Ghash.io has voluntary to suspend parts of service!

[justusranvier]

If pools growing too large causes the exchange rate to crash that's a good thing.

Fear of their investment rapidly losing value is one of the economic incentives for pools to behave well.

[HeliKopterBen]

This may be a dumb question since I am not a miner but who is required to execute a 51% attack in a pool?  Does it require all participants of the pool to reverse transactions, ect. or can anyone or a small group within the pool or only the pool operators execute the attack? 

[TookDk]

This may be a dumb question since I am not a miner but who is required to execute a 51% attack in a pool?  Does it require all participants of the pool to reverse transactions, ect. or can anyone or a small group within the pool or only the pool operators execute the attack?  

The miners do not "know" what they are mining. The pool just send them jobs and the miners return the result (shares) and get pay (there are many different payment schemes), but most easy to understand is Pay-per-share, you get a fix amount of santoshi for each submitted share. The pool owner can use the hashing power they are in control of to any anything they like and most miners wouldn't even notice that they are not mining the honest block chain as long as they are being pay for the jobs.

btw. it do not require 51% of the hashing power to execute a "51% attack" - its a matter of statistic. e.g. 40% hashing power can also perform double spend, the success rate are just less. GHash.IO has definitely the hashing power needed to perform double spend attacks, the would loos mining time, but as long as you "cheat" yourself to more BTC than you have to pay the miners, then can it be a profitable business. A scheme for a double attack is to send a bet to Santoshi Dice, if the bet win, fine, take the money, if the bet loose, use the hashing power to confirm the transaction to have gone elsewhere.

[FandangledGizmo]

If pools growing too large causes the exchange rate to crash that's a good thing.

Fear of their investment rapidly losing value is one of the economic incentives for pools to behave well.

Never in my entire life, in any movie, book or forum, have I ever seen or heard, & I doubt whether it would be possible to find, even if I scoured the depths of the universe, a statement that is as unbelievably f*cking stupid as the one above.  

To anyone who contributes resources or works for a mining pool that controls more than 10% of the network you are as evil as the most oppressive government agencies & central banks in the world combined and your stupidity is only eclipsed by the person that wrote the above statement.

[TrollboxChamp]

If pools growing too large causes the exchange rate to crash that's a good thing.

Fear of their investment rapidly losing value is one of the economic incentives for pools to behave well.

Never in my entire life, in any movie, book or forum, have I ever seen or heard, & I doubt whether it would be possible to find, even if I scoured the depths of the universe, a statement that is as unbelievably f*cking stupid as the one above.  

To anyone who contributes resources or works for a mining pool that controls more than 10% of the network you are as evil as the most oppressive government agencies & central banks in the world combined and your stupidity is only eclipsed by the person that wrote the above statement.

I have to agree. The only good thing is an evenly distributed network. I approve of you looking for light in darkness but youre trying to turn shit into caviar.

[FandangledGizmo]

I just want to apologise to justusranvier, read some of his posts and he's clearly a much smarter guy than me.

This situation just got me worked up & I over-reacted.  

[justusranvier]

Maybe that wasn't as clear as it could have been.

If pools could grow indefinitely without consequence, then some of them, sooner or later, are going to try to monopolize the hashing power.

That is a bad thing.

If we assume pools operators and the miners who supply their hashing power are it to make money, then one very powerful disincentive for them to grow excessively is if their size causes adverse effects on the exchange rate.

That doesn't save you from an attacker with infinite dollars to spend who doesn't care about generating a positive ROI, but it does protect the network for lesser threats.

So when headlines appear about a pool getting too large cause a large selloff in the markets followed by rapid action by that pool to correct the situation it tells me the system is working.

[BigJohn]

For my money, this story isn't getting nearly enough attention.

Everyone is all up in arms about Ghash. But that's only part of the story. The fact is that for quite a while now over 50% of the hashing power is controlled by very few people. Bitcoin's hashing is quite centralized, and this is a huge issue for me. Bitcoin is supposed to be decentralized in essence. Yet one of the primary functions is effectively centralized.

I don't see what difference does it make that Ghash is ramping down, or that people are moving away from Ghash. They're just moving their power from one pool to another. The end result is exactly the same. The hashing power is controlled by the same few individuals.

