Bitcoin Community Abuzz Over Ghash.io's Uncomfortably High Hashrate
Fears of a potential 51 percent attack are once again brewing in the bitcoin community with news that mining pool Ghash.io has reached an uncomfortably high hashrate in the past twenty-four hours. The bitcoin subreddit on social sharing website Reddit.com, with over ten shares on the page related to the matter. The pool's hashrate reached as high as 47 percent - extremely close to the 51 percent envelope that would open the door to attacks that could be carried out by the majority. One such attack would be double-spending transactions. That is, using the same amount of bitcoin twice. Such....
Related News
There's certainly been a lot of discussion lately with regard to the Ghash.io mining pool. Consistently reaching a high bitcoin network hashrate (exceeding 40 percent), the pool has been viewed by many in the community as a bad player. Why is this a big deal? Because when a pool reaches 51 percent network hashrate, they may have the ability to carry out malevolent attacks. These include excluding transactions, reversing transactions while in control, and more. But now, amid all of the bad press, Ghash.io and sister company Cex.io have released a statement on the matter, and the....
Over the last couple of days, the Ghash.io mining pool has been stirring up conversation in the community again, with an uncomfortably high share of hashrate hitting very close to the feared 51 percent mark. Posts urging miners to switch to smaller pools litter social media, and Bitcoin Foundation Chief Scientist Gavin Andresen did the same on Friday in a post published on the Bitcoin Foundation blog. He writes: Bitcoin mining has been too centralized for years, with just a handful of pool operators have controlled well more than 50% of hashing power. Recently, mining power has become even....
The bitcoin community has been critical for the past two days of the increasing hash rate of the biggest bitcoin mining pool Ghash which states that it is currently able to process 37.92 Ph/s leading to an estimation of 42% – 47% of the total network hashrate. Ghash has not yet responded to requests for comments. However, in a press release issued in January 2014 to alleviate fears of 51% control of the total hashrate, Ghash, whose hashrate is stated to consist of approximately 45% BitFury ASIC based miners and 55% independent miners, publicly stated in clear terms that: “GHash.IO does not....
Ghash.io is still currently the largest Bitcoin mining pool, based on data from the last 48 hours. In June, the media had a frenzy over the fact that a Bitcoin Mining pool had over 50% of the total network hashrate, thus presenting an unnecessary threat to the health of the Bitcoin network. Currently, they are sitting at around 30% of the total Bitcoin network hashrate and today it has been revealed that they plan to never go above 39.99% ever again. Unlike BTC Guild, Ghash.io does not have a set mitigation plan involving raised fees or closed registrations to back up their promise. In....
Here at CCN, I was able to talk with Jeffrey Smith of Cex.io and ask him a few questions about cex.io and ghash.io. For those readers that are unfamiliar with the Cex.io/Ghash.io websites, they provide simple access to mining power of any size for end users around the world. With Cex.io, users can purchase GH/s on a freely floating hash for Bitcoin exchange. Ghash.io is the mining pool that rented equipment from Cex.io is pointed towards, many other miners also use Ghash.io because they are able to offer 0% fees and a high hashrate consistently. Back a few months ago, CCN raised concerns....