GHash.IO is standing at 51%

[pennywise]

Here in the topic, I read that miners joining GHash are only serving their own good which is the only reasonable thing to do.

Let's take a closer look at that statement.

- trying to maximize their profit, miners join GHash instead of another pool.

- GHash exceeds 51% hashing power.

- panic ensues and price of BTC goes down and therefore profits of the miners get lowered.

This short elaboration shows that miners joining GHash are actually not serving their best interest. There exists a math explanation for this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2d_dtTZQyUM


So to really serve their best interest, miners should voluntarily distribute themselves between several quality pools so that none of the pools can reach 51%.

If in this case the Nash equilibrium can be achieved with spread of information and voluntary decisions, good. Otherwise the bitcoin protocol will need to be somehow adjusted, I think.

[BitCoinDream]

Here in the topic, I read that miners joining GHash are only serving their own good which is the only reasonable thing to do.

Let's take a closer look at that statement.

- trying to maximize their profit, miners join GHash instead of another pool.

- GHash exceeds 51% hashing power.

- panic ensues and price of BTC goes down and therefore profits of the miners get lowered.

This short elaboration shows that miners joining GHash are actually not serving their best interest. There exists a math explanation for this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2d_dtTZQyUM


So to really serve their best interest, miners should voluntarily distribute themselves between several quality pools so that none of the pools can reach 51%.

If in this case the Nash equilibrium can be achieved with spread of information and voluntary decisions, good. Otherwise the bitcoin protocol will need to be somehow adjusted, I think.

Here is a little modification of your process to show how the profit is actually made...

- trying to maximize their profit, miners join GHash instead of another pool.

- GHash exceeds 51% hashing power.

- panic ensues and price of BTC goes down and therefore profits of the miners get lowered. and they buy more from the market.

- GHash.IO stops some their mining machine to get down to 30%.

- Market rises again and they book all the profit.


p.s. ...and anyone can ride this tide. This is how traders make profit more than miners w/o investing in mining, but by analysing the fact & figures with proper logic.

[pennywise]

- GHash exceeds 51% hashing power.

- panic ensues and price of BTC goes down and therefore profits of the miners get lowered. and they buy more from the market.

- GHash.IO stops some their mining machine to get down to 30%.

- Market rises again and they book all the profit.

I could be wrong but I don't think they will do it. A serious company (which, I imagine, GHash is) wouldn't trade its long-term prospects (which are closely connected to public loss of trust) for some short-term profit.

Besides, big strains to make bitcoin volatile are harming towards it. By making its price stable, its value would rise much faster (I guess some volatility would remain), than by making it volatile. And who the fuck needs to manipulate the price of BTC when all you have to do is buy and HODL anyway?

[BCwinning]

- GHash exceeds 51% hashing power.

- panic ensues and price of BTC goes down and therefore profits of the miners get lowered. and they buy more from the market.

- GHash.IO stops some their mining machine to get down to 30%.

- Market rises again and they book all the profit.

I could be wrong but I don't think they will do it. A serious company (which, I imagine, GHash is) wouldn't trade its long-term prospects (which are closely connected to public loss of trust) for some short-term profit.

Besides, big strains to make bitcoin volatile are harming towards it. By making its price stable, its value would rise much faster (I guess some volatility would remain), than by making it volatile. And who the fuck needs to manipulate the price of BTC when all you have to do is buy and HODL anyway?

Unless they steal someones coins ala gox'd I seriously doubt the community at large would care that much.
greed is the drive in this community.

[Dr. Sekxy]

51% mining pool is not a 51% attack

[Catmoonglow]

When we will move to P2P pools?

[newIndia]

- GHash exceeds 51% hashing power.

- panic ensues and price of BTC goes down and therefore profits of the miners get lowered. and they buy more from the market.

- GHash.IO stops some their mining machine to get down to 30%.

- Market rises again and they book all the profit.

I could be wrong but I don't think they will do it. A serious company (which, I imagine, GHash is) wouldn't trade its long-term prospects (which are closely connected to public loss of trust) for some short-term profit.

Besides, big strains to make bitcoin volatile are harming towards it. By making its price stable, its value would rise much faster (I guess some volatility would remain), than by making it volatile. And who the fuck needs to manipulate the price of BTC when all you have to do is buy and HODL anyway?

Unless they steal someones coins ala gox'd I seriously doubt the community at large would care that much.
greed is the drive in this community.

Dont blame the bitcoin community. Greed is the driving factor of the homo-sapience community.

[BCwinning]

- GHash exceeds 51% hashing power.

- panic ensues and price of BTC goes down and therefore profits of the miners get lowered. and they buy more from the market.

- GHash.IO stops some their mining machine to get down to 30%.

- Market rises again and they book all the profit.

I could be wrong but I don't think they will do it. A serious company (which, I imagine, GHash is) wouldn't trade its long-term prospects (which are closely connected to public loss of trust) for some short-term profit.