[HeatherG78]

What I think is there should be no ASICs too.

Also, no one pool should have more than 10%

Even 20% is way too high for one pool

[TookDk]

What I think is there should be no ASICs too.

Well, there is an alternative: LTC.

[Pangia]

What I think is there should be no ASICs too.

Well, there is an alternative: LTC.

LTC is an alternative until that company (Alpha -- 'something') comes out with an ASIC for LTC.  Hopefully, they were just talking nonsense and can't do it until a few years.

[justusranvier]

But this didn't cause a crash...

It was enough of a selloff to prompt a rapid press release:

http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg1zczsg2014-01-09zeg2014-01-09ztgSzm1g10zm2g25zvzcv

https://twitter.com/cex_io/status/421334549726244864

[gweedo]

But this didn't cause a crash...

It was enough of a selloff to prompt a rapid press release:

http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg1zczsg2014-01-09zeg2014-01-09ztgSzm1g10zm2g25zvzcv

https://twitter.com/cex_io/status/421334549726244864

First off that is far from a crash. $50 down when the price is ~$940 is small. Now how can you tell that the volume is from panic sellers or overstock selling off their bitcoins? That is what caused the downturn and spike in volume.

[pissing]

A full-on crash is sure to happen in case ghash.io gain 51% of the network.
This issue can cause btc to loose up to 95% of the current value. Just my own estimate.
I will surely sell ALL my btc if i see ghashes.io gain the 50% no matter what the other news are.

You're an idiot.

Do you just follow people around the forum posting things like "you are an idiot" or "you are ignorant" to increase your post count and get money from the dice sponsor? I just clicked your last post, if it was my sponsorship program I would suspend your pay. Just because in the terms and conditions it says you cannot get away with saying "great post" and "thanks" doesnt make it acceptable to just go round posting "idiot" "ignorant" and "stupid".

Just a thought

[FandangledGizmo]

Maybe that wasn't as clear as it could have been.

If pools could grow indefinitely without consequence, then some of them, sooner or later, are going to try to monopolize the hashing power.

That is a bad thing.

If we assume pools operators and the miners who supply their hashing power are it to make money, then one very powerful disincentive for them to grow excessively is if their size causes adverse effects on the exchange rate.

That doesn't save you from an attacker with infinite dollars to spend who doesn't care about generating a positive ROI, but it does protect the network for lesser threats.

So when headlines appear about a pool getting too large cause a large selloff in the markets followed by rapid action by that pool to correct the situation it tells me the system is working.

Yes I realised that's what you meant the first time. But there is VAST, HUGE amounts of money to be made from having the power Ghash.io  currently has to crush the price, even if they only have the power to utilize it ONCE.

Do central banks like Bitcoin? How much would they be willing to pay to crush it's reputation and price just before the bank bail-ins are announced and set it back 1 year +?

A small group of people having this power is the antithesis of why Bitcoin was created.

[justusranvier]

Yes I realised that's what you meant the first time. But there is VAST, HUGE amounts of money to be made from having the power Ghash.io  currently has to crush the price, even if they only have the power to utilize it ONCE.

Do central banks like Bitcoin? How much would they be willing to pay to crush it's reputation and price just before the bank bail-ins are announced and set it back 1 year +?

How exactly do you propose that would play out?

[garcias]

Maybe that wasn't as clear as it could have been.

If pools could grow indefinitely without consequence, then some of them, sooner or later, are going to try to monopolize the hashing power.

That is a bad thing.

If we assume pools operators and the miners who supply their hashing power are it to make money, then one very powerful disincentive for them to grow excessively is if their size causes adverse effects on the exchange rate.

That doesn't save you from an attacker with infinite dollars to spend who doesn't care about generating a positive ROI, but it does protect the network for lesser threats.

So when headlines appear about a pool getting too large cause a large selloff in the markets followed by rapid action by that pool to correct the situation it tells me the system is working.

Yes I realised that's what you meant the first time. But there is VAST, HUGE amounts of money to be made from having the power Ghash.io  currently has to crush the price, even if they only have the power to utilize it ONCE.

Do central banks like Bitcoin? How much would they be willing to pay to crush it's reputation and price just before the bank bail-ins are announced and set it back 1 year +?

