Monday, June 16, 2014

BREAKING: Major Bitcoin Developer Has Sold Half His Bitcoin Position

PC World reports:
Bitcoin was hovering around $600 on Monday, according to CoinDesk.com, which tracks prices on exchanges, down from $653 on Wednesday.

The decline follows reports that a group is now in a position to conduct a so-called “51 percent attack” on the cryptocurrency, a situation in which it could potentially interfere with transactions or even spend bitcoins twice...

Unlike the other, competing, pools, however, GHash.io now controls over 50 percent of the total computing power used to mine bitcoins, allowing its controllers, if they were so minded, to reject transactions validated by other miners. The mere potential for such abuse has worried supporters of the once-decentralized currency, and even prompted Bitcoin developer Peter Todd to sell half his bitcoin holdings.

“I’ve known for awhile now that the incentives Bitcoin is based on are flawed for many reasons and seeing a 50 percent pool even with only a few of those reasons mattering is worrying to say the least,” Todd wrote...

“This is a big deal, and it would be a mistake to downplay it in the hope to buoy Bitcoin prices,” Cornell University researchers Ittay Eyal and Emin Gün Sirer wrote on the Hacking, Distributed blog.

“It will be difficult to attract new people to Bitcoin when it’s controlled or controllable by a single entity.”

2 comments:

  1. The idol continues its descent to the pit of hell from which it ascended on its cloud of false hope.

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  2. That was 3 days ago - ancient news in Bitcoin World. The price has already sagged and has begun rebounding since then.

    Another way of looking at this is that it was a successful rebuff and ostricization of a mining pool that grew too big. The community raised the alarms and individual miners pulled their hashing power away from Ghash.io and brought it back in line. New pools were formed to create more competition. This is anti-fragility at work. What doesn't kill it makes it stronger.

    BTW, this one developer sold half his position AND THEN the mining pull was reigned in. So is his bitcoin wallet half-full or half-empty?

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