bitcoin is really secure? question about mining pool...

[edo777]

Hi,
I have seen on blockchain.info that over 50% of the total hashrate is controlled by 3 mining pools. How do we know that they don’t come to an agreement to control the entire network Bitcoin allowing for example the double spending?

[1715151483]

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[1715151483]

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[OnkelPaul]

As soon as such an agreement (or just a reasonably plausible suspicion of one) would surface somehow, the value of bitcoin would most likely go down a lot, making the pools lose really big.
The would not be able to make up for that through any double spending tricks.
Of course, that would not make it impossible for the pools to try, but according to game theory they are very unlikely to try it because loss would be inevitable.

Onkel Paul

[spazzdla]

People would leave the pools.

Pools are just a group of people mining as one, NOT A SINGLE DAMN THING prevents them from jumping to another pool.  I can do it in about 60 seconds.

What is a threat is the owners of the central banks buying up several billion in mining gear to decimate the blockchain.

[pereira4]

People would leave the pools.

Pools are just a group of people mining as one, NOT A SINGLE DAMN THING prevents them from jumping to another pool.  I can do it in about 60 seconds.

What is a threat is the owners of the central banks buying up several billion in mining gear to decimate the blockchain.

And like the poster above said, if they try something stupid then watch people dump Bitcoin in fear. That is why Bitcoin is such a genius invention, it's a self regulated system.

[Mickeyb]

Hi,
I have seen on blockchain.info that over 50% of the total hashrate is controlled by 3 mining pools. How do we know that they don’t come to an agreement to control the entire network Bitcoin allowing for example the double spending?

Like the posters above have suggested, people will just leave pools on the slightest suspicion of wrong doing. Not just that, if any pool would come close to those famous 50%, people would massively leave (this has once happened in history, if you Google it, you will find it).

So after this incident, smart people have actually concluded that anything over a 25% is again dangerous, so that's why you don't see any pool controlling more than 25% of the hashrate at any given moment.

So to conclude, it's very easy to jump ships and stay healthy.

[isvicre]

Hi,
I have seen on blockchain.info that over 50% of the total hashrate is controlled by 3 mining pools. How do we know that they don’t come to an agreement to control the entire network Bitcoin allowing for example the double spending?

Older forum members know, it used to be one pool which had more than %50 hashrate, called Ghash.io. Nothing bad happened. If you try to do bad thing you'll harm Bitcoin and nobody use it anymore.
You don't need to worry, pools know what to do and what not.