should be solved by the community. I wonder how big of a mistake this will be.

Clearly Mr. Todd thinks it's a big enough mistake to justify unloading half his coins.

Very interesting. You got a link by chance?

First thing Bitcoin community learned me is : "never trust anyone"
Secont thing is that bitcoin, as peer to peer, open source, whatnot is created so we dont need to trust anyone (central auth etc.). So basicly, if they are not fixing it and "trust that community will solve it" than that's like backstabbing yourself in the back. First you say: "Hey guys, look, ill give you tool that will enable you to control your own wealth w/o any central auth" and than few sentances after they say: "yes but you have to trust..."
Sorry but that holds no credit with me.
Almost every problem Bitcoin has, should be solved by software (changing protocol) not by hardware, or god forbid community.

There was a post on their blog not so long ago about that.
And that's totaly ok...i rent ghs and i tell where it will mine. That's how it should be from the start (i do understand that it wa snot needed so...)

wouldn't switching to NXT, XPM, DRK or LTC be a more logical solution to the BTC 51% threat than selling bulk? Those coins (for the time being) are much less susceptible to a 51% attack....

I've been reading this 51% attack crap since early 2011 and it isn't fixed yet. Why? Is it because back then it was just Tycho, Slush, Eleuthria, Graet, LukeJr and a few others. They are all swell guys and would never hurt the network, right? Well, that's the thinking of a child's mind. You don't let a major issue sit unsolved for over three years where money is involved. I read a thread once where Gavin was talking to etotheipi and rambling on about prioritizing issues because he could only handle so much at a time. Tough shit. You can't handle the workload then get more people. Bitcoin is no longer here just to intellectually stimulate a select group of developers. It's real money we're talking about.

+1

same situation like "Transaction Malleability" and the mtgox desaster. such gaps have to be fixed and not let the bad boys take advantage of it!

One year ago, if someone would have raised the possibility of MagicalTux seriously hurting bitcoin, a chorus of disapproval would have dismissed that.  ::)

Good point, have we learned nothing from gox?

"BitFury Pulls 1PH/s of Mining Power from Ghash.io Amid Community Uproar"

http://www.coindesk.com/bitfury-pulls-power-ghash-community-uproar/ (http://www.coindesk.com/bitfury-pulls-power-ghash-community-uproar/)

He probably took that money and put it into Feathercoin. Some massive buys came in today! ChooChoo

voted on by whom?

-bm

You would think that the foundation might spend some of that money it's built up on more programmers. I'm sure there are lots of extremely talented people in the world who would love a chance to work on a challenging project like bitcoin.

I don't even think it's about willing bodies to do the job. The ego of a control freak has stifled development for years now. I assumed when Gavin stepped down things would change but I guess I was wrong. I was hoping  Wladimir would be more open to radically altering Bitcoin for the better. Especially since he's a damn good coder and the author of Dropship (effectively hacking Dropbox's servers). I guess I was wrong. Their going to sit on major necessary changes forever.

Thing is, major changes are affecting current mining system and, sorry to break your dream, but hardware companyies are way too deep into BTC development and as long as they have paws on bitcoin devs, nothing that could affect mining will change.
Only way i can see a change is something bad happening, so that devs have no more room for bullshiting like : "community will regulate itself" or "ASIC's are protectors of network" and are forced to change stuff they should have changed LONG time ago (protection of network on software level etc.)

Voting is not the answer.  Participation is.  Here is an open issue in which I lay out how to solve this and other thorny problems.

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/4079 (https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/4079)

Please share this issue widely.

Thank you.

By the stakeholders in the blockchain.

He is entitled to his opinion, already steps are being taken to contain the 51% threat
Not saying it's not a valid concern, just that views can differ on how acute and dangerous it is

The incentives aren't necessarily aligned with the way bitcoin works in regards to the dev team, in my opinion. The devs have no real reason to implement proactive protection because they major see changes as 'risky'. The main risk is that they get blamed for implementing a change incorrectly or making a mistake, thus taking the blame personally. So they have more motivation to stick with the status quo.

I think soon enough bitcoins glacial pace will end up leading to it being just chapter one in the history of cryptocurrencies. Not the whole book.

We view this as a huge problem. We invite all devs who agree to come join us at DigiByte. We have strategic main stream partners who believe the DigiByte brand has the most potential to be marketable above all alt coins. But we also have a solution to the centralized mining problem.

Email me at: dev@digibyte.co

You send and store data in megabytes & gigabytes. Why not send money in DigiBytes?

