GHash.IO hashrate

[Hyena]

The ghash.io thing where people keep joining ghash faster it gets closer to 51% reminds me of the movie Untraceable where a serial killer ties up his victims and puts them on a Youtube feed with a system where the more people that are watching a video, the faster the victim dies,  and then millions of viewers exponentially pile in to watch, brutally killing the victim.

Is it a good movie or it's just gore like saw??

There is some gore but it's not a just a gore movie - it is a movie about human psychology and how greedy people are, because everyone insists on watching the movie, which contributes to the victim dying.

it's a pretty good movie, i remember watching it with my ex.

but it's indeed a bit like the GHASH situation indeed, but in their defense, GHASH is still the best pool by far.

<tinfoilhat>
What if GHASH pays other pools to remain unattractive to miners?
</tinfoilhat>

[Este Nuno]

The ghash.io thing where people keep joining ghash faster it gets closer to 51% reminds me of the movie Untraceable where a serial killer ties up his victims and puts them on a Youtube feed with a system where the more people that are watching a video, the faster the victim dies,  and then millions of viewers exponentially pile in to watch, brutally killing the victim.

Is it a good movie or it's just gore like saw??

There is some gore but it's not a just a gore movie - it is a movie about human psychology and how greedy people are, because everyone insists on watching the movie, which contributes to the victim dying.

it's a pretty good movie, i remember watching it with my ex.

but it's indeed a bit like the GHASH situation indeed, but in their defense, GHASH is still the best pool by far.

<tinfoilhat>
What if GHASH pays other pools to remain unattractive to miners?
</tinfoilhat>

What if someone wants to kill bitcoin simply pays more to miners than Ghash?

[Notanon]

Logic and market forces should have dictated that a competitor matching GHash.io in terms of services and abilities would have popped up by now. The fact that this hasn't happened and people are crying foul about a superior service being flocked to and dominating instead of the other mining pools says a fair bit about this community and Bitcoin mining in general, and of an obvious elephant in the room that no one has dared considered mentioning until now. If anything, I'm surprised some of the smaller pools that have been around for a few years haven't considered merging to counter GHash.io instead of just sitting twiddling their thumbs like they have been for the past few months everytime the hashrate on GHash.io has soared close to 50% and crying "Woe is me".

TL;DR the community has only its complacency to blame for.

[Benjig]

Logic and market forces should have dictated that a competitor matching GHash.io in terms of services and abilities would have popped up by now. The fact that this hasn't happened and people are crying foul about a superior service being flocked to and dominating instead of the other mining pools says a fair bit about this community and Bitcoin mining in general, and of an obvious elephant in the room that no one has dared considered mentioning until now. If anything, I'm surprised some of the smaller pools that have been around for a few years haven't considered merging to counter GHash.io instead of just sitting twiddling their thumbs like they have been for the past few months everytime the hashrate on GHash.io has soared close to 50% and crying "Woe is me".

TL;DR the community has only its complacency to blame for.

Eligious pool and slush should have been merged at this point now, anyway they are going down in hashrate eveyrmonth, if they dont do anything they will just dissapear in a matter of months 

[bitleif]

Ok .. am I the only one who fails completely to see how this is such a big deal?

Please someone educate me.

[MatTheCat]

Ok .. am I the only one who fails completely to see how this is such a big deal?

Please someone educate me.

Not an expert myself but if any one entity has more than 50.000001% control of the Bitcoin network then it would be possible to compromise the entire system by making double spends that are 'verified' by the Bitcoin network. I suppose in essence, they would have a Bitcoin printing press.

[Miz4r]

Ok .. am I the only one who fails completely to see how this is such a big deal?

Please someone educate me.

It isn't, but you can't control mass hysteria (stupidity). It's like the malleability issue, everyone was completely hysteric about it when MtGox reported about it. Transaction malleability is still there but now you hear nobody about it (and it still isn't a big deal), this is just how mass psychology works. In a month from now Ghash will be back to 35-40% and everyone will be happy again, even though there is really no significant difference between a pool owning 51% of the hashrate or 30%.

[bitcoinsrus]

I think that the 51% pool would have to do malicious things (that can only affect future blocks, not past blocks). Then everyone in the network would see these attacks. Other pools could join together to own a larger portion to counter(or the big 51% pools miners could go to another pool).

