You people flock to bitcoin supposedly to reclaim public, distributed control over a currency, and then you just give away the power to the first pool operator who asks for it.
Key word is give. It can be taken away too.
The fact that people are actually arguing here that "deepbit would never do such a thing" is unbelievable. Is he Jesus now? Is he your new guru? I thought the entire point of bitcoin was that no one would be the guru, no one would have control.
That's free market principles at work. They provide a great service and people use it until they do something to lose people's trust then they go elsewhere.
And then you have the incredibly naive and ignorant argument that if someone abused the network people would "rally" to save it. What fantasy world is this? That's not what would happen. People would abandon the currency because they don't want to sink more money into a flawed concept and flawed community.
If by save then you mean abandon the site and redistribute the power by going to other pools that are springing up left and right or going solo, then yes, absolutely.
Amateur hour. The fact that one man already actively controls enough cryptographic power to break the validity of the currency with NO OVERSIGHT and people put their BLIND FAITH in him..... no serious person is going to have confidence in the currency when they learn that the exact exploit conditions presented by the creator have already been fulfilled, and not through investing significant personal resources either, but fulfilled because bitcoin users VOLUNTARILY GAVE AWAY their cryptographic authority to him. Amazing!
People put blind faith in their federal governments, state governments, city governments, local governments, home owners associations, parent/teacher associations, and any other group that they join voluntarily. Oversight is it's own joke. Everyone thinks they know how to do it right and do it better. The difference here is that protesting is as easy as pulling your hashing power and moving it somewhere else. Until users are given a reason to do so they will keep using whatever service they choose.
The "exact exploit conditions presented by the creator" are having => 50% of the network power, which no one person has, and also that they are anonymous so that no one knows where to go looking if someone trys said exploit.