Bitcoin Forum

Proponents of Bitcoin claim that Bitcoin is a decentralized system. And because it is decentralized, nobody can control it - not you, not me, not the central banks, not the Federal Reserves, not anybody. Bitcoin nodes are distributed extensively and not kept in a centralized system (for instance, in one server) which can be susceptible to hacking or take over. While the inherent system is designed to operate in a decentralized manner, external factors are making Bitcoin less decentralized. Why? Because Bitcoin transaction requires miners to validate and update transactions on the Bitcoin network. To do that, miners need hashpower. The greater the hashpower, the greater control the miner or group of miners have on the system. Currently, Chinese miners control more than 70% of the total Bitcoin mining hashpower in the world, making China the undisputed world leader in Bitcoin mining. Talk about decentralization. According to blockchain.info, 4 (19%) of the total of 21 mining pools control more than 50% of the hashing power, while the rest of the 81% are left with 47% of the remaining hashpower. Doesn't sound so decentralized, does it?

Moreover, Bitcoin developers are controlled largely by Bitcoin Core group that is being run by people hired by Blockstream, a private company. So now, you have bitcoin mining controlled by a small handful of miners and the developers controlled by a group of people belonging to a single private entity. Some argue that this is exactly what makes Bitcoin decentralized because none of them can gain control over it. Really? Because from the outside, it looks more like a company being run by two hard-headed CEOs who are only looking out for their own self-interest. When two CEOs clashes against one another, is that what they refer to as decentralized?

So while Bitcoin's inherent system is decentralized, the governing factors (hashpower dominance by Chinese miners and software development by a small group of developers) makes it less so.

When we look at the big stock market, we see that they are not completely independent, Bitcoin will be meaningless without stock exchanges, ATMs are not widely available and their fees are very high.

It ain't perfect, that is for sure.  :-\
Mining is too centralized, I agree. Many altcoins have lower block time to battle mining pools, Bitcoin doesn't.
But remember that people can change mining pools and those mining pools can be left without the hashing power.
People can also choose a different wallet, many don't use Bitcoin Core (mobile wallets). However the majority of full nodes are Bitcoin Core, that is something to worry about.

As you can see from recent hardfork, people have a choice. Always.
I am not worried about the protocol that much, the nature of capitalism is what worries me the most. Even tho miners can choose different mining pools, I am worried that there will be less and less miners. And they might lean to a smaller and smaller area on the map and be under the same government as they are now, for economical reasons.

I don't believe that Bitcoin is a problem, I think it is the best solution we got right now. I am just afraid that it will not be enough.
But what is the point of just doing nothing and shaking your head. If you see a possible way out of the bad system, you might as well take the chance. It might be the only one you get or it might even be the one that will make the world a better place to live.

I fully agree:Mining is too centralized.
Beside some miners work under the same governmental umbrella there is still the possibility that you have different mining pools which belong to one group of mining pool - who knows.
Yes, it is not perfect - it could be better, but it could also be much more worse.

I highlighted the key words of your paragraphs. This is true. Let's just see it that there are companies who can set their own rules and salary to their employess since government has no control of it (a symbolism for decentralized Bitcoin) but the thing is the employees can always resign with no further adieu since there is no contract that binds them (a symbolism to a greater freedom that Bitcoin has given us).

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By the way, I find your topic interesting and this is exactly my concerns when I realized that Bitcoin is not fully decentralized considering the factors you had aforementioned. I am waiting for the reply of the respected bitcointalkers out there. I would like to extend my compliments to you.

The independence of bitcoin is a myth. And decentralization, too. Recently all of us became hostages of a fork. Miners began to dictate terms and it is also pressure. In the state of the economy there is an antitrust law. It is able to solve these problems. In the bitcoin economy, this mechanism is not and we become hostages of the situation.

It is decentralize only in bitcoin itself but if you put it on the exchanges and other websites that holds it I think it losses it because someone is starting to regulate it

Bitcoin may not be perfect, but it's the best thing we have. I just wish there was more competition in mining.

