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Ghash.io very close to 51% of bitcoin pool

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Re: Ghash.io very close to 51% of bitcoin pool

#121

Post by SilasX »

pron wrote: post #81
notdrunkatall wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...except you're wrong. Bitcoin participants have developed a solution to the 51% problem, without any regulation, without any government stepping in and telling anyone to do anything. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Getblocktemplate Your post is a poorly argued attempt to inject politics into a technical discussion. It reads like the top comment at /r/politics, not HN.

The invention of a new currency is a highly political act; claiming it isn't is a political statement in itself. The discussion of any disruptive technology should quickly focus on politics and ethics, or risk being abused. You can't both claim to invent technology that seriously affects society, and at the same time dismiss talk of politics as irrelevant. A technology can either be irrelevant or be political (if you…

"People often re-invent cigarettes as a currency in prison." <-- oops, political statement

Re: Ghash.io very close to 51% of bitcoin pool

#122

Post by dwild »

pron wrote: post #81
notdrunkatall wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...except you're wrong. Bitcoin participants have developed a solution to the 51% problem, without any regulation, without any government stepping in and telling anyone to do anything. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Getblocktemplate Your post is a poorly argued attempt to inject politics into a technical discussion. It reads like the top comment at /r/politics, not HN.

The invention of a new currency is a highly political act; claiming it isn't is a political statement in itself. The discussion of any disruptive technology should quickly focus on politics and ethics, or risk being abused. You can't both claim to invent technology that seriously affects society, and at the same time dismiss talk of politics as irrelevant. A technology can either be irrelevant or be political (if you…

You are wrong, I totally trust the government, I'm one of the few that still trust the NSA (and I'm not even a US citizen).

It's not a question of trust, it's a question of choice. With a simple and universal way to transfer money, we no longer have to care about the currency we use, if we can easily do an international transfer with our bank, if our Paypal account is still fine, etc...

The only politic is how governments will be able to tax Bitcoin transaction and I believe it's a big issue but I believe we will be able to fix that when it will become a problem.

I don't really understands what's wrong with: "It's like saying, I don't want to put people in charge because I don't trust them, and I don't want even to talk to others in order to resolve disagreement; instead, I choose to take all decision-making agency out the hands of humans and place it in the hands of an algorithm that can provably never be swayed, because that is the only thing I can trust."

Re: Ghash.io very close to 51% of bitcoin pool

#123

Post by VMG »

pron wrote: post #120
VMG wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Regardless, there is nothing technical about a story of a small group attaining concentrated power over a decentralized currency. It is completely technical. The incentives and disincentives to centralization are encoded in the protocol.

> The incentives and disincentives to centralization are encoded in the protocol. I am not sure I catch your meaning (about incentives being encoded etc.), but suppose they are. Isn't that a very political statement to design a system that entrusts "the last word" with an abstract algorithm rather than humans? Why is it that way? And again, whenever engineers build something that they want people to use to change the…

It is both very technical and very political.

Encryption itself is a highly political technology - the right for two parties to communicate securely and covertly is controversial in many parts of the world, even today.

The economics of centralization are a dependent on the technical choices of the protocol -- PPCoin and scrypt-based crypto-currencies are specifically designed to avoid the scenario that is happening right now, by not relying solely on sha256^2 hashing power. Of course they are not perfect and have their own issues.

Re: Ghash.io very close to 51% of bitcoin pool

#124

Post by oakwhiz »

dragontamer wrote: post #105
jobeirne wrote: post #71

Folks are missing an important point here about the incentives of a pool majority (that I recall Satoshi mentions in the original whitepaper[0]): even if a particular agent has a majority in the mining network, it isn't in their interest to upset trust in a system that they have such a large investment in. Where would the sense be in taking the risk to undermine public trust in BTC for a short-term gain like modifyin…

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=327767.0 I dunno, maybe to double-spend their coins? GHash.IO has been accused of double-spending in the past. Reaching 51% will enable them to double-spend their coins. If GHash.IO really cared about BTC, they would stop before they reached majority stake in the Hashrate. All other pools in the past have purposefully gimped their hashrate in these situations. A pool reaching 5…

>All other pools in the past have purposefully gimped their hashrate in these situations.

This has even occurred with altcoins (which are often widely believed to be pump-and-dump schemes) where a pool gets too close to 51% and voluntarily makes an effort to reduce their hashrate (either by blocking new signups, issuing fewer work units, etc.)

Re: Ghash.io very close to 51% of bitcoin pool

#125

Post by [deleted] »

nhaehnle wrote: post #61
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #5

Could someone with knowledge of Bitcoin explain what happens when a share of the pool hits 51%? Is this dangerous in some way? Edit: Thanks to those who took the time to explain. Very interesting.

