Topic: I am selling half of my Bitcoin holdings because of Ghash - page 2. (Read 4328 times)

Unfortunately for you. Fortunately for all the smart(er) people who will buy up those coins at ~$600 and sell at $1,000, $6,000, or $60,000 per BTC. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Page after page of people making fun of him and he abandons the thread. Funny that?

Is it me or is the Dr. gone ever since I asked how many coins and at what price will he be willing to part with them?

I would try to live on it if I could. I know I'm getting rid of half so why not pay for everything in your life with it and benefit Bitcoin in the process. If you were right you only lost half of your Bitcoins. If you were wrong it wouldn't matter because you helped the economy grow. Almost a win-win.

Didn't he say he was going BTC -> gold and holding gold as a stopgap measure? Or did I misunderstand.

And what type of purchase do you have in mind?

yeah, like Litecoin, good job Dr.   

The bible (white paper) tells a story of pure greed. Their is no reason to a fear a node with controlling interest in the system because their rational self interest, being the same as ours, is for more wealth.


I suppose being a scientist his failure to take political, social or psychological perspectives into account is understandable. Greed is the only reason to not take action against Bitcoin when you are in control. Governments pour trillions of dollars into self preservation annually. Crazy people kill just because they can do it. Radicals, believing their way is the only way, forgo personal wealth and chain themselves to trees to stop what they believe is the ultimate evil. There are major holes in the original structure of Bitcoin. Nakamoto did a good job with the organization of the concept by building on a foundation laid by the leading minds of the time but the practical application is unworkable without modification.

Well I think the solution will be to get big investors. {Oil companies} to fund the smaller unknown mining operations, to counter Ghash.

Or more people, caring about this, to invest in the smaller unknown miners.

I doubt, when Satoshi envisioned this currency in the beginning, that he wanted only big companies doing all the mining.

Your best bet would be to invest in smaller operations, to cancel the 51% attack. NOT to sell all your coins in fear of it.

Most people on this forum, agree that mining for bitcoins with GPU's are gone, but mining with ASIC is still possible. So subsidize smaller "unknowns" with investment capital for them to be competitive, instead of buying hash with ROI periods of 10 months or more.

According to Andreas M. Antonopoulos there are many ways to counter 51% attacks, they have just not implemented it yet or needed to.

What's the total of unknown + Ghash? I think you might find that they are currently way over 51%. I do appreciate them making the pie chart look all pretty again though.

I understand GHash is presently mining at 29% -- considerably down from the 51% they were mining at earlier.  Did this large decline in mining rate come about as a result of them voluntarily cutting back on their mining operations (or redirecting them elsewhere)?  Or, as I understand, were they a direct result of some actors within the community taking directed actions against GHash?  If the latter, then it seems that there is already an emergent mechanism in place for protecting the market against rogue operators.  I would be tempted to hold long enough to ascertain whether or not this mechanism can be relied upon in the future to take the necessary action should this happen again.  Presumably the threshold for going into action will be lower the next time (40% is already excessive).

You're not a "believer in decentralized crypto currency". If you were you'd understand the merits of the current philosophy. What you are asking for is more centralisation, not less.

Take a look at what's happening right now. GHash is approaching 51%. Who is that most a problem for  - THEM. Because if they get past 51% the entire Bitcoin economy will devalue and their business model will go down the pan. Being one of the biggest Bitcoin businesses, they also stand to be one of the biggest losers, so they HAVE to do something about it to save their business.

One the other hand, lets examine what will happen if we implement this suicidal solution that you propose in your post: GHash will then be able to safely continue to grow their monopoly towards 75% or even 90%.

The prospect of 90% mining pool monopolies will be far worse than a 50% one where the worst they can do is double spend the next block - and even at that not for very long because of the economic pressure to mitigate their mining monopoly.

In fact, what will happen if we simply allow this scenario to play itself out is that this period will be seen to be the age of "peak mining pool power" because from now on they'll understand that the sector has a glass ceiling to growth. They'll be less financial incentive for mining pools to grow and they'll naturally start to de-centralise.

Do NOT solve GHash's problem for them. DO NOT make it possible for them to gain a 90% monopoly by "fixing" Bitcoin. The system is good - let it do it's work.

also right before a major auction that has something like a 200k deposit requirement.

-bm

Nope. I'm going to panic sell all of my Bitcoins, when we recently met the 100K merchant milestone, and when companies like Expedia, Holiday Inn, etc have started to accept it more. That's the smart thing to do, isn't it?

^ the good news is that a lot of people are concerned, and there will probably be some sort of effort to correct this issue. i don't know if cex.io is really genuine (and that things will work out well), but at least there is a discussion on it at /r/bitcoin

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/28aldt/ghashio_is_open_for_discussion/

There is no doubt that the rise of Ghash.io to over 50% of the network fundamentally moves bitcoin away from a decentralized crypto currency.  While I still don't understand what made Ghash.io so irresistible to miners, it is clear that something I would never have expected to occur, has.

I think there needs to be a serious response to this other than denial and jawboning down of the threat (even though I agree it is not armageddon) and if there isn't, you may be very glad you did sell off half your coins.

Good Luck!

Unfortunately, you can't work around the 51% attack.


This has happened before. What happened was hashers left Deepbit for other pools. This time it is different: many of the hashers seem to believe it is up to the developers to code a protocol change to solve the problem. They fail to see how they are contributing to the problem.

I see only only one solution: hashers need to start avoiding pools with more than 30% market share. Pools with more than 30% market share need to start raising fees. If these solutions don't start to materialize within about a week, I will join you in selling half my holdings.

Edit: There will probably arguments that I am asking hashers to go against their own self-interest. The purpose of hashing is to secure the network. If you refuse to monitor the health of the network, it is completely reasonable to expect more variance in price.

and we've never seen more evidence that it is going mainstream in all it's history!

-bm

Panic selling 50% of your BTC holdings is stupid. There ARE going to be bumps in the road before bitcoin goes mainstream. Considering the amount of community outpour over this issue, I have confidence that the bigger players such as Gavin, Andreas, etc. (and the community) will find a way to resolve this.

I'm not worried.

The issue with you sending a message is that ghash can not really control how much mining power they have at their pool short of disconnecting miners that are already working on it's pool.

I agree with your point OP except you shouldn't just sell them into fiat. Why don't you hedge your bet by making a major purchase with half of your Bitcoin. That way you can make the statement you want, eliminate some of the risk of holding too much of a high risk investment and help the community at the same time. What Bitcoin needs badly is greater velocity of circulation. You would be doing a great favor for the community.