Besides, big strains to make bitcoin volatile are harming towards it. By making its price stable, its value would rise much faster (I guess some volatility would remain), than by making it volatile. And who the fuck needs to manipulate the price of BTC when all you have to do is buy and HODL anyway?

Unless they steal someones coins ala gox'd I seriously doubt the community at large would care that much.
greed is the drive in this community.

Dont blame the bitcoin community. Greed is the driving factor of the homo-sapience community.

not blaming anyone. Just opining my perspective .

[unexecuted]

That's a little worrying that a 51%attack is so easy..

[newIndia]

That's a little worrying that a 51%attack is so easy..

Reaching 51% hash power and making the attack is different like having nuclear bomb and dropping it on a country.

[Searing]

Just checked this out to see what ghash.io's network % is ( see https://blockchain.info/pools?timespan=24hrs )


is it really 32% now or does it just say such cause it is getting DDOS attacks

thanks

Searing

[validium]

Just checked this out to see what ghash.io's network % is ( see https://blockchain.info/pools?timespan=24hrs )


is it really 32% now or does it just say such cause it is getting DDOS attacks

thanks

Searing

Its at 30% now and i hope it stays that way for a long time.

[Bit_Happy]

.........
Update: I have changed the initial title from 49% to 51% as I can see it has now reached 50% !!!
.......

Time to change the title to ~32%, please promote accuracy instead of (intentional?) FUD.  

[innocent93]

GHash.IO has dropped down to 33%,actually,the time of standing above 50% is very short.
 no worry about the 51% attack.

[Parazyd]

They should go below 30% and then the crisis is averted. As long as they don't point the miners to "unknown".

[BitCoinDream]

GHash.IO has dropped down to 33%,actually,the time of standing above 50% is very short.
 no worry about the 51% attack.

No worry ....if u think Bitcoin is a bubble. But for us, who think Bitcoin is here for the long term to fight out the current monetary system, this is a weakness to be dealt with. DeepBit & GHash.IO are the 2 that have reached 51% till date, but no attack has taken place. DeepBit has gone to oblivion and probably one day GHash.IO will vanish too. But a new player will emerge and 51% will need to be addressed.

[Swordsoffreedom]

GHash.IO has dropped down to 33%,actually,the time of standing above 50% is very short.
 no worry about the 51% attack.

No worry ....if u think Bitcoin is a bubble. But for us, who think Bitcoin is here for the long term to fight out the current monetary system, this is a weakness to be dealt with. DeepBit & GHash.IO are the 2 that have reached 51% till date, but no attack has taken place. DeepBit has gone to oblivion and probably one day GHash.IO will vanish too. But a new player will emerge and 51% will need to be addressed.

The biggest concern is that someone makes a service so efficient that everyone will flock to it
Gigahash was the closest by far by acting both as an exchange and a location for coins to be mined in addition offering different pool choices besides bitcoin and offering lower fees are a great combination.

That said it brings about the risk of an exchange and security crashing if everyone flocks to the network
A different approach such as Proof Of Stake acts as incentive to avoid a 50% attack but as Bitcoin is just proof of script we will always need to be concerned about a network hitting 51% concentration.

That and the decreasing number of full nodes as ASIC mining becomes centralized and the people who use full nodes to relay the block chain independently and decentralization of nodes starts to decrease.

These are concerns that I think Bitcoin has not addressed well and will need to find solutions to while we still have time to modify and adapt the system...

That or we will need to as a community one day accept a centralized mint in terms of hashrate and a few major nodes run by major mining companies that maintain the network due to the increasing size of the Blockchain and transactions.

[newIndia]

GHash.IO has dropped down to 33%,actually,the time of standing above 50% is very short.
 no worry about the 51% attack.

No worry ....if u think Bitcoin is a bubble. But for us, who think Bitcoin is here for the long term to fight out the current monetary system, this is a weakness to be dealt with. DeepBit & GHash.IO are the 2 that have reached 51% till date, but no attack has taken place. DeepBit has gone to oblivion and probably one day GHash.IO will vanish too. But a new player will emerge and 51% will need to be addressed.

The biggest concern is that someone makes a service so efficient that everyone will flock to it
Gigahash was the closest by far by acting both as an exchange and a location for coins to be mined in addition offering different pool choices besides bitcoin and offering lower fees are a great combination.

That said it brings about the risk of an exchange and security crashing if everyone flocks to the network
A different approach such as Proof Of Stake acts as incentive to avoid a 50% attack but as Bitcoin is just proof of script we will always need to be concerned about a network hitting 51% concentration.

That and the decreasing number of full nodes as ASIC mining becomes centralized and the people who use full nodes to relay the block chain independently and decentralization of nodes starts to decrease.

These are concerns that I think Bitcoin has not addressed well and will need to find solutions to while we still have time to modify and adapt the system...

That or we will need to as a community one day accept a centralized mint in terms of hashrate and a few major nodes run by major mining companies that maintain the network due to the increasing size of the Blockchain and transactions.

The bolden part gives me the idea of how internet was initially designed and how it got under the control of ISPs.