Quote from: jwcastle on December 29, 2014, 12:09:06 AM

Many people speak of China as if it's one person. Although that may be true in some respects, it's not the case for Bitcoin mining.
There are thousands of miners in China. Each one operates independently not controlled by one person or one organization.
If someone were to say, "What would happen if USA has > 51% of hash?" People would say, "So what?" There are thousands of independent miners in the USA. 51% in one region or one country doesn't mean anything at all.

As for ghash.io, maintenance fees have gone way over profit returns. People are losing money every single day at ghash.io. Wouldn't you turn off your cloud mining rigs if you were losing money every day? The remaining ones are probably not customer-owned.

Quote from: securityinfo on December 28, 2014, 04:41:38 AM

I wonder how long until >51% of hash is in China Huh

Pretty damn close right now.... ~46% for certain, and 20% "unknown".

guojin mintui.

Seems like China is really becoming the 800lb gorilla in the Bitcoin equation, from build to run to store.

What would be the benefit, if any, to China to potentially control/manipulate the Bitcoin economy as it moves forward?

Hmmm....

So, you believe that the Chinese Government has no interest in Bitcoin mining? I certainly have no proof either way, but my experience with China and her policies might make me question such a belief. I don't think one can compare the USA to China with respect to direct governmental influence on individuals (but that is easily debated :-) ); also, I really don't know enough about the mathematics of pools to understand if multiple pools could be somehow combined or manipulated in a way that might subtly influence the Bitcoin market. It was just a thought.

Thanks for your comments, as a newbie I appreciate them!