Calling it “not a big deal” is completely wrong, and basically an irrational cheerleader position. yes, there are reasons that a miner with 51% might not want to use their position of power, but it defeats the primary claim of bitcoin: that it is technically infeasible for a single organization like a government to manipulate the currency for their own benefit. If a single miner / mining pool controls 51%, you are back to relying on social / economic pressure to keep powerful players from acting badly. And if “the core devs” are threatening to change the protocol by fiat to punish bad actors, then I don’t really know what value it has at all. Beyond that, it is proof that achieving 51% is not impossible. Even if this pool isn’t going to do anything bad, that means someone else can, too. In particular, a large bank or government could probably easily buy enough hardware to take over the block chain.
Bron
