Ghash.io very close to 51% of bitcoin pool • Hacker News Board

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

#101

Post by mattzito » Thu, Jan 09, 2014, 3:45 PM UTC

celticninja wrote: post #96

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…

Bitcoin is more of a technology than a currency, as such it does not have to have been a political act to create it.

That's an interesting variant on, "The personal is political" - "The technical isn't political".

Some technologies are by their nature effectively neutral - the knife can be used to cut food, shave your face, kill your enemy.

In a more recent example, the microprocessor is a neutral technology.

But many technologies are inherently political - the Pill, for example, or ICBMs.

I would argue that Bitcoin may be more of a technology than a currency, but it is an inherently political technology, designed as it is to provide an abstract, somewhat anonymized general ledger technology.

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

#102

Post by dragontamer » Thu, Jan 09, 2014, 3:46 PM UTC

celticninja wrote: post #96

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…

Bitcoin is more of a technology than a currency, as such it does not have to have been a political act to create it.

Robert Moses's Bridges are a technology as well.

But his bridges were a political tool to segregate New York City. Since his bridges and tunnels were shorter than certain busses, he made it impossible for African Americans to commute to certain areas of NYC in the early 20th Century.

Politicians can use anything they want as a weapon for their viewpoints.

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

#103

Post by pron » Thu, Jan 09, 2014, 3:55 PM UTC

true_religion wrote: post #97

pron wrote: post #41

I don't know much about the particulars of BitCoin mechanics, but the general spirit of this story seems like a natural evolvement of any unregulated organization. People who favor unregulated markets/societies dislike the concentration of power in the hands of a central authority, but the reality is that in any social system there will always be concentration of power in the hands of the few. I've read a hypothesis[…

Wait.... It has been a while since I studied this era, but my understanding is that Rockefeller, Frick, JP Morgan, Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Mellon et al. were the "good guys" like in the instance of Carnegie steel which gave back tremendously to the community. The named figures of this period, who still have visible fortunes today, were generally better than the grand morass that were known as the robber barons.

Some of them were great philanthropists who generously donated to causes of their choosing some of the fortune they had amassed by exploiting and disenfranchising vast populations. Those I named were chief among the robber barons, and some of their descendants, perhaps most notably the Rockefellers, tried to distance themselves from or atone for the means by which their forefathers had come by their wealth.

This cartoon[1] shows "infant" Roosevelt battling the Rockefeller and JP Morgan "serpents". No, they weren't the good guys by any means, despite their philanthropic deeds. They most certainly industrialized the US, but so did Stalin in the USSR (though most would agree that the American robber barons were better than Stalin :)).

[1]: http://newsjournalist.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/the-infant...

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

#104

Post by dragontamer » Thu, Jan 09, 2014, 3:56 PM UTC

true_religion wrote: post #97

pron wrote: post #41

I don't know much about the particulars of BitCoin mechanics, but the general spirit of this story seems like a natural evolvement of any unregulated organization. People who favor unregulated markets/societies dislike the concentration of power in the hands of a central authority, but the reality is that in any social system there will always be concentration of power in the hands of the few. I've read a hypothesis[…

Wait.... It has been a while since I studied this era, but my understanding is that Rockefeller, Frick, JP Morgan, Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Mellon et al. were the "good guys" like in the instance of Carnegie steel which gave back tremendously to the community. The named figures of this period, who still have visible fortunes today, were generally better than the grand morass that were known as the robber barons.

A little bit of both. No one can deny the fact that Carnegie created the Steel Emmpire, etc. etc. that provided a baseline for American Manufacturing through the middle of the 1900s. Furthermore, many of these "Barons" became philanthropists and gave away huge portions of their fortune.

However, they also had no morals with regards to child labor, unions, worker rights, and so forth.

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

#105

Post by dragontamer » Thu, Jan 09, 2014, 4:02 PM UTC

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 51% is undermining the trust of the BTC system. Period. GHash.IO apparently doesn't care however.

---------------

Furthermore, as the thread I linked to suggests, GHash.IO attempted to double-spend against BetCoin back when they only had 24%. This isn't a theoretical problem, these guys actually are trying to double-spend bitcoins.

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

#106

Post by theboywho » Thu, Jan 09, 2014, 4:05 PM UTC

masklinn wrote: post #64

theboywho wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but the reality is that in any social system there will always be concentration of power in the hands of the few. Actually in this particular case, it's not in the hands of the few, it's in the hands of the majority.

No, it's in the hand of the pool operator not in the hand of the pool's miners.

The scenario of a pool having 51% of the network power has always been known, and it actually already happened with other pools and the result is just people leaving as soon as it's getting closer to 45%.

As of writing, Ghash.io (which is operated by cex.io) is already down from 45% to 38%.

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

#107

Post by waterlesscloud » Thu, Jan 09, 2014, 4:07 PM UTC

monochr wrote: post #100

waterlesscloud wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact remains that the "power" of the pool operator depends on the miners, who can change pools in a matter of minutes. The instant it's known they're abusing their power, it starts to vanish. It's not a long, drawn-out process. It literally starts within minutes.

And control of the block chain can be taken over in minutes too. As far as I am aware the network updates itself every 10 minutes. So unless the operator never has a period of more than 10 minutes of 51% control or more the network is vulnerable.

This started out as discussion of power, in particular regarding the robber barons who "enslaved" large numbers of people.

That's not possible with the mining pools. The pool operators simply do not have that kind of power, and they will never have it.

Their power derives from people who can leave them by literally clicking a button. Not much room for power to be abused in that situation.

Yes, there could be a window of maybe 20-30 minutes when a pool operator could do something wrong. But that window would come to a swift end.

And that's not what this thread is about anyway.

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

#108

Post by pron » Thu, Jan 09, 2014, 4:15 PM UTC

huxley wrote: post #69

pron wrote: post #41

I don't know much about the particulars of BitCoin mechanics, but the general spirit of this story seems like a natural evolvement of any unregulated organization. People who favor unregulated markets/societies dislike the concentration of power in the hands of a central authority, but the reality is that in any social system there will always be concentration of power in the hands of the few. I've read a hypothesis[…

You might be interested in reading about The Iron Law of Oligarchy (an influential "social law" that was proposed in 1911 by Robert Michels) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy It is a pretty dismal assessment of the likelihood that a democratic institution can avoid becoming oligarchic (spoiler: Michels believed it was inevitably impossible as the institution grew in size and complexity, years later h…

Thank you for that! I guess it's sort of a reversed second law of thermodynamics.

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

#109

Post by mapt » Thu, Jan 09, 2014, 4:15 PM UTC

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…

Can #2 be turned on and off in a controllable manner, such that it grants only a modest statistical advantage (sufficient, say, to keep the pool above 50%) ?

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

#110

Post by makomk » Thu, Jan 09, 2014, 4:19 PM UTC

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…

I think they've all but admitted that they were behind the double spending actually, they just blamed it on a rogue insider: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=318010.msg3590355#ms...