Despite the good responses, there are two points that I believe are important that haven't been pointed out yet. 1. While a 51% pool operator could double spend, none of the participants can do that. The social incentives against a pool operator exploiting this power are very strong, however, because double spends are basically impossible to hide and would destroy the value Bitcoin - which is pretty much against the…

[deleted]

Re: Ghash.io very close to 51% of bitcoin pool

#126

Post by simbyotic »

cwp wrote: post #94
simbyotic wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"In that period of unprecedented (and largely unregulated) growth, much of the US population became quickly enslaved by a few members of an elite group, later called the robber barons (Rockefeller, Frick, JP Morgan, Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Mellon et al.)" You ought to rethink what you define as "enslavement". As far as I am aware, neither Rockefeller, nor JP Morgan, nor Carnegie "enslaved" the US population when they h…

Did the robber barons kidnap people from Africa, ship them across the sea in chains and force them to work by whipping them if they didn't? No. Still, have you ever heard the song "Sixteen Tons?"[1] You might recognize the lines "another day older and deeper in debt" and "I owe my soul to the company store." It's about the life of a coal miner in Kentucky. Those lines refer to a system where the company paid its work…

Having to work to each day for food and lodging is like slavery in practice? That a preposterous notion.

Whether you live in a desert island, a small village with no water or electricty, or New York, you will still have to face the practical demands of your survival, of which food and lodging are the primary - in the sense that they are the most immediate,- but not your only, concerns. Whether by hunting and killing your own food, or buy buying it from the supermarket, the facts are the same: you have to work for your survival, it is not guaranteed by nature. And for myself,if I may, I take having to work so I can buy my favorite food and drink at the supermarket every day over having to savagely hunt and kill the food I eat.

Re: Ghash.io very close to 51% of bitcoin pool

#127

Post by scotty79 »

pron wrote: post #120
VMG wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Regardless, there is nothing technical about a story of a small group attaining concentrated power over a decentralized currency. It is completely technical. The incentives and disincentives to centralization are encoded in the protocol.

> The incentives and disincentives to centralization are encoded in the protocol. I am not sure I catch your meaning (about incentives being encoded etc.), but suppose they are. Isn't that a very political statement to design a system that entrusts "the last word" with an abstract algorithm rather than humans? Why is it that way? And again, whenever engineers build something that they want people to use to change the…

Politics is about taking things from people without actually shooting at them. I think your definition of politics so broad that in encompasses apolitical things.

Re: Ghash.io very close to 51% of bitcoin pool

#128

Post by pron »

scotty79 wrote: post #127
pron wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The incentives and disincentives to centralization are encoded in the protocol. I am not sure I catch your meaning (about incentives being encoded etc.), but suppose they are. Isn't that a very political statement to design a system that entrusts "the last word" with an abstract algorithm rather than humans? Why is it that way? And again, whenever engineers build something that they want people to use to change the…

Politics is about taking things from people without actually shooting at them. I think your definition of politics so broad that in encompasses apolitical things.

Politics (New Oxford American Dictionary): "the assumptions or principles relating to or inherent in a sphere, theory, or thing, esp. when concerned with power and status in a society".

So politics is everything concerning the managing of power in a society.

Re: Ghash.io very close to 51% of bitcoin pool

#129

Post by pron »

dwild wrote: post #122
pron wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The invention of a new currency is a highly political act; claiming it isn't is a political statement in itself. The discussion of any disruptive technology should quickly focus on politics and ethics, or risk being abused. You can't both claim to invent technology that seriously affects society, and at the same time dismiss talk of politics as irrelevant. A technology can either be irrelevant or be political (if you…

You are wrong, I totally trust the government, I'm one of the few that still trust the NSA (and I'm not even a US citizen). It's not a question of trust, it's a question of choice. With a simple and universal way to transfer money, we no longer have to care about the currency we use, if we can easily do an international transfer with our bank, if our Paypal account is still fine, etc... The only politic is how govern…

There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, but it certainly says a lot about our society, or at least about how some people view it or think it should govern itself. I find it interesting.

Re: Ghash.io very close to 51% of bitcoin pool

#130

Post by X4 »

patio11 wrote: post #60
X4 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So even gambling sites use Bitcoin! That double-spend attack sounds so weird, I wonder why it's even possible. Why does Bitcoin trust the owner of larger amount of BTC (51%) more than those with less? I thought that trusting every client equally (less) would be a greater advantage, than trusting the largest group of clients. That part is hard to understand. What would happen, if due to a war many of the datacenters o…

You should know that you don't understand enough about Bitcoin to reason about it [+], and before trusting my representations about it, you should know that I am approximately the most skeptical person about it in the entire tech community. + This phrasing is rather more robust than I'd prefer, but you're dangerously mistaken about something which many people will attempt to get you to equate with money. The Bitcoin…

Thanks for the great and detailed answer patio11! Hope you have a great weekend =)
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