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Comment by ohazi | Hacker News Reader

> I realize this hasn't happened yet

Don't be so sure... there are already mining pools that collectively control far more than 50% of the network's mining capacity. This is supposed to be existentially problematic for bitcoin, but the majority sentiment appears to be ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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The situation reminds me a little bit of the Keynesian beauty contest: what matters isn't what I think of bitcoin, it's what other people think.

Do I think the average person buying bitcoin today is even aware of these problems? Not a bit. Are they going to wise up soon? Probably not.

So maybe it makes sense to bet that Bitcoin will be popular and unaffected by these issues for a while. (I mean, you can still use it to buy heroin, right? Growth potential.)

On the other hand, ignoring the long-term problems feels a little like knowingly buying into a pyramid scheme.

Exactly, markets are based in perception. Doesn't matter what is the true value of anything, it depends what majority thinks. To quote GOT "Power lies where we think it lies".

To be clear, at this time no single pool has >50%, and your concern is that a minimum of 6 pools would need to collude to achieve >50% of hashrate. No?

Source: https://blockchain.info/pools

My concern is that in the long term you'll see more and more consolidation of mining power, because economic forces will tend to push things in that direction. (That's what the articles I linked to above are saying.)

At some point, it might not take "collusion" to manipulate the currency because somebody will be able to do it unilaterally.

Obviously there's some collection of pools that control more than 50% of the capacity, how could there not be?

The question is how many are needed to control more than 50%, and how likely they are to collude.

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