Concern? over 50% of miners controlled by two pools

[DeepCryptoanalist3]

51% attack do not allow you to steel money from someone else.

Wrong.
It can. It can rewrite the whole blockchain.

The whole blockchain is now very long... it will require little bit more computational resources than just 51%. 51% mining power allows you to just ignore some recent transactions. Also, in case of mining pools, if the pool administrator will ask nodes to do some work to prolong old blocks it will be transparent to nodes. Everyone knows what blocks pool is trying to prolong so the admin will be required to explain this behaviour. Rewriting the whole blockchain is possible only through the attack on SHA2 hash function. So it is better to worry about this.

[bryant.coleman]

The whole blockchain is now very long... it will require little bit more computational resources than just 51%.

Who knows... every now and then new supercomputers are being created with massive computational power. Will create interesting scenarios in the future. 

[CoinCidental]

The whole blockchain is now very long... it will require little bit more computational resources than just 51%.

Who knows... every now and then new supercomputers are being created with massive computational power. Will create interesting scenarios in the future. 

but the current network is only being strengthed ,not weakened as btc  becomes more famous

its already bigger than anything anyone could attack it  with and its growing with every new bitcoiner who joins
and gpus and asics  are sold out everywhere 

nobody is going to invent a supercomputer anytime soon that can outperform the btc network

[Lauda]

This ^^^^

My biggest fear is that the Star Trek Enterprise will come back through time to our century and pull off a 51% attack.

I think they are only ones with their super advanced technology that could pull it off.

Hell, Commander Data could probably do it with his positronic brain.  



  

You would be breaking the rules of time traveling if you made such changes.
Note for everyone: You can recover from a 51%.

[Trance]

Do you even know what a 51% attack is?  Do you know what can be done using it?  Do you know what would happen if a pool tried to do it?

Let's do a mind experiment.  Assume BTC guild, right now, has 60% of all the hashing power.  Now explain to me exactly what they would do in order to pull off a "51% attack", exactly what they would accomplish by doing it and most importantly exactly why they would do it.

This ^^^^

My biggest fear is that the Star Trek Enterprise will come back through time to our century and pull off a 51% attack.

I think they are only ones with their super advanced technology that could pull it off.

Hell, Commander Data could probably do it with his positronic brain. 



 

Haha, very interesting thinking

[BurtW]

This has all been discussed ad nauseum http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_nauseam (not ad hominem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem, unless that was meant as a joke, then, good one!)

Here is a pretty good thread that I moderated a while back discussing some of the technical aspects of a fork of this nature:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=352734.0;all

EDIT:  BTW the other thread mentioned in the above referenced moderated thread, the one that motivated me to open the moderated thread is:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=349869.0;all

which is a pretty good thread on the whole "attack" idea being discussed (again) in this thread.