If they do malicious things and double spend, cant people just put like a red flag on bitcoin usage so everyone else knows that bitcoin is not safe until the issue is resolved.

What I think is that if there is a problem, it is very likely that it can be resolved one way or another.
And I do not think ghash has any malicious intent (they just want to get the probability of hitting more blocks in a row to make more $$)

[MatTheCat]

If they do malicious things and double spend, cant people just put like a red flag on bitcoin usage so everyone else knows that bitcoin is not safe until the issue is resolved.

I will put my hands up and admit that I don't understand Bitcoin from a technical standpoint at all. But should any events occur where 'people just have to put up a red flag on Bitcoin usage because it is unsafe', then Bitcoin is finished.

[bitcoinsrus]

If they do malicious things and double spend, cant people just put like a red flag on bitcoin usage so everyone else knows that bitcoin is not safe until the issue is resolved.

I will put my hands up and admit that I don't understand Bitcoin from a technical standpoint at all. But should any events occur where 'people just have to put up a red flag on Bitcoin usage because it is unsafe', then Bitcoin is finished.

I got that info from watching one of andreas youtube vids where someone asked him about the 51% ghash (in jan). He basically said the community would react to counter the attack. Yea the red flag thing I mentioned might not work (exactly like that).

[ShakyhandsBTCer]

Ok .. am I the only one who fails completely to see how this is such a big deal?

Please someone educate me.

It isn't, but you can't control mass hysteria (stupidity). It's like the malleability issue, everyone was completely hysteric about it when MtGox reported about it. Transaction malleability is still there but now you hear nobody about it (and it still isn't a big deal), this is just how mass psychology works. In a month from now Ghash will be back to 35-40% and everyone will be happy again, even though there is really no significant difference between a pool owning 51% of the hashrate or 30%.

This is true, ghash would likely never attempt a 51% attack.

The good news is that it does not matter as bitfury is moving several PH/s of capacity out of ghash

[Parazyd]

Ok .. am I the only one who fails completely to see how this is such a big deal?

Please someone educate me.

It isn't, but you can't control mass hysteria (stupidity). It's like the malleability issue, everyone was completely hysteric about it when MtGox reported about it. Transaction malleability is still there but now you hear nobody about it (and it still isn't a big deal), this is just how mass psychology works. In a month from now Ghash will be back to 35-40% and everyone will be happy again, even though there is really no significant difference between a pool owning 51% of the hashrate or 30%.

This is true, ghash would likely never attempt a 51% attack.

The good news is that it does not matter as bitfury is moving several PH/s of capacity out of ghash

Again, it's not the question of would Ghash do it or not...
The point is, it's possible and people can get greedy. Plus, agencies and governments.

[rudius]

Ok .. am I the only one who fails completely to see how this is such a big deal?

Please someone educate me.

It isn't, but you can't control mass hysteria (stupidity). It's like the malleability issue, everyone was completely hysteric about it when MtGox reported about it. Transaction malleability is still there but now you hear nobody about it (and it still isn't a big deal), this is just how mass psychology works. In a month from now Ghash will be back to 35-40% and everyone will be happy again, even though there is really no significant difference between a pool owning 51% of the hashrate or 30%.

This is true, ghash would likely never attempt a 51% attack.

The good news is that it does not matter as bitfury is moving several PH/s of capacity out of ghash

Again, it's not the question of would Ghash do it or not...
The point is, it's possible and people can get greedy. Plus, agencies and governments.

Agreed. Not a concern for now, but it s a long term problem that need to be deal with if bitcoin want to stay.

[reg]

Ok .. am I the only one who fails completely to see how this is such a big deal?

Please someone educate me.

It isn't, but you can't control mass hysteria (stupidity). It's like the malleability issue, everyone was completely hysteric about it when MtGox reported about it. Transaction malleability is still there but now you hear nobody about it (and it still isn't a big deal), this is just how mass psychology works. In a month from now Ghash will be back to 35-40% and everyone will be happy again, even though there is really no significant difference between a pool owning 51% of the hashrate or 30%.

This is true, ghash would likely never attempt a 51% attack.

The good news is that it does not matter as bitfury is moving several PH/s of capacity out of ghash

Again, it's not the question of would Ghash do it or not...
The point is, it's possible and people can get greedy. Plus, agencies and governments.