- Jared Tate
DigiByte Founder

https://www.linkedin.com/pub/jared-tate/90/9aa/257

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkWVD8MJlS0

Well if a dev is willing to sell his Bitcoins on this then that means something
It means that a proof of work and consensus system with a majority network does centralize if the incentive is to generate blocks
In order to counteract that a proof of work would need to be created that promotes decentralized networks

Satoshi could come in and fix this if he comes back otherwise we will have a Dev battle which could fork the system in the worst case.

This has me interested as well
I can see the problems of hashing incentives leading to a centralized mint if the network, lower fee rates and higher transactions through mining more blocks leads people to favor some pools over others.
Such as Ghash.io

In relation to the blocks solved by miners higher discovery rates tend to equalize payouts, since I am not a dev can't really speak much on the solution other than somehow splitting the miners up by having a dual method verification system.

Such as Sha 256 and another algorithm that would work together on the ledger requiring different software to operate making a 50% attack twice as difficult, or a sidechain that does the same thing based on the Bitcoin protocol and incentivizes miners to use it as a way to earn revenue.
Simply put two reward pools one made easier than the other but in a way that promotes distribution and decentralization over centralized networks.

__
From Reddit
1) Eliminate pools.
2) Provide a way for miners to solo-mine with low variance and frequent mining payouts even with only small amounts of hashing power.
3) Get rid of ASICs.
__

Possibly
1) Split pool distribution in a way that incentivizes miners to not collect hashing power into one pool
2) Provide a way for miners to solo-mine with low variance and frequent mining payouts even with only small amounts of hashing power.
Perhaps with a sidechain implementation or a fork.
3) Removing Asics
Difficult to implement other than to change the scripting algorithm, an increased hash rate also strengthens the security of the network but other than changing distribution or scripts this is difficult to counteract. (That said more nodes are needed)
If a split and fork is supported would also implement 4 into the suggestions

__
4) Increase nodes and promote an incentive to running full nodes that keep a record of transactions occurring over the network.
As data increases and the blockchain grows running full nodes becomes more burdensome so a mechanism of reward however minor may increase the decentralized aspects redundancy is important.
http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-nodes-need/

Anyways just my thoughts on this.

That said: A 51% attack should not be as profitable as earning the revenues from Blocks so the costs of doing this outweigh the benefits of such an attack.
However A centralized mint defeats the point of decentralization so it should be addressed.

What would you do in his place?

Personally I do not judge him for selling 50% of his coins.
I would have done the same because I have mouths to feed and bills to pay.
I will not sit around hoping that the major player will behave.

Even though I took a gamble in investing in Bitcoin, that is a gamble that I am not willing to take.

Actually I find it quite disappointing that he announced he sold half his holdings of Bitcoin. If he really believed in the project he must have known this disclosure would be very damaging. It's very appropriate, as a core Dev,  to air issues of concern that need urgent attention but to air he sold 50% of his holdings was poor form

I am sorry to say but with all the news going around about BTC lately I am starting to lose a bit of faith my self.

Way too much "centralization" being forced on BTC lately and it doesn't look good.

Sure sounds like Peter had most of his networth in BTC. Not a smart idea to begin with.

If you can't sustain your living expenses for at least 6 months in the worst case scenario of BTC going to $0 then you have made a grave mistake.

It's like that old saying "never keep all of your eggs in one basket".

Every miner including GHASH.IO should run distributed P2POOL and make it more than 70% of network hashing power to solve this problem permanently, I think that will be the major task for miners in the coming years

I also think that bitcoin foundation have the responsibility to advertise the use of P2POOL at large scale

Maybe this is the only way he saw to bring attention to the fact that the dev team has no intention to bring a technical solution to the table.

I wonder what he will buy with all that money?

what do you guys think will happen when GHASH abuses their position?

Right, everyone will leave the pool.

that's what i wish.
but are you really sure about that?

Everyone here likes to fantasize about Bitcoin replacing a national currency or a governments value transfer system. That's not possible as long as the advancement of Bitcoin is controlled by a select few frightened devs. Someone mentioned that devs might be so aligned with the infrastructure and business that implementing a sweeping change is impossible for them. Well, government payment systems like ACH/EFT can't be left to rot with major flaws or national financial systems crumble. Could you imagine a government spotting a basic design deficiency that allowed a possibly hostile foreign actor to destroy their financial system and then do nothing for 3+ years? I would never support Bitcoin as a national payment system because it's system of governance is flawed so badly that the collective authorities are willing to allow it to sit defenseless for years. Inaction is keeping Bitcoin at the level of a super high risk investment and nothing more.

this may have provoked this FUD
well,no only this,but it is many things around the fear.
bitstamp,ghash.io
it is a snowball

when will bitcoin price will raise? today it is dropping like anything.