A small group of people having this power is the antithesis of why Bitcoin was created.

True

[FandangledGizmo]

Yes I realised that's what you meant the first time. But there is VAST, HUGE amounts of money to be made from having the power Ghash.io  currently has to crush the price, even if they only have the power to utilize it ONCE.

Do central banks like Bitcoin? How much would they be willing to pay to crush it's reputation and price just before the bank bail-ins are announced and set it back 1 year +?

How exactly do you propose that would play out?

Well I can think of a few scenarios, but here's one -

_______________________________________________________________________________ ________

Scenario 1:British Intelligence already owns Ghash.io

Ghash.io was reportedly sold to unknown British based interests a while back,  since then it has expanded aggressively.

The British Intelligence Services are among the best and arguably most secretive in the world. Their cyber-warfare department is also one of the most 'offensive-capable' in the world.

Besides serving the interests of their central bank, London is also the no.1 financial centre in the world.

To assume that they don't understand the potential risk crypto-currencies pose and to assume that they wouldn't seek to mitigate and control those risks is naive. That IS their job.

For the short and medium term at least, Bitcoin isn't excactly the Enigma machine either. Even 4 years in, Ghash.io has made it look laughably easy to gain control of a double-spend 'doomsday switch' which can be used to decimate the price and trust in Bitcoin at a critical moment. This power they may now wield over Bitcoin is priceless. Best of all it can be blamed on hackers/rogue employee/greedy pool owners, whichever serves their purpose best.

Counter: But 55% of their hashing power is external, as soon as any double spending occurs, those external hashers will rapidly switch over to other pools.

Response: Those are the numbers THEY gave you. I would also suggest that if you can see 45%, what don't you see?

___________________________________________________________________________

That's just one of many scenarios. Believe it or not as negative as I've tried to make it, I'm actually British and proud to be and I'm also not selling my BTC. But I think even if it suppresses the price in the short term it's worth keeping this problem front and centre and working to address it now, (by strengthening p2pool etc.)

[TookDk]

Yes I realised that's what you meant the first time. But there is VAST, HUGE amounts of money to be made from having the power Ghash.io  currently has to crush the price, even if they only have the power to utilize it ONCE.

Do central banks like Bitcoin? How much would they be willing to pay to crush it's reputation and price just before the bank bail-ins are announced and set it back 1 year +?

How exactly do you propose that would play out?

Well I can think of a few scenarios, but here's one -

_______________________________________________________________________________ ________

Scenario 1:British Intelligence already owns Ghash.io

Ghash.io was reportedly sold to unknown British based interests a while back,  since then it has expanded aggressively.

The British Intelligence Services are among the best and arguably most secretive in the world. Their cyber-warfare department is also one of the most 'offensive-capable' in the world.

Besides serving the interests of their central bank, London is also the no.1 financial centre in the world.

To assume that they don't understand the potential risk crypto-currencies pose and to assume that they wouldn't seek to mitigate and control those risks is naive. That IS their job.

For the short and medium term at least, Bitcoin isn't excactly the Enigma machine either. Even 4 years in, Ghash.io has made it look laughably easy to gain control of a double-spend 'doomsday switch' which can be used to decimate the price and trust in Bitcoin at a critical moment. This power they may now wield over Bitcoin is priceless. Best of all it can be blamed on hackers/rogue employee/greedy pool owners, whichever serves their purpose best.

Counter: But 55% of their hashing power is external, as soon as any double spending occurs, those external hashers will rapidly switch over to other pools.

Response: Those are the numbers THEY gave you. I would also suggest that if you can see 45%, what don't you see?

___________________________________________________________________________

That's just one of many scenarios. Believe it or not as negative as I've tried to make it, I'm actually British and proud to be and I'm also not selling my BTC. But I think even if it suppresses the price in the short term it's worth keeping this problem front and centre and working to address it now, (by strengthening p2pool etc.)

I luv conspiracy theories  
This is one of the better I have seen; unlikely but definite plausible (don't get me wrong, I think your post are great, and very relevant to the topic).

[keithers]

The whole ghash.io mining percentage is worrisome in my opinion.   I could totally see the US Gov't trying to mimic this if possible, to try gain some control that we definitely do not want them to have.