lulz.

Put another way.  No disrespect, but STFU.

Ahhh, thanks for that.

Okay, well I guess you are right. Since Vlad is just setting up a large non-monopolistic mining organization, this isn't really the place for me to go trolling. I'll delete my posts and take my posting to other threads.

Please notice how orangey his ignore link is and while you're at it, give it a click yourself. I promise you'll have a much better experience on this forum

Either they are orphaned or not. What does the eventually mean?

Ophan isn't instantaneous.  

The chain with the most hashing power will ALWAYS eventually the longest and orphan out any other competing chains.  Eventually is a given but how low is subject to variance.

Say one entity (A) has 51% hashing power.  Everyone else is (B) and has a combined 49%.

block #1000 is current block
B builds a block #1001  (we will call it 1001B)

If A builds the next block (1002A) it never risks being orphaned as long as it builds on the longest chain.
If B builds the next block (1002B) and A decides to abandon the block it is working on and build on top of 1002B then the chain continues
If B builds the next block (1002B) but A decides to continue its chain and publish 1002A then eventually 1002B will be abandoned.

Maybe team "B" even gets lucky and builds 1003B, 1004B, 1005B.  Sweet got 5 blocks despite A having 51%.  The victory is short lived because the math is unavoidable.  A has 51% of hashing power.  The 1% is like house edge in a casino.  Over a long enough chain of blocks A will build the longer chain and when that happens 1001B, 1002B, 1003B, 1004B & 10005B will all be orphaned.   It is inevitable and unavoidable.  It is the same dynamic in play with a 51% attack.

51% hashing power = 51% to 100% hashing power.  The miner with 51% can choose how many blocks to oprhan and how much profit they want to make.

No rational miner will ever reject all other blocks when he has 51% because this will lower the value of the BTC he is mining. Irrational miners however ...

No rational user will stop using bitcoin because of the identity of the person processing their txns. Therefore, there is no rational reason to believe that a monopoly would negatively affect price. In fact, the rational argument points in the opposite direction.

Monopolized Control -> Stronger incentives for monopolist to develop uses for bitcoin -> More new uses developed -> Higher price

Your argument goes

Monopolized Control Less Useful -> Lower Price

I'm not understanding the part. Seems illogical. Could you explain without introducing irrational behavior?

@cunicula: Bitcoins security is largely based on the decentralization of control. Using a centralized approach one would have to trust a single entity to, for instance not double spend. Replacing the distributed  securing authority with a single centralized one just turns Bitcoin into another Fiat currency. Even inflation could be introduced at the mercy of the central authority! This significantly reduces the value of the currency.

@DeathAndTaxes: Sure that could very well happen. The drop-off in value would simply be smeared out over many years. The loss in intrinsic value of the currency would be the same, so market prices will follow soner or later (markets can be irrational for potentially long periods).

To be clear: I am not saying the system would have zero value. it would be useful similar to how the Candian Mintchip has value. There will simply be more value for a miner with >51% to accepts valid blocks of others and in turn he will stop holding 51% of the market in the future when suffient competitors enter the market.

so you cant even tell if your company seeks capital to buy third party systems or to develop your own IP and chips ?
Why then, post anything at all?

Announcing a paramount monopoly in mining would be a good trick to drive many people to sell off their coins in panic. Result: Cheap coins to buy before people found out it isn't really a present danger and the price will slowly rise again.

If I held a substantial amount of hashing power of the network I'd also make sure people won't notice it. MM could be mining at 10 different pools hiding his 20% of the share until he could go for a 51% attack. After the next difficulty change we will know more.

BUT it looks like the 51% attack may be Bitcoin's sore point after all. It won't be Vlad's or anyone's fault. It will simply be the major flaw everyone has been looking for and was glad they didn't find. The system really seemed bullet proof so far. Perhaps the time will come sooner than later that "shit hits the fan" as some here in the forum may call the end of the game.

Let's hope I am wrong or the developers decide to change the algorithm so Asics have no chance at this (too early) stage of Bitcoin.