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[Baitty]

Ghash is the closest and they have said that they will be reducing the amount of miners if they get closer which they have been doing which I think is good as they own most of the hashing power right now but even if they didn't do that and had 51% it doesn't mean they could do the actual attack there is still some luck that they would need to perform the attack I honestly believe this attack has no threat to Bitcoin at the moment.

Ghash won't do a 51% attack even if they could just because they earn money through bitcoins.
By double spending they would decrease the trust people has in bitcoins and their business won't work anymore.

It's true but they have already made their bucks and if for some reason they lose a lot of their money and or get screwed by someone whats stopping them from going AWOL and attacking Bitcoin?

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[Marlo Stanfield]

Ghash is the closest and they have said that they will be reducing the amount of miners if they get closer which they have been doing which I think is good as they own most of the hashing power right now but even if they didn't do that and had 51% it doesn't mean they could do the actual attack there is still some luck that they would need to perform the attack I honestly believe this attack has no threat to Bitcoin at the moment.

Ghash won't do a 51% attack even if they could just because they earn money through bitcoins.
By double spending they would decrease the trust people has in bitcoins and their business won't work anymore.

It's true but they have already made their bucks and if for some reason they lose a lot of their money and or get screwed by someone whats stopping them from going AWOL and attacking Bitcoin?

Because it would still cost a ton of money to pull off and unless there's a specific pay off with irreversible fiat(is there even?) then it's going to be hard to break even on the attack.

Plus it would be so high profile that they would get charged for sure.

I don't think people who are already millionaires are too interested in going to jail for nothing.

[toknormal]

Nobody gives a fuck about 51% attacks anymore.

Stop harping on about it.

[santaClause]

Ghash is the closest and they have said that they will be reducing the amount of miners if they get closer which they have been doing which I think is good as they own most of the hashing power right now but even if they didn't do that and had 51% it doesn't mean they could do the actual attack there is still some luck that they would need to perform the attack I honestly believe this attack has no threat to Bitcoin at the moment.

Ghash won't do a 51% attack even if they could just because they earn money through bitcoins.
By double spending they would decrease the trust people has in bitcoins and their business won't work anymore.

It's true but they have already made their bucks and if for some reason they lose a lot of their money and or get screwed by someone whats stopping them from going AWOL and attacking Bitcoin?

ghash is continuing to sell more of their mining chips aka their GHs as they buy them from bit fury so if they are not reputable they will not be able to sell this mining capacity

[byt411]

Ghash is the closest and they have said that they will be reducing the amount of miners if they get closer which they have been doing which I think is good as they own most of the hashing power right now but even if they didn't do that and had 51% it doesn't mean they could do the actual attack there is still some luck that they would need to perform the attack I honestly believe this attack has no threat to Bitcoin at the moment.

Ghash won't do a 51% attack even if they could just because they earn money through bitcoins.
By double spending they would decrease the trust people has in bitcoins and their business won't work anymore.

It's true but they have already made their bucks and if for some reason they lose a lot of their money and or get screwed by someone whats stopping them from going AWOL and attacking Bitcoin?

ghash is continuing to sell more of their mining chips aka their GHs as they buy them from bit fury so if they are not reputable they will not be able to sell this mining capacity

No, they're not, the GHs on the market is GHs already on the market. They're not buying any more, and selling had nothing to do with being reputable.
Stop blabbing nonsense.

[jonald_fyookball]

This threat seems very, very likely at some point. The cost of an attack wouldn't actually be that much to pull off. Even a short term (i.e. much cheaper) attack could completely destabilize the faith people have in Bitcoin.

Are we just waiting for an attack to occur before actually doing anything?

An attacker that isn't motivated by money will eventually attempt an attack. This isn't an "if", it's a "when".

Some billionaire, inherited wealth rich kid could completely devastate Bitcoin for under $50 Million.

Some people love to wreck shit. Rich guys that love to wreck shit? It could get ugly.

Somebody console me. I want to be wrong. What am I overlooking?

