Quote from: notlist3d on July 09, 2015, 10:24:57 PM

Quote from: acaciosc on July 09, 2015, 10:22:47 PM

Quote from: notlist3d on July 09, 2015, 10:18:49 PM

Quote from: acaciosc on July 09, 2015, 09:51:18 PM

Quote from: navigator on July 09, 2015, 04:45:40 PM

Quote from: acaciosc on July 09, 2015, 02:52:18 AM

Quote from: navigator on July 09, 2015, 12:59:23 AM

I've posted this elsewhere before, I think this chart shows a sort of equilibrium now
https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/difficulty-price-btc.html#log

Thank you very much for that graph. From what I understood now, the Bitcoin price will always follow the difficulty? If so, Bitcoin looks a great and practically safe investment.

It's usually said to be the opposite, that difficulty follows price. I think it's more convoluted than that. If price shoots up then more miners are added to compensate. But if price falls then miners will leave. But if too many miners leave then this leaves a lot of unused hardware that someone could scoop up and use to destroy bitcoin by 51% attack. So I think if price falls too much and some miners leave, then remaining miners will want to save bitcoin from attack and will either mine at a loss or stop selling mined coins so low causing price to go back to an equilibrium.

So price can shoot up and difficulty can easily follow to very high numbers. But if price falls enough to cause 50% of miners to turn off then we have a problem. I hope that we wont let that happen which also seems to create a price floor that gradually moves up.

Well, but a 51% attack is practically impossible... Unless a malicious person takes control of the top three pools... Which are EXACTLY at 51% of Hashrate distribution!

I would say currently practically impossible. It is a very very very small chance it ever happens. It would take someone in a main pool/pools wanting to hurt bitcoin which normally does not help them long run.

Look at ghash they had the amount of hash a while back. This proves there can be the conditions there, but the community does actively stop it in the past.

But it's risky to have the top 3 pools accounting for 51% of the total hashrate, right? And why EXACTLY 51%? Just a coincidence?

I sleep nice with it split 3 way's. That actually is not a bad split. No way 3 mining pools get together and destory bitcoin. Just will not happen.

If it was 1 pool with 50 percent or high 40's yes I would be worried. Just like with Ghash back in the day. But we have moved a lot and not one pool has the 51 currently.

How can you be so confident that the three pool operators wouldn't decide to attack together? They may have some secret relationship. I will ask again: Why do the three top pools account for EXACTLY 51% of the total hashrate?