Bitcoin 51% Attacks

You're aware of a 51% attack yeah?

The way I see it, it is certainly possible for one entity to gain enough computing power to control 51% of the Bitcoin network. However, once you do that, if you actually do any of the bad things that you could do, people will notice, and consequently trust Bitcoin less, so the value goes down. So why make the huge investment to control Bitcoin for nefarious purposes if you will make it worthless in the process?

Yes, but those miners have invested so much capital into their mining hardware, software, electricity, etc that they have a strong incentive to make sure that doesn't happen. If an attacker were to gain control of 51% of the network Bitcoin would quickly become worthless or at least drop sharply in price making the whole attack pretty worthless. Not only is it very difficult to get to 51%, there are strong incentives for the relevant parties to make sure such a thing doesn't happen. If

Unless the hackers control 50%+ of the mining?

Is it a problem? If you had 51% of hashing power would you sabotage the bosom that feeds you?

No one is actually answering your question, the answer to which is absolutely yes, it’s technically possible to do what you’re describing. Actually getting 51% hash power will be likely infeasible.

This reminds me of the idea of bitcoin owning 51% of miners and being able to split.What do you think?

No. If someone does manage to control 51% of the computing power of Bitcoin, he's much better off using that to mine bitcoins rather than "cheating". If he'll use it to cheat, he'll cause panic, make bitcoin drop their value and undermine the source of his own potential wealth. It'll be much better for him to play fair and just gain (a lot, with that much computing power) wealth by mining.

Owning >51% of the mining power for a sustained period would make it impossible to trust and presumably eventually wipe it out. The hashing power is frequently compared to small states, so a large state could presumably put together enough hashing power to sustain such an attack.

Not really. There are always lots of 'versions' of the blockchain floating around. The network only keeps track of the longest chain (broadly speaking). This means the network with 51% can determine which transactions get into the blockchain. For example, if the pool owner doesn't like you, he can essentially 'blacklist' your account, which means your Bitcoins can become unspendable, basically. The longer they have the 51% power, the more damage they can do. GHash alread