Topic: We're not going anywhere, until the 51% question is answered - page 4. (Read 6400 times)

No, it doesn't.

The question has been answered : the risk is utterly low

I don't really care. Let it crash. More ppl mine on ghash the more blocks solved = faster money for me.

LOL How true. 

why is it always about ghash - go beat up on BTC guild to cut the 3% fee to something vaguely reasonable. Then maybe miners will stop pointing at ghash

I don't think any investors care about the 51% issue because everyone knows that it's not an issue. It's never going to happen. The person it would harm most is the person who controls 51%.

be careful to avoid actually discussing any facts, and make sure to only use hyperbole, sensational language and speculation on this forum. its's what keeps it ticking!

As if this exact same FUD wasn't circulated only 6 months ago in December/ January. 

Last time the network hard forked, miners acted swiftly to resolve the issue. Shortly after the huge (but quick) panic, we saw the beginning of a massive rally. The ones who panicked lost. The ones who understood the issue made a lot of money.

In the incredibly rare and stupid event Ghash forks the network, you can bet we would see similar action. The weak would panic, the miners would move, the network would be fine, and the strong would pick up some cheap coins.

all the ones who are the first to chime in here saying who cares it isn't a problem will the first ones crying they lost their lifesavings.

No, I can answer it better. The problem with the 51% attack is the name. It's too catchy.

I can answer it with a question: Why care? By the way, I know who John Galt is.

Yeah but remember, people are dumb. Most don't do numbers. Look around this forum, how many people give the impression that they understand what they have thrown money at? I could name a few, but most don't fall in that category. If there ever is a 51% attack that gets even a little bit of publicity there will be panic.

no because anyone smart enough to warrant trying it will already understand why its not worth it. but *just in case* there are stupid people in the world with more money than sense (i know). that thread gives some reassurance that its not the issue people think it is.

whats more telling is the way people seem to think this is a black an white issue.

Setting aside transaction manipulation, which is largely a non-issue given the nature and transparancy of the bitcoin protocol.

In terms of block reward hash rate doesn't guarantee anything. hash rate as the fuel to the fire that is block generation. block generation is what gives you the power to manipulate the chain.

Having 51% doesn't magically give you guaranteed control, just as 49% doesn't mean you can't possibly manipulate it.

The hash rate is a reflection of the probability you can solve the next block before anyone else. 51% is marginal, its basically still a coin flip, just like 49% is.

With 51% The chance you can solve two consecutive blocks is 0.51^2 = 26%
The chance you can get 6 blocks is 0.51^6 = 1.7%

Anyone with the most base understanding of how things work can see that with 51% of the hashrate you are going to average 75BTC per 6 blocks.

Over time you are averaging 12.5 BTC per block.

Or you can get 150BTC 1.7% of the time by trying to build your own 6 block longer chain before anyone else.

Over time you would average 0.43BTC per block.

To make it worthwhile, you would need to get your 6 block chain in 50% of the time or more. To guarantee that you need 89% of the hashing power (6th root of 0.5)

If you have 89% of hashing power though, you'd still be better of just hashing. because you would average 22BTC per block.

In a way its good that idiots with a lot of hashing power might try this, because in the long term it means their hashing power wouldn't count, and any remaing honest miners get a bigger piece of the pie

Not the pool owners, the miners. And the second problem would be a matter of not signing up for someone with unknown owners. But of course that won't happen until we have an actual 51% clusterfuck.

I am not quite sure how you would get pool owners to accept a change that would negatively affect them.  At best they would just subdivide their pools into smaller pools and carry on, possibly obscuring their ownership.

I think the best solution would be if we as a community decided that each mining guild should not exceed 10% of the total network rate. This way people are still ensured regular blocks and it would be much harder to get enough groups together for a 51% attack.

why not track down miners and destroy their equipment in a criminal act?

or at least the miners who are those imbeciles mining as a horde under the same mining pool. or maybe it would be possible to disable centralized mining from bitcoin altogether?

If bitcoin 0.9.2 was to come out with the hard fork so that newer versions no longer allow centralized mining I would rather support it and have everyone forced to use P2P mining.

So, is this already implemented on bitcoin's code?

Well I think this opinion might be partially correct that said I read a few threads on Gigahash abusing its power when it last had greater than 50% of the network by reversing bets.
That said the network should correct itself if it is abused again so a non-issue but with a caution involved in it.

That said there is more incentive to leave the system working as it is than to double spend on it and lose more than you would gain

To be honest, there is no way to really monitor this.  If a few pools get together and decide to try to double spend, it would happen.  It would have to be a self destructive act, so it would likely be a hacker that was controlling all of them simultaneously.  It wouldn't be a rational hacker, as it would be more profitable to steal the BTC from the pools than force a double spend attack.  It would have to be a hacker with the psychological makeup of the Joker.  Once this attack happened, the Bitcoin Foundation would quickly move to reverse it and implement countermeasures.