And how do they know I submitted the false blockchain? Unless I am BCX and announce my intentions, nobody knows I am the one with the secret hash power.
All I did was accept BTC transfers from a third party and converted them to dollars. Half of the transactions look exactly the same as mine do.
They all got rolled back, so which transactions belong to the bad guy? It's not my fault the exchange lost their BTC.

Transfer your coin to an exchange and convert it into dollars. Take your dollars spend them on hookers and beer. Replace the part of the chain that contains your transfer with your version of the blockchain that does not. Rinse and repeat.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Attacks#Attacker_has_a_lot_of_computing_power

Why does someone have to create something in order for the 51% attack to be a valid design flaw?

The alt chain would need new and useful functionality in order to gain popularity. Bitcoin clones are doomed to fail.
The alt chain would also need a sugar daddy in order to manifest the hash power to protect the chain. The sugar daddy would also have to dump the coins mined to keep the price below the point where it would be worthwhile to do a 51% attack.
All exchanges would need to participate in a cartel to react to 51% attacks (by agreeing to upgrade their clients to manually agree on the correct chain for instance).

And probably a bunch of other things as well.
The days of tossing a bitcoin clone over the fence and then speculating on it are over.

If BCX has indeed worked for Apple for some time there is a very good chance that he/she has the wealth to put behind such an attack.
AAPL stock options granted in 2006 @ a strike price of $85 would be worth $490 each today. Even a small allotment like 1000 shares per year would make BCX a millionaire.

Cats crap in sandboxes.

All you need to know about Pharr is

Estimated median household income in 2009:
Pharr:   $27,834
Texas:   $48,259

Then you have all organized an effective defense of Litecoin that will foil the 51% attack attempt. Well done.
We can close all these superfluous threads and open the exchanges again.

Does all the Bitcoinica drama actually boil down to "I gave some BTC to some guy in China, and he won't give them back!" ??

Tazmania.

My point exactly. 1 post in the newbie forum...
How about some organized resistance?

It appears that Litecoin is only being defended by angry forum posts.
It had some potential. At the very least it could have demonstrated how a block chain could recover from a 51% attack.
But it seems the LTC user community cannot organize a response, let alone a defense.

Cryptocurrencies will never be stronger than the people who participate in them and their willingness to exchange things outside the block-chain for things inside them.

Not really. 8 Months into Bitcoin's blockchain, very few people knew what it was.  There were no exchanges at that point, so it could not be priced. An attack on the BTC block chain would only be interesting from an intellectual point of view. Most of the people who knew about BTC were also supporters of it.

ASICs still have the power to disrupt, as they always have had in every industry everywhere.

New block chains cannot use the BTC launch as a model. It only works the first time (IMHO). Speculators and hackers are ready to pounce on any alt-chain and exploit any weakness because the exchanges implement the new blockchains immediately.

Finally, a 51% "attack" is just democracy in action. People vote with their hash power. The current party in power has as a policy that there shall be no double spending. However, if the BTCXpress party gets enough votes that policy may change. Rock the vote if you don't like it!

A fair point.
On the other hand, is Litecoin really a currency if one female Apple employee can destroy it? Apple has thousands of female employees, how can you possibly hope to keep them all happy? If Litecoin cannot be harmed by one female Apple employee, then it might be a currency.
Either way what is all the fuss about? Either Litecoin isn't worth saving or it doesn't need to be saved.

I do.

People "found" out my real name and address and nothing happened.
Well, one of my plants died. Maybe someone from these boards came and killed one of my plants as a warning.
Consider me warned.

Looks like Mlawrence struck a nerve.

Given just how much hate Bitcoin_raped_me has for BTCXpress, it has to be either Groinhunter or Viper from SoiledCoin.
Everyone else who hates BTCXpress is actually using their handle instead of hiding behind a sockpuppet.

Perhaps the reason behind inflaming BCX to attack Litecoin is to sensationalize the 51% attack and round up new supporters for SoiledCoin. Or maybe they own stock in JiffyPop. Or maybe now that SoiledCoin 3 is dead, they have a lot of time on their hands to vent their frustrations on these boards.

You need to look at how many BTC were in existence and multiply that by how much they were each worth and then determine hashes defending per dollar of cryptocurrency. That is the true cumulative worth of the block chain (from an attacker's point of view). Also, BTC had the advantage of being the first. The only people who put any store in it's value were people who believed in it. Now that BTC has paved that road, other cryptocurrencies cannot rely on being under the "hackers radar" when they launch. They either need additional protections to defend against a 51% attack early in their lifecycle, or they need to have very little value to discourage people from attacking the chain until there is enough hash power & resources to defend it.

Your comparison of hash strength of the two chains is also off since it has been shown that GPUs performance on LTC mining is not well bounded.

No matter the outcome, the proponents of Litecoin need to be prepared to spend money to put hashes behind their blockchain. Otherwise, it is vulnerable to bad actors and thus not a proper value store.

Just because people are putting money in does not mean it is worthwhile. Lots of people had invested money in Bernie Madoff for instance.
Litecoin stands or falls on its design, not on what people wish it could be.
Would you keep your money in a bank that left it lying on the floor, depending only on internet forum posts to deter thieves from taking it? Of course not.

It looks like the value of Litecoin has outstripped it's hash-rates ability to defend the block chain. The proper response for people who have invested in Litecoin is to engage more hash power to defend their value store or sell their Litecoin to reduce it's value. Either action make it less attractive to attack the block chain.