No they aren't.

Estimates of the number of CPU cores owned by Google varies wildly.  ZDNet did an one back in 2007.  They reckoned that Google had the capacity for 654,400 processor cores (so maybe 300,000 actual CPUs).

That's in just one building.

The site in question has two such buildings.

And that's just one site out of many.

Now, how much of that is speculation, and how much of the capacity is actually filled I have absolutely no idea.  But to underestimte what Google is capable of is, I think, a dangerous thing to do.

Thanks for making that clear Joel.

It's definitely a good idea, but how cheap is cheap?

I know that seedboxes can be had for as little as £1.20 (that's GBP, so maybe $1.90 USD) per month for 10 GB disk space.

So, by extension, it's practical for the bitcoin economy to continue as it is now, with no more coins being created or introduced than are currently in circulation?


I think there's a 'perceived value' thing to be addressed.  I think that people are unlikey to be drawn in if the price of a single coin is excessively high (in fiat terms).


Yes, I agree that it's unrelated to mining, but it's a very real possibilty if someone decides to throw enough power at it.

Unless I'm misunderstanding things (which is quite possible) then it seems to me that it's also a much much bigger issue than the time it takes to confirm a transaction.  Doesn't control of the block chain enable the controller to reverse every transaction (or at least a significant proprotion of them), and also create fraudulent transcations?

This is what seedboxes are for.

There are plenty of places offering these.  I do so myself, and would definitely consider doing them in exchange for bitcoins if the coin:fiat price was stable enough.

Demonoid ratios are notoriously inaccurate.  Unlike other 'proper' private trackers they don't use any keys in the announces or torrents but instead rely on IP addresses.  This fails on many levels.

Anyone with a dynamic IP address is pretty much guaranteed to have an incorrect ratio.  Demonoid simply use the address you had when you last logged in there, so if your address changes then it won't be connected to your account or the torrents you're running.  Further, if someone else is allocated your IP address as last recorded by Demonoid then all their transfers will be assigned to you.

And it doesn't work at all if you use a seedbox.

Without commenting on the likelihood or otherwise, I don't see how it would be good for anyone.

If a Big Player™ decided to undermine bitcoins then they could do so very easily.  All they'd have to do is throw enough resources at it to capture the majority of the mining capability and they'd be able to sit on whatever they mine.  This would be likely to temporarily push up the value of existing coins, thereby making it much more difficult for any new adopters to jump in.  Then when the number of people using bitcoins contracts and the number of services accepting them in payment shrinks (both of which I think would be likely in this scenario) the value of each coin would decrease as the existing supply outpaced the demand.

And don't forget the 51% thing.  That's potentially a very big issue.  If someone could control the block chain, even partialy, then the intergity of the entire system would be compromised.

If such a player actually wanted to help bitcoins then the best thing they could do is not mine at all, but rather just start accepting them as payments.

Not talking about it won't reduce the risk of it happening.

These people aren't stupid, are very likely to be aware of bitcoins, and have huge resources at their disposal.

A head-in-the-sand attitude won't help anyone.  It's better to be aware of and address these (very real) possibilities rather than brushing them under the carpet and hoping it won't happen.

[edit]
Added the quote to make it clear what i replying to
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If Google (or some well-resourced TLA) wanted to kill BTC (I'm not saying they do, just if they did) and they decided to get serious then I imagine that they could do so fairly easily.

If they threw even a fraction of their computing power into mining I suspect that they could outpace the total output of the current miners and grab the lion's share of new coins for themeselves.  They could then simply sit on these (or even "destroy" them).  Some people may argue that this would increase the value of existing coins, but I don't think so.  If there were no freely-available new coins then the barrier to entry would become much higher for potential new adopters.  The outcome would be a smaller user base, and possibly also the ultimate a collapse of the system, except pehaps amongst those already holding coins.

There's also the 51% thing to consider.  Any big player with sufficient resources could conceivably disrupt or corrupt the block chain.

I've been reading the forums for a while and signed up to answer the Linux question here: http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=22697.0

But it seems I can't.  Oh well.