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It's a common joke ("this is good for bitcoin"). But in this case I would say it is actually good. I would correct your statement: 1. Greater hash power makes

It's a common joke ("this is good for bitcoin"). But in this case I would say it is actually good. I would correct your statement: 1. Greater hash power makes the system more secure from attack 2. A large amount of hash power geographically concentrated is a weak point 3. More geographically dispersed hash power is better. 4. Ideally a large amount of globally dispersed hashpower provides the best security. -- Disclosure: I do not currently own any BTC.

gverrilla 5y ago
> 1. Greater hash power makes the system more secure from attack Not necessarily. There's a lot of "latent" hashpower ready to join the fight if bitcoin gets under attack, including random people and orgs around the world and the current miners themselves aswell: a lot of them mine other cryptos aswell, and could diminish their mining intensity on them to devote hashpower to bitcoin wars or stop altogether.
- shoghicp 5y ago
  Bitcoin mining at this time requires ASIC devices that cannot switch to other algorithms, other coins that use the same, sure, but not for example Ethereum.
  - dannyw 5y ago
    There may still exist some latent hashpower from people with obsolete mining chips. Those cost more in electricity to run than they mine, but when bitcoin is under attack, operating them could be a civic measure.
    - Majromax 5y ago
      > when bitcoin is under attack, operating them could be a civic measure. Unless I'm gravely mistaken about the bitcoin protocol, you wouldn't know that bitcoin is under a 51% attack until it completes. The 51% attack succeeds when the attacker's blockchain becomes longer than the publicly-accepted blockchain. But there's no reason that the attacker needs to show their work publicly; they can start in secret, mine blocks, and reveal the entire chain at once after it is some number of blocks longer than the public chain.
      - rantwasp 5y ago
        lol. no. there are 2 parts: one is mining the block, the other is propagating the block. if you do what you describe, computing blocks would not be enough. you would also need to recompute blocks to account for what happened on the block chain since the split. the more time it passes, the more computing power you would need. when people talk about 51% attack they usually talk about the double spend issue. this requires 1) a large number of nodes (>51% of the network) and 2) a large amount of hashing power. you would spend some bitcoin, let it be captured in the chain and after that you would fabricate a block that spends the coins differently. now you’ve spent it twice. the miners would pick this as the longer chain and keep going. the important thing to remember is that you cannot keep your chain in the shadows and that this type of attack would be a really hard to pull off (have you ever synchronized a lot of machines to do something? it’s incredibly hard)
- rb12345 5y ago
  The problem here is that the latent firepower can be used in two ways: to help defend the blockchain, or to destroy it. With 62% of hashrate offline, it's entirely possible to buy up the old miners cheaply, wait for complexity to fall, and then use your newly acquired hardware for fun and profit. Bear in mind that the attacks here could be 51% transaction-invalidation, or simply just messing with the complexity (jumping from 25 minutes/block to 3 minutes/block and back again as the system corrects for the changes in hashrate).

gverrilla 5y ago

> 1. Greater hash power makes the system more secure from attack Not necessarily. There's a lot of "latent" hashpower ready to join the fight if bitcoin gets under attack, including random people and orgs around the world and the current miners themselves aswell: a lot of them mine other cryptos aswell, and could diminish their mining intensity on them to devote hashpower to bitcoin wars or stop altogether.

shoghicp 5y ago
Bitcoin mining at this time requires ASIC devices that cannot switch to other algorithms, other coins that use the same, sure, but not for example Ethereum.
- dannyw 5y ago
  There may still exist some latent hashpower from people with obsolete mining chips. Those cost more in electricity to run than they mine, but when bitcoin is under attack, operating them could be a civic measure.
  - Majromax 5y ago
    > when bitcoin is under attack, operating them could be a civic measure. Unless I'm gravely mistaken about the bitcoin protocol, you wouldn't know that bitcoin is under a 51% attack until it completes. The 51% attack succeeds when the attacker's blockchain becomes longer than the publicly-accepted blockchain. But there's no reason that the attacker needs to show their work publicly; they can start in secret, mine blocks, and reveal the entire chain at once after it is some number of blocks longer than the public chain.
    - rantwasp 5y ago
      lol. no. there are 2 parts: one is mining the block, the other is propagating the block. if you do what you describe, computing blocks would not be enough. you would also need to recompute blocks to account for what happened on the block chain since the split. the more time it passes, the more computing power you would need. when people talk about 51% attack they usually talk about the double spend issue. this requires 1) a large number of nodes (>51% of the network) and 2) a large amount of hashing power. you would spend some bitcoin, let it be captured in the chain and after that you would fabricate a block that spends the coins differently. now you’ve spent it twice. the miners would pick this as the longer chain and keep going. the important thing to remember is that you cannot keep your chain in the shadows and that this type of attack would be a really hard to pull off (have you ever synchronized a lot of machines to do something? it’s incredibly hard)
rb12345 5y ago
The problem here is that the latent firepower can be used in two ways: to help defend the blockchain, or to destroy it. With 62% of hashrate offline, it's entirely possible to buy up the old miners cheaply, wait for complexity to fall, and then use your newly acquired hardware for fun and profit. Bear in mind that the attacks here could be 51% transaction-invalidation, or simply just messing with the complexity (jumping from 25 minutes/block to 3 minutes/block and back again as the system corrects for the changes in hashrate).