I think the bitcoin dev team ideally should be dynamic and ready to face challenges that might appear down road. They should have contingency code written already for any possible situation that could arise. Even if it takes a team of a hundred of coders it's better then sitting on their hands and waiting for problems to come to them(and then still ignoring them).

that sounds like standard proof of stake.

-bm

here's whats bizarre. 

1) Chinese exchanges dont seem to be reflecting this price drop.

2) perhaps a new major stakeholder due to US Federal Auction.

3) Yahoo and Google both added support for BTC price.


 ?

-bm

I did consider this as a reason but if true that Bitcoin is clearly rudderless, that's a more damaging statement,unfortunately not looking good at all

agreed
and duckduckgo, expedia etc
atms popping up all over world

I'm presonally selling none, buy some more if dips lower, when I get some fiat


how many did this tool sell? was it a sizeable amount as he doesn't seem to say

I planned to purchases some miners which are priced in usd, with in 2 day $100 price down. I will loose more than 10% if i purchase now. :-[

When bad news stop bombing bitcoin. It is just insane, every few days there is another bad news.
Im realy wondering what exactly is being developed, aside from ponzi hype

also Apple announces Bitcoin support?  these are not indicators that Bitcoin is going away- it would appear that it has gained acceptance among major tech players.

all things seem to suggest this price dip was created to shake out small hands.

-bm

It was all good news for a long time there, what are you talking about?

US marshal selling seized coins isn't even bad news at all.

Ghash being stupid is just bitcoiners doing to themselves. It's not a new problem.

Thats a good idea. There are 8000 people worldwide working on Linux. They push out between 6 and 12 patches a minute. 75% of Linux devs are paid for their work. Major corporations sponsor development and oversight is through the Linux Foundation. If the Bitcoin Foundation wants to be more than just an umbrella for criminals they should solicit businesses like Overstock to become involved in development through donation and oversight of where their money is going.

that's what they are trying to do with the Bitcoin foundation.

Why people on this forum feel the need to constantly
bash the foundation is really beyond me.

They pay for Gavin and several other developers to work
full time on improving Bitcoin... and people want to take
that away.  I'm not saying BCF is perfect but you sure
get a lot of armchair quarterbacking going on here.

There are a lot more people complaining that doing. 

I am guessing some people just bought a miner and expect it to make them rich.   They are expecting the rest of the world to do what they want because they invested a few thousand dollars.

we don't like the foundation because they're trying to speak for us, when they are an obviously fuckedup/disorganized org. to make matters worse, they are probably just figuring out how to become a major player among the bitcoin community, so they can benefit themselves only.

i dont get whats foundation doint at all. i mean - sure they fixed ssl and sometiems update wallets with minor chanes - is it really that much work they cannot fix 51% issue in 3 years?
all the job they did could be done in propably 7 days not 3 years.

They are not a real foundation. That's why they get bashed. Their bylaws are written to favor "founding directors". Do you want to share a giant joke with me? Keep this to yourself though. I don't want the whole world knowing it. Read the highlighted names of the initial "Industry Directors" below. That's some funny shit jack! LOL


So the "Founding Directors" will ALWAYS have some control in the Bitcoin Foundation? That hardly seems like a real foundation at all. Seems more like a private boys club to me. One of them is in jail, one of them should be in jail and one is MIA. That means FOR LIFE either Gavin Andresen, Peter Vessenes, Roger Ver or Patrick Murck will have a controlling seat on the Board of Directors. Fucking shameful! You want to know what's even more shameful? I bet you that fewer than 10% of their membership even knows that.

To be honest, I have looked into Ghash.Io and I dont like anything about them, its hard to even understand their pool, and how it actually works. When I went to sign up I must first become a member of their CEX.io exchange, I dont like that at all, and I have never been able to even get into the mining aspect of their pool. Its really confusing, for me, and just seems like a big run around to me. I dont liken Ghash.io so I dont see why they are so large. I think there is more to that story than we can read on the cover. There seems to be something very weird about that Ghash.io "Pool"

And in addition, if so many people are so worried about thier 51% hashrate why do people keep joining them? and if they didnt want to hit that 51% why wouldnt they just place a stop on new members or hashrate increases on current members? see why i said there are weird things going on there. a few simple steps could stop all the nervousness, and I dont think they are taking those steps other than to say they arent trying to hit the 51% when in reality I think they are doing their best to hit it.

Sounds like you answered your own question.
Poor form? This is a guy who dedicated a lot of time to developing the Bitcoin system, he can do whatever he wants and speak about whatever he wants. Are the Bitcoin mind police going to come and shut him up?
 
This post shows a lot of the real problem that the BTC community has. Many of our members are like robots and just repeat the same shite and fail to dig into the issues and try and find solutions...or the BTC core dev's look the other way.
Let's get real.
There are problems and sweeping it under the rug is not going to solve it.

