Dude, give it up. First you have just explained how the system could be interrupted in a rather cheap way, and then you are saying there is nothing wrong with the design. If a government can screw it up for only 40 million bucks, there are lots of things wrong with the design.. Also: "It's so important that people realize that we can only get rough guesses at how much hashing power any one pool actually has; ghash.io could just as easily point all their hashing power to p2pool and we'd be thinking everything is hunky dory even though we'd still be at risk."
I disagree, it really is not, all those asic need to do is solve sha-256. We are talking about a few guys with very limited resource in the basement here. If goldman sachs were to do it for example, they will drop $10mill in r & d and easily get one of the many professional firms to get it done and fast track with tsmc foundry and foxconn-type assembly. Look how many iphones/ipads get pumped out a day, this is just a drop in the bucket. Those banks already have multiple data centers, all those asic will just be blade rackmounts. The infrastructure setup is really not that difficult, again you are only thinking mom & pop setups, you need to think how a large company with access to hundreds of billions in resources & funds will attack this. It's a walk in the park. i agree it gets more difficult as time goes by that's why i am saying we need to grow slow and steady until the network becomes too difficult to attack. You cannot patch and defend if within a week another 36K TH came online for example, unless you track down their datacenter and physically shut it down. It will be too late by the time the "good guys" catch on. Yes they are ignoring now because there is no impact to their bottomline, but if bitcoin becomes too popular and actually getting used as a currency, you bet they will take notice and try to shut it down, as by design, there is no way for them to profit on the transactions otherwise as an exchange. Hopefully by then the network is too big.
pfff ..... we will see who is right... (put some skin in the game and go short, I will be on the other side).
i dont think you want anyone to have the ability to short btc at this point, or things can really get out of hand. I am happy there is no way to securely short bitcoins currently without major counterparty risk. I have supported bitcoin since day 1 before anyone here even know what it is, just because i raise concerns doesnt mean i want it to die. Also not saying someone will execute this type of network attack, my point is it can be done by a large firm relatively easily right now due to the low network difficulty. You need to understand how bitcoin actually works, you also need to understand what "major flaws in the protocol" means - which implies design fundamental error. The protocol is working exactly as expected by design, and everyone knows it since day 1. There is nothing more to say on this.
that you don't have any good argument. I understand it just swell.... Coiners wouldn't be freaking out if it wasn't a problem. If it is not, why don't we just let a group gain 50+% share and see what happens...
Wells Fargo considering offering bitcoin service http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/news/wells-fargo-hopes-offer-bitcoin-services-135983
I think all pekelo's concerns which have great reasoning would be priced Into bitcoin at this moment and it would not be at the price it is at. The evil doers as you say would nip this in the butt now rather than letting it get more steam. I would think.
Central banks and those behind them are the only concern. From their perspective, Bitcoin is a challenge to their slavery system. However, the people working at the establishments are so angry with the central banking slavery system that they want to see change.
I think no matter what your medium of exchange, it all has flaws. Fiat can be debased, gold can be injected with tungsten, bitcoin can be hacked...if you are always looking for worst case scenario, you can probably always find one no matter what. Doesnt mean its going to happen. You measure the risk/reward, see if it's worth it, and act accordingly. Gold & fiat have the advantage of having a longer track record than bitcoin, which is why the risk reward with those investments is near nothing. In my opinion, bitcoin has a serious, potential lifechanging reward for anyone who makes a small investment now of even maybe only $1k bucks. (most of you have probably dropped that in a day, trading) Others believe the cake is a lie.