It is not cost effective to attack Bitcoin for economic reasons... $50 million to gain what?  Double spend 1 million?

If done for malicious reasons at any price, it could be attacked.  The community could then decide
to fork to alternative proof of work hashing algorithm.  Yes there would be damage done
and some transactions rolled back but I think Bitcoin would live on.
  

[byt411]

This threat seems very, very likely at some point. The cost of an attack wouldn't actually be that much to pull off. Even a short term (i.e. much cheaper) attack could completely destabilize the faith people have in Bitcoin.

Are we just waiting for an attack to occur before actually doing anything?

An attacker that isn't motivated by money will eventually attempt an attack. This isn't an "if", it's a "when".

Some billionaire, inherited wealth rich kid could completely devastate Bitcoin for under $50 Million.

Some people love to wreck shit. Rich guys that love to wreck shit? It could get ugly.

Somebody console me. I want to be wrong. What am I overlooking?

It is not cost effective to attack Bitcoin for economic reasons... $50 million to gain what?  Double spend 1 million?

If done for malicious reasons at any price, it could be attacked.  The community could then decide
to fork to alternative proof of work hashing algorithm.  Yes there would be damage done
and some transactions rolled back but I think Bitcoin would live on.

Of course it would live on, but the problem is that if we fork we might end up like Vericoin, but at a much larger scale, which is bad for everyone. Merchants that got paid and shipped the items would find their payment missing from their wallet, all around the world.
Governments could bribe or take over cex/pool and attack bitcoin, since it's competing and winning their pieces of paper.

[SpontaneousDream]

Lol @ all the FUD.

Can't wait for the day when we all look back on the 51% "issue" and laugh at how freaked out everyone got.

[jonald_fyookball]

Lol @ all the FUD.

Can't wait for the day when we all look back on the 51% "issue" and laugh at how freaked out everyone got.

we'll it is still a shadow that looms....as is over regulation... Bitcoin is still an experiment.

[AliceWonder]

Nobody gives a fuck about 51% attacks anymore.

Stop harping on about it.

Increasing centralization of mining pools is a concern.

[jonald_fyookball]

agree Devin.

It's not about stopping at 51% attack...its about limiting
the damage one can do.

Double spends and big pools aren't the real threats.

Mining monopolies , transaction exclusions, and tearing
down the blockchain is what needs to be prevented.

[phillipsjk]

The reason nothing is being done about the 51% attack is that nothing can be done about it other than scrounging as much hash-power as possible to point at the network (making the attack more difficult).

If you believe in Bitcoin, you believe that people are generally good. If the "good" hash-power outnumbers the "bad" hash-power, Bitcoin works just fine. If "bad" hash-power wins out over good, Bitcoin fails: at least until evil gets bored.

There are no "technical" fixes to this: only social ones. The reason is that trusting the majority of the hash-power is how Satoshi solved the distributed consensus problem. Somewhat relevant: Byzantine fault tolerance. According to that page, for most algorithms, you must trust 67% rather than 51% of the actors.

[jonald_fyookball]

The reason nothing is being done about the 51% attack is that nothing can be done about it other than scrounging as much hash-power as possible to point at the network (making the attack more difficult).

If you believe in Bitcoin, you believe that people are generally good. If the "good" hash-power outnumbers the "bad" hash-power, Bitcoin works just fine. If "bad" hash-power wins out over good, Bitcoin fails: at least until evil gets bored.

There are no "technical" fixes to this: only social ones. The reason is that trusting the majority of the hash-power is how Satoshi solved the distributed consensus problem. Somewhat relevant: Byzantine fault tolerance. According to that page, for most algorithms, you must trust 67% rather than 51% of the actors.

Interesting... I had been thinking lately about 2/3 vote... seems to be some kind of universality to it (2/3 vote in congress, etc).

Obviously this is incompatible with Satoshi's scheme in its current incarnation because
Bitcoin not only requires distributed consensus, but ALSO is intolerant to any
stagnation or inactivity -- we MUST have a decision roughly 10 minutes or
else blocks won't get published.

