On 05/17/11 17:01, Srini RamaKrishnan wrote: > On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 1:09 PM, Alaric Snell-Pym > <[email protected]> wrote: >> Currently, the bitcoin network produces about 1.5 trillion hashes per >> second, total. So somebody managing a billion a second, in a mining >> pool, earns about a 1500th of the total "income" of new bitcoin - 50 >> every ten minutes... > > Wait, it doesn't work like this? > > http://xkcd.com/538/ >
Alas no! The design of the system is all about global consensus - more than 50% of the hashing capacity needs to agree for stuff to happen. There's nobody to whack with a wrench - it'd cost more to go and whack each pimply nerd with a basement full of computers than to just buy more computers ;-) ABS -- Alaric Snell-Pym http://www.snell-pym.org.uk/alaric/