I agree to the poster below that way too much centralization is taking place and turning Bitcoin into something that it was not meant to be.
Say hello to the bankers and the financial guys for me.

Seems very extreme to me.  But that's just my view,  it's his money and he's free to take whatever actions he wants.

Actually members are aware of this... I wish more people would comment on the open issue on github, though....

https://github.com/pmlaw/The-Bitcoin-Foundation-Legal-Repo/issues/10

I know, I was being facetious. The Bylaws were written to be as close to a real document as you can get without the original collection of scumbags relinquishing power. The founding members have a major time and money investment in Bitcoin and don't just want Bitcoin to be successful they want it to be successful FOR THEM. There are many reasons I never joined the foundation but the best reason for separating yourself from them is because they don't really represent the users of Bitcoin. You might complain that there are many different kinds of reasons to use Bitcoin and that they can't all be represented. That's true but the foundation can represent more than just one.

This very thread topic is the perfect example. You don't like to risk your investment on the flawed concept of PoW but aren't in favor of PoS or PoB. Great, PoS may concentrate power in the hands of the wealthy and keep coins from moving. Ok, then develop something else and implement it. Fix the problem. Foundation founders can't support that because any sweeping change to the system would risk their investment. I'm actually glad to see Ghash.Io is menacing and no one cares to change anything. It proves that Bitcoin will never change even when it faces destruction because of the power a select group of people have over it (centralization at its finest). Bitcoin will live in BetaLand forever until the updates to Bitcoin Core are numbered 0.9.9.9.9. Bitcoin will eventually fork into a shell of its former self unless someone takes action and that might not be a bad thing. All is not lost. We have plenty of competition now willing to take over.

True! Most of the Bitcoin news the last 2 months has been overwhelmingly positive, this is a great time to be optimistic.  :) 

The problem isnt that Ghash will seek to attack the network, of course they wont, this business makes them millions and millions. Ghash generates vast amounts of wealth securing the network.

The problem now is there are probably only a handful of people in the world (the owners/operators of Ghash), if not a single person, who hold the network hostage to their whimsy.

Even if these people are rational actors, it still presents a major security threat. How much do you think it would cost to finance a small security force to kidnap the owner/operators of Ghash and seize control?

It might not even cost 7 figures.

so shouldn't we get the info out? who is the the main guy behind ghash.io? does he have a seedy past? where is PG to do the dirty work?

And we cannot forget that this problem isnt GHASH/CEX alone, there are many miners out there that point Ph/s on their pool that could easily help reduce this.

There's a fair chance this has nothing to do with 51% and Peter Todd just felt like cashing out some coins and wanted a good sounding reason.

What the heck, why would he want a reason? Is there some sort of obligation for bitcoin core devs to keep their money in bitcoins? Do they have to publicly explain when they cash out? I don't think so, it's their money they are free to do how they like.

Will he be buying PeerCoins with those Bitcoins?

Please comment on github at https://github.com/pmlaw/The-Bitcoin-Foundation-Legal-Repo/issues/10 - I am ABISprotocol so you know how i think, but consider supporting the positions of nwfella, sosojni, and ripper234 as expressed in the issue description and later comments

please consider commenting on github, https://github.com/pmlaw/The-Bitcoin-Foundation-Legal-Repo/issues/10 i urge you to support the position of nwfella as a simple example of where this should go initially.  head away from centralization is better than status quo, that is for sure.

I'm confused. Why did Ron Gross decide to debate the issue on GitHub? Shouldn't that debate happen on the foundations forum where the effected membership can see it? I would go there and comment but I'm not really invested in the idea of having a foundation at all. At this early stage in Bitcoin history I don't really see the need. At some point Bitcoin might grow enough that some type of professional org is necessary but that's not today.

Just human nature.  People often feel the need to explain their actions.

Can't be just human nature. He knew he would be much criticized for this act and he still did it, though he could do it without anyone noticing. No, he truely started doubting Bitcoin, that's what it is. He had a plan set up in advance and he executed it, because he believes in the need for decentralization of Bitcoin more than many people who criticize him.

That's true it takes a set of bravery and willpower to execute a strategy even when people say your foolish for doing so.
The problems with centralized mining due to the development of ASIC's and the slowly decreasing amount of full nodes are issues that Bitcoin will need to face in future and find solutions to.

That said explaining your actions and rationale even if people don't agree is still a good thing to know.

No of course there is no obligation but all things being equal I would prefer the bitcoin devs to have significant bitcoin holdings so that their incentives align with mine. This is just what would benefit me personally(and anyone else holding bitcoin as an investment). I'm not saying that we should force people to hold bitcoins.

This is only a developer.