[lihuajkl]

This threat seems very, very likely at some point. The cost of an attack wouldn't actually be that much to pull off. Even a short term (i.e. much cheaper) attack could completely destabilize the faith people have in Bitcoin.

Are we just waiting for an attack to occur before actually doing anything?

An attacker that isn't motivated by money will eventually attempt an attack. This isn't an "if", it's a "when".

Some billionaire, inherited wealth rich kid could completely devastate Bitcoin for under $50 Million.

Some people love to wreck shit. Rich guys that love to wreck shit? It could get ugly.

Somebody console me. I want to be wrong. What am I overlooking?

Perhaps the reason this wouldn't happen is because there's nothing in wrecking bitcoin for the super rich? 50million to do it maybe, but in destroying bitcoin's credibility, there'll be no value resulting from any dastardly deeds I'm pretty sure.

Absolutely! 51% Attack can't make you earn anything and make you lose $50 million. Then the  fork chain 1 and original chain are existing at the same time. The majority of miners will know which chain is created by evil people and choose the right chain.   

[phillipsjk]

The Chinese government has already been hostile towards Bitcoin. What's to stop them from taking it a step further?

BItcoin is of strategic importance. That means that the US, Great Britain, France, Russia and China must all agree that Bitcoin is bad before directly attacking it: otherwise, they may spark a new arms race.

[JypsiCreme]

Why do you seem to think nothing is being done about it...

[gtraah]

Im curious what will happen with my multibit client when a fork happens? Does this mean that multibit also needs to be updated aswell as Bitcoin core ?

When we say everyone agrees, how do I agree? What do I need to do, I don't run a full node nor do I use Bitcoin Core wallet.

[AlPutino]

Think the other way around: Why would it happen and stay 51% for a long time? Miners are not going to destroy Bitcoin - It's their investment at stake. The mining power is not controlled by large mining pools, merely "administered".

[AlPutino]

If a pool starts behaving badly with its miner's hashing power, miners will leave that pool. Simple. A rich kid wrecking Bitcoin? Maybe DDOS the network and stop it in its tracks for a few hours. And what would he achieve?

[DannyHamilton]

Im curious what will happen with my multibit client when a fork happens?

It will choose the fork that uses the original protocol unless it is upgraded to new code that chooses the fork with the updated protocol.

Does this mean that multibit also needs to be updated aswell as Bitcoin core ?

That depends on which fork you want to be on, but in general if there is an intentional fork in the bitcoin protocol to fix some issue, and you want to be operating on the new fixed protocol, you'll need to update.

When we say everyone agrees, how do I agree?

You agree by choosing software that implements the protocol that you agree with.  99% of the altcoins are all essentially bitcoin forks that fork off at the genesis block of the blockchain.  If you agreed with the decisions made by the developers of those forks, you'd choose to run the software that was written for the fork you liked (litecoin? dogecoin? etc). By choosing software that is compatible with the current bitcoin protocol, you have chosen to enforce the current rules of the bitcoin protocol.

If the bitcoin protocol were to fork, and some people chose to continue running wallets that supported the old protocol rules, then there would be an "old bitcoin", and a "new bitcoin".  Since the blockchain would fork later than the genesis block, any bitcoins generated prior to the fork would be spendable on both forks.  Bitcoins generated after the fork would only show up on the fork where they were generated.  If a single transaction spent pre-fork bitcoins and post fork bitcoins together, then all of those bitcoins would only be spendable from the side of the fork that the post-fork bitcoins came from, from then on.

What do I need to do, I don't run a full node nor do I use Bitcoin Core wallet.

The reason that your multibit wallet only sees bitcoin transactions, and not any other altcoins, is because it is designed to implement the current bitcoin protocol.  If there is a fork in the bitcoin protocol to fix some issue, and you want to continue to operate on that new fork, you would need to wait for the MultiBit developers to update their software, and then you'd need to upgrade.