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It's Time For a Hard Bitcoin Fork

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Re: It's Time For a Hard Bitcoin Fork

#121

Post by marcosdumay »

Aqueous wrote: post #98
josu wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's in Bitcoin community's, and GHash's, economic interest that no miner exceeds 50%. Are Bitcoin community's interests and individual miners' interests aligned? I understand why the bitcoin community wouldn't want a mining pool with more than 50% of the share, but why should "selfish" individual miners care?

If the blockchain is dominated by a single interest, and that player starts abusing their market position, BitCoin's exchange rate will plummet and the economic interest in question will lose millions. So yes, it is in the community's interest and individual miners' interest to keep the hashrate distributed enough to prevent that from happening. What happens when people lose faith in the system? The 2008 financial cr…

And nobody in the world wants Bitcoin to break down?

Re: It's Time For a Hard Bitcoin Fork

#122

Post by marcosdumay »

gus_massa wrote: post #80
Tuna-Fish wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The pool would notice that certain participants contributions are conflicting with other discoveries, and ban such participants? How? Or, you ban me, I sign up again under a different alias.

The pool can use a 2% fee for old accounts and a 20% fee for new accounts (for example, with less than 1 month or less than 10^x hashes calculated.)

But, you see, the attacker isn't mining anything of value under the pool, thus the pool has nothing to apply the fee over.

Re: It's Time For a Hard Bitcoin Fork

#123

Post by bunderbunder »

joaorj wrote: post #117
bunderbunder wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reasoning is based on the assumption that a 51% player must also be long on Bitcoin, and that they interpret the nature and value of the Bitcoin market in a similar manner to most members of the Bitcoin community. In other words, assuming that they don't know anything you don't. Considering we're talking about an entity that's managed to become a 51%er, that assumption sounds downright Pollyannaish to me. The sa…

When they bought the mining machines they were entering bitcoin as long weren't they? They can't even sell their future winnings as they don't have them yet, so they are really long!

Maybe they were. . . or maybe they've figured out something others haven't. Some sort of shorting-type scheme, perhaps.

Normally I'm not so inclined toward conspiracist thinking, but considering all the different capers that have put Bitcoin in the news over the past couple years, in this particular case I'm inclined to make an exception.

Re: It's Time For a Hard Bitcoin Fork

#124

Post by allworknoplay »

Aqueous wrote: post #82

Take a deep breath. Stop hyperventilating. Bitcoin has died a violent, crashy, gory death dozens of times at this point. It's in Bitcoin community's, and GHash's, economic interest that no miner exceeds 50%. That's all you need to know to know that this is just another exasperated hand-wringer proclaiming the premature death of BitCoin. BitCoin, RIP 2008 - 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, ?

How is it that you know what GHash's interests are?

They could have short-term profit in mind, or else crippling bitcoin itself. There is plenty of room for them to have interests that are out of line with the rest of the bitcoin community.

Re: It's Time For a Hard Bitcoin Fork

#125

Post by dllthomas »

joaorj wrote: post #117
bunderbunder wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reasoning is based on the assumption that a 51% player must also be long on Bitcoin, and that they interpret the nature and value of the Bitcoin market in a similar manner to most members of the Bitcoin community. In other words, assuming that they don't know anything you don't. Considering we're talking about an entity that's managed to become a 51%er, that assumption sounds downright Pollyannaish to me. The sa…

When they bought the mining machines they were entering bitcoin as long weren't they? They can't even sell their future winnings as they don't have them yet, so they are really long!

Well, they aren't long bitcoin from buying mining rigs, they are long bitcoin call options denominated in energy. If the return seems likely to be too low, as eventually it must be when (if things continue) people make more efficient rigs, then it would eventually be in their interest to let the longer term options expire. It is totally conceivable that taking a huge short position and scaring everyone off of btc could mean more profit than the could be mined out of those rigs. Of course, you would need someone to take the other side of that bet, in a setting with sufficiently little counterparty risk that you can collect (which typically means a more regulated setting) and a sufficiently lax regulatory environment that you aren't likely to be accused of some illegal type of market manipulation. That said, people do seem to overlook such details... and this all only seems unlikely to very unlikely, not impossibly or absudly unlikely.

Re: It's Time For a Hard Bitcoin Fork

#126

Post by kolev »

Aqueous wrote: post #82

Take a deep breath. Stop hyperventilating. Bitcoin has died a violent, crashy, gory death dozens of times at this point. It's in Bitcoin community's, and GHash's, economic interest that no miner exceeds 50%. That's all you need to know to know that this is just another exasperated hand-wringer proclaiming the premature death of BitCoin. BitCoin, RIP 2008 - 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, ?

It's hard for something to be let die when some have made big money already or have lost and want to recover. Bitcoin is gambling and attracts a rare mindset and this prevents it from going mainstream anytime soon - similarly only a small percentage of people trade stocks. Regular people hardly want to get associated with the gambler crowd. We've seen this before where gambling and technology met.

As I've been closely monitoring the ups and downs of Bitcoin price, what always stops Bitcoin free fall is the feeling that you're gonna miss a huge profit, it's not the reason, and dips become smaller, and smaller as speculators who missed the train last time don't wanna risk too much next time. When you have a bunch of greedy people with money, again, it's hard for this thing to die unless more profitable alternatives appear on the horizon. The one unique thing here is China and their limited options for high tech speculation. If China really kills Bitcoin over there, it will mark the final death of Bitcoin.

Re: It's Time For a Hard Bitcoin Fork

#127

Post by kolev »

FYI, GHash.io is a Ukrainian company. As you know, the country is a mess now and there's an ongoing civil war. Just sayin'! (See, I didn't even mention that most black hat hackers come from that part of World.)

Re: It's Time For a Hard Bitcoin Fork

#129

Post by sillysaurus3 »

gtirloni wrote: post #69

And down it goes again: https://bitcoinity.org/markets In the previous crisis it was all based on trust ("it was just a bad player, trust will return to the market"). Now we've a doomsday scenario and what seems a serious flaw in Bitcoin. Feels like a chapter out of The Foundation books.

If you look at the 6 month graph, this downward blip is such a small one that it's indistinguishable from noise.

Re: It's Time For a Hard Bitcoin Fork

#130

Post by sillysaurus3 »

kolev wrote: post #127

FYI, GHash.io is a Ukrainian company. As you know, the country is a mess now and there's an ongoing civil war. Just sayin'! (See, I didn't even mention that most black hat hackers come from that part of World.)

The idea that most black hat hackers come from that part of the world is quite interesting. Would you expand on it?
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