Agreed. Not a concern for now, but it s a long term problem that need to be deal with if bitcoin want to stay.

no you are not the only one but there are a few who also think its not a major problem as so far as I know no one has yet lost a coin even on a double spend. however the potential is there to control the block chain by a political or financial organisation and this undermines a core principal of btc that must not be allowed to happen. I believe the majority of bitcoiners are very concerned that there seems no involvement by the core developers to prevent this possibility? so as i posted previously I remain concerned.

[bananahunter67]

These guys are making nice money from their pool. 

[freebit13]

Merging pools to counter GHash would not be a good thing... it kinda goes against the decentralization thing bitcoin has going for it 

[ShakyhandsBTCer]

Ok .. am I the only one who fails completely to see how this is such a big deal?

Please someone educate me.

It isn't, but you can't control mass hysteria (stupidity). It's like the malleability issue, everyone was completely hysteric about it when MtGox reported about it. Transaction malleability is still there but now you hear nobody about it (and it still isn't a big deal), this is just how mass psychology works. In a month from now Ghash will be back to 35-40% and everyone will be happy again, even though there is really no significant difference between a pool owning 51% of the hashrate or 30%.

This is true, ghash would likely never attempt a 51% attack.

The good news is that it does not matter as bitfury is moving several PH/s of capacity out of ghash

Again, it's not the question of would Ghash do it or not...
The point is, it's possible and people can get greedy. Plus, agencies and governments.

Agreed. Not a concern for now, but it s a long term problem that need to be deal with if bitcoin want to stay.

no you are not the only one but there are a few who also think its not a major problem as so far as I know no one has yet lost a coin even on a double spend. however the potential is there to control the block chain by a political or financial organisation and this undermines a core principal of btc that must not be allowed to happen. I believe the majority of bitcoiners are very concerned that there seems no involvement by the core developers to prevent this possibility? so as i posted previously I remain concerned.

It is acknowledged to be a weakness of Bitcoin. It would be very difficult to "force" an entity not to commit a 51% attack nor to control a majority of the hashrate

[maker88]

Ok .. am I the only one who fails completely to see how this is such a big deal?

Please someone educate me.

It isn't, but you can't control mass hysteria (stupidity). It's like the malleability issue, everyone was completely hysteric about it when MtGox reported about it. Transaction malleability is still there but now you hear nobody about it (and it still isn't a big deal), this is just how mass psychology works. In a month from now Ghash will be back to 35-40% and everyone will be happy again, even though there is really no significant difference between a pool owning 51% of the hashrate or 30%.

This is true, ghash would likely never attempt a 51% attack.

The good news is that it does not matter as bitfury is moving several PH/s of capacity out of ghash

Again, it's not the question of would Ghash do it or not...
The point is, it's possible and people can get greedy. Plus, agencies and governments.

i don't see where greedy and destroying your own income comes together. I've heard it over and over. ghash aka people who are getting rich on bitcoin, will intentionally destroy bitcoin. because greed. what i never hear is how that conclusion was reached. where does greed involve you killing your income? i would define greed as a drive to keep your income going at all cost.

[JorgeStolfi]

i don't see where greedy and destroying your own income comes together. I've heard it over and over. ghash aka people who are getting rich on bitcoin, will intentionally destroy bitcoin. because greed. what i never hear is how that conclusion was reached. where does greed involve you killing your income? i would define greed as a drive to keep your income going at all cost.

Guy works for a company, embezzles a large sum, flees the country, company collapses.

Guy works for a company, gets paid a nice sum by competitor to sabotage it.

Guy manages the finances of a company,  "borrows" a large sum from its bank accont to invest in some rich-quick venture, venture fails, company goes bankrupt.

Guy owns a company, decides to use cheap unsafe components in his product to increase profits, clients get harmed and sue the company for damages, company goes bankrupt.

Guy manages a company, fire the highest-pay employees to increase profits, hires inexperienced workers who cause huge accident. 

And so on.  You can easily find uncoutable examples in the media of people killing their golden-egg goose out of greed.

[galbros]

While I still don't see what makes Ghash.io such an amazing pool, I don't think just combining existing pools is going to do the trick.  Usually when two second run businesses combine you get just a bigger second run business.  The other pools are clearly missing some key feature, hash trading?, that Ghash.io offers.

I agree this is worrisome, not so much from the 51% attack, which is in no way armageddon, but from the fact that a pool can appear that is so much better than all the others and can't be imitated or excelled by the community.