Maybe that's coming... Did you guys see this?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-08-08/russia-launches-100-million-bitcoin-mining-operation

Bitcoin is certainly distributed well enough. As for whether it's decentralised, in its present form I would say it isn't but there is the capacity to get it back if flagrant abuses were becoming more brazen.

It's something that's never been properly put to the test. Perhaps it needs to be.

Bitcoin is truly decentralized, else this could have been manipulated often by the user who holds a big volume of bitcoin. As it functions on an entirely open platform the transactions were transparent. This makes it a trusted way for large volume transactions.

If you don't agree with what the devs are doing you can always fork or you can always just create an altcoin. You're free to do literally whatever you want so just go ahead and do it. It's decentralized because no central controller is sitting there waiting to change something for their own benefit. How many people in the world do you honestly think could be (useful/successful) bitcoin devs?

Bitcoin is decentralized and it's not depending on any central bank, government or regulatory agency. When it comes to manipulation I don't say there is no chance but I think the possibilities are minimal. Minera could be a different story but still I don't think they influence that much.

Erm, does that not mean that Bitcoin development is therefore extremely centralised?

It started off a lot more centralized with only one developer haha. Lots of altcoins have 1 or 2 devs (ETH) but does that mean they are centralized? Not really. I mean ETH isn't actually truly decentralized and is a shitcoin/ponzi to begin with but that's a whole other discussion.

Seriously though, not enough people understand the fundamentals of bitcoin and can make regular contributions to it so that's where there are a small group of people that do it. You can always 'vote' against it... So it's still decentralized.

Decentralized until certain point. If someone has too many Bitcoins this one can control the market influencing the price, it's a kind of centralization. In a decentralized world only those who deserve becomes rich and powerful, but when they achieve it they can control others very well if they wish.

Someone owning a vast amount of coins isn't centralised. They bought them freely off people who sold them freely. If people were prevented from buying or selling as many as they wanted it would become more... centralised as some authority figure would be dictating that. 

I think we would probably end up going batty attempting to define decentralisation in the context of everything.

Mining became centralized indeed, that's why we have few processors manufactures at semicondutor industry, big money can access the best professionals, cheap government electricity subside, etc. I guess the balance at bitcoin ecosystem came when you give a copy of the the database (Blockchain) among as much people as possible (users)  

No doubt the Bitcoins were adquired spontaneously for both sides wishes (the seller and buyer). But the point is that the buyer can keep adquiring more and more Bitcoins. While his fortune grows stronger, other's fortunes will decrease or keep the same. I'm not saying it's wrong, it can be achieved by his own merit.

And when the biggest part of Bitcoins are in his hands he will choose when to sell, so he controls the price by controlling the disponible supply at the market. Otherwise, if people start seeing this they will want to stop using Bitcoins and this could kill the currency, that is possible risk for Bitcoin sustainability.

I think BTC is decentralised as much as possible, there will never be a fully decentralised currency as long as technology keeps changing and improving, someone needs to update the code or be able to fork. Unless of course an AI controls and auto-updates the currency.

Might be the reason why Satoshi Nakamoto decided to disappear in the eyes of the public to erase the thinking that he is the irony of the decentralized currency he had developed.

Who says ETH is somehow decentralized cryptocurrency? Anyone who is knowledgeable in the cryptoworld know that ETH is centralized.

It is decentralize but not fully decentralized. The foundation of decentralization in Bicoin is the freedom to make a choice like if you refuse using Bitcoin Core wallet then you can try other which you think is much better like Mycelium, Electrum and etc. Also if it is truly centralized then wayback August 1 we shouldn't been worried about the possibility of hardfork which proves that they need consensus, a support from the community in excecuting those plans or proposals.

I believe that bitcoins are distributed among the people well. A person or group of people holds a few thousands of bitcoin but not a million unless you are Satoshi Nakamoto since as we know that it is possible for him to have those figures though we can't verify this as a fact but a possibility. I doubt that Satoshi would just thoughtlessly sell