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If a pool has control of >50% of the hashing power, it means that they could do damaging things to the Bitcoin network as far as I understand. People will expl

If a pool has control of >50% of the hashing power, it means that they could do damaging things to the Bitcoin network as far as I understand. People will explain that it's not in the pools interest to do this, but it's missing the point. The pool is now a potential weapon, with a very small number of people in control. This means they are now a potential weapon against Bitcoin, and if someone external wanted to hurt Bitcoin GHash.io might be a good starting point to do this of which there are many ways to potentially realise this goal (blackmail, hacking, bribery, covert seizing of control etc) The more pools there are, and the more evenly the hashing power is ditributed amongst these pools the safer it is for everyone who has interests in Bitcoin. Peer-to-peer decentralised pools to me sound like an excellent way to mitigate this sort of risk, and I think it's important. Consolodation of pool hashing power I beleive is a natural inevitable market force. One pool has to be objectively the best and will attract the most miners. From what I gather, p2p pools are a fairly large technical challenge and the question still remains as if they can still compete with centralised pools with regards to efficiency and reliability (profitability).

DrJokepu 13y ago
Malicious attackers or disgruntled employees could also gain access to the pool and do nasty things.
btown 13y ago
With Bitcoin as popular as it is, it would be an increasingly lucrative strategy to short BTC, damage the network, re-buy low, and undo the damage. Sure, this is sort of a one-time use weapon, but there's no reason to believe that GHash.io's operators are in this for the long haul - perhaps, in the words of that amazingly catchy television commercial, they "need cash now."
- josu 13y ago
  It is currently pretty much impossible to short large quantities of bitcoins. Besides, such an attack would probably crash the whole system which could render the potential shorts useless. Too much uncertainty for anything that big. I really can't see the way for anybody to benefit from a 51 attack. However, a potential attack will probably be a black swan, which will make it "impossible" to foresee for 99% of us, so the fact that there isn't any clear way to benefit from it, doesn't actually mean that there isn't a way.

DrJokepu 13y ago

Malicious attackers or disgruntled employees could also gain access to the pool and do nasty things.

btown 13y ago

With Bitcoin as popular as it is, it would be an increasingly lucrative strategy to short BTC, damage the network, re-buy low, and undo the damage. Sure, this is sort of a one-time use weapon, but there's no reason to believe that GHash.io's operators are in this for the long haul - perhaps, in the words of that amazingly catchy television commercial, they "need cash now."

josu 13y ago
It is currently pretty much impossible to short large quantities of bitcoins. Besides, such an attack would probably crash the whole system which could render the potential shorts useless. Too much uncertainty for anything that big. I really can't see the way for anybody to benefit from a 51 attack. However, a potential attack will probably be a black swan, which will make it "impossible" to foresee for 99% of us, so the fact that there isn't any clear way to benefit from it, doesn't actually mean that there isn't a way.