Who cares about the 45% Ghash.io have - will you care when they are at 51%?

[noSlave]

There's probably too much money and power invested in the PoW infrastructure at this point for any real progress to be made. I appreciate what you're doing personally, but bitcoin is becoming an old dinosaur incapable of change or self criticism.

.....hmmm I see the self critcism everywhere. Not as much as it should be but it's still there.

[coolbeans94]

Switch to Mintcoin. 

30x faster than Bitcoin.
Most energy efficient.

[noSlave]

Switch to Mintcoin. 

30x faster than Bitcoin.
Most energy efficient.

not the worst idea.

But it's still contains the concept: the riches gone richer

[noSlave]

Update:
"Who cares about double spend. The more important risk is jamming up the system indefinitely by not allowing transactions through, or implementing white lists by only allowing certain transactions through from preapproved addresses.?"

[Unluckyduck]

The sad thing is that there is a good chance they will reach 51% because of apathetic miners who will stay with the pool and just expect the other guy to leave.

[Este Nuno]

The sad thing is that there is a good chance they will reach 51% because of apathetic miners who will stay with the pool and just expect the other guy to leave.

The thing is that it's quite possible they will just shift mining power outside of Ghash.io and still have over 50% but not have it show up that way on blockchain.info or anywhere else that tracks those statistics. It might be happening now, but who knows really.

This should be a much bigger issue than it is. BTC Guild already set the standard for how a pool should act under these circumstances, it would be good to see Ghash follow their lead.

[exocytosis]

The thing is that it's quite possible they will just shift mining power outside of Ghash.io and still have over 50% but not have it show up that way on blockchain.info or anywhere else that tracks those statistics. It might be happening now, but who knows really.

Exactly.

[os2sam]

Who cares about the 45% Ghash.io have - will you care when they are at 51%?

It's not a matter of caring.  It's a matter of not really being able to do anything about it.  Ghash.io has rate is mostly their own.  And if they reach 51% on their own hash rate what can anyone do?  What should anyone do?

If that happens then bitcoin price will fall.  Hopefully they are only interested in making revenue for their company.  Because if that is the case then they will mine until the price crash's and then quit or tapper back dramatically and move onto the next "get rich quick" scheme.

So Bitcoin will correct itself using market forces or it won't.  To exert other pressure on an entity to do what you/we want them to is an assault on human dignity and is the antithesis of the principles of Bitcoin if the first place.

So let Bitcoin go through its own correction or let it die on it's own merits.  Micromanaging the network will be a failure in the least a disaster at the most.

Sorry if these thoughts have already been posted.  I don't really feel like reading this whole thread.

[BCwinning]

maybe the developers need to add code to throttle nodes that start to encroach on the 50% mark.
So regardless if a node can hash over 50% of the network it won't matter.
How they can do that I don't know and I'm not sure if it's even wise to do so.
I'm sure it was considered if I thought about it

[os2sam]

maybe the developers need to add code to throttle nodes that start to encroach on the 50% mark.

Exactly the kind of micromanagement that will kill Bitcoin.

[Este Nuno]

maybe the developers need to add code to throttle nodes that start to encroach on the 50% mark.

Exactly the kind of micromanagement that will kill Bitcoin.

I don't know if this particular idea is a solution or not, but the alternative is doing nothing and killing bitcoin through lack of management.

[BCwinning]

maybe the developers need to add code to throttle nodes that start to encroach on the 50% mark.

Exactly the kind of micromanagement that will kill Bitcoin.

How do you consider that micromanagement? DO you propose to not do a thing and expect
the the pool operator to play nice? Head in the sand mentality?

[os2sam]

maybe the developers need to add code to throttle nodes that start to encroach on the 50% mark.

Exactly the kind of micromanagement that will kill Bitcoin.

How do you consider that micromanagement? DO you propose to not do a thing and expect
the the pool operator to play nice? Head in the sand mentality?

Yes, that is what I said in my above post.

What else can be done realistically.  We need Bitcoin because here in the U.S. the politicians took our currency off the gold standard with which has damaged our economy and allows politicians aka government to manipulate our markets.

So like I said Bitcoin will manipulate according to the originally established rules and succeed or it will not be able to adapt and will die.  If Bitcoin needs to micromanaged to stay alive then it is just as susceptible to manipulation as the U.S. currency and is no better and then won't be useful anyway.

[BCwinning]

maybe the developers need to add code to throttle nodes that start to encroach on the 50% mark.

Exactly the kind of micromanagement that will kill Bitcoin.

How do you consider that micromanagement? DO you propose to not do a thing and expect
the the pool operator to play nice? Head in the sand mentality?

Yes, that is what I said in my above post.

What else can be done realistically.  We need Bitcoin because here in the U.S. the politicians took our currency off the gold standard with which has damaged our economy and allows politicians aka government to manipulate our markets.

So like I said Bitcoin will manipulate according to the originally established rules and succeed or it will not be able to adapt and will die.  If Bitcoin needs to micromanaged to stay alive then it is just as susceptible to manipulation as the U.S. currency and is no better and then won't be useful anyway.

I disagree on how you are using the word micromanagement here. Managed yes micro'd no.
It's nothing more than adding another safeguard to preserve the currency.

[tianrui81317]

Very severe. we should act as a community.

[os2sam]

I disagree on how you are using the word micromanagement here. Managed yes micro'd no.
It's nothing more than adding another safeguard to preserve the currency.

Mechanisms to deal with large hashers that approach 51% are already in place.  When an entity reaches that point and they are deemed to not be trustworthy, that will cause the value to decrease.  When the value decreases then they no longer have an incentive to have that much hash power running and will stop.

Modifying the way Bitcoin works to prevent someone, you don't like, from reaching a certain percentage is what I would call micromanagement.  Once the precedent is set who is to say what that magic percentage that no one entity should be allowed to reach.  51% isn't the number that double spends are possible, that can be done with a much smaller percentage.

[zvs]

I'd be shocked if ghash.io hasn't been above 50% already for months.  It's against their interest for people to know they're > 50%, the solution is to simply submit blocks through unconnected IPs without a block sig that would identify them as ghash.io.

add:  It's not like they're relying 100% on people mining on their pool.  You'd have to be naive to think they wouldn't obfuscate the identity of blocks discovered by their massive ASIC farm.

[devphp]

Mechanisms to deal with large hashers that approach 51% are already in place.  When an entity reaches that point and they are deemed to not be trustworthy, that will cause the value to decrease.  When the value decreases then they no longer have an incentive to have that much hash power running and will stop.

You mean the price of Bitcoin decreases and the big hasher stops hashing that much? I wouldn't call it a 'mechanism to deal with large hashers', because everybody is punished proportionately with the decrease of the price (smaller miners may be punished even more than big ones). If that is the only 'mechanism', it's as good as none.

[QuestionAuthority]

Mechanisms to deal with large hashers that approach 51% are already in place.  When an entity reaches that point and they are deemed to not be trustworthy, that will cause the value to decrease.  When the value decreases then they no longer have an incentive to have that much hash power running and will stop.

You mean the price of Bitcoin decreases and the big hasher stops hashing that much? I wouldn't call it a 'mechanism to deal with large hashers', because everybody is punished proportionately with the decrease of the price (smaller miners may be punished even more than big ones). If that is the only 'mechanism', it's as good as none.

Finally, someone gets it.

[Este Nuno]

Mechanisms to deal with large hashers that approach 51% are already in place.  When an entity reaches that point and they are deemed to not be trustworthy, that will cause the value to decrease.  When the value decreases then they no longer have an incentive to have that much hash power running and will stop.

You mean the price of Bitcoin decreases and the big hasher stops hashing that much? I wouldn't call it a 'mechanism to deal with large hashers', because everybody is punished proportionately with the decrease of the price (smaller miners may be punished even more than big ones). If that is the only 'mechanism', it's as good as none.

Finally, someone gets it.

The invisible hand of the market is more like the invisible fist?