Quote from: reg on July 02, 2014, 04:44:42 AM

Quote from: DannyElfman on July 02, 2014, 04:37:36 AM

Quote from: justusranvier on July 02, 2014, 12:24:39 AM

Quote from: cenixentor on July 02, 2014, 12:20:21 AM

I worry that 60% of hash power is in the hands of only two ...
Could be hacked and you lose all your money...

Can you explain the sequence of events between those two mining pools getting hacked and all bitcoin users losing their coins?

In theory if the two pools were hacked and the hackers executed an attack on the blockchain then the confidence in bitcoin could be eroded to the amount that bitcoin price would crash.

In reality this will not happen as when evidence of an actual attack against the network by specific pool(s) miners would pretty much instantly pull their hashpower from those pools to prevent the attacks from continuing. IMO the very large miners with significant amounts of money invested in miners would likely be monitoring a number of sources (forums, MSM, the blockchain) for potential evidence of an attack on the network by the pool they are mining on and would react accordingly

a 51% attack and hacking were never really my concern as these have been shown to be mainly self defeating and therefore less likely. However monopoly of blocks is a concern as this would drive the smaller pools and miners out of btc. as I have said in a previous post there are still 9 miliion btc to be mined -do you feel safe and in a decentralized system if they all belong to ghash.io

Well hackers could in theory hack two (or more pools), essentially control 51% of the network, spend massive amounts of coins on some good/service and then reverse the payment after the goods/services are received. The problem with this is that if the amounts were great enough then the price of bitcoin would likely fall more then 50%, making the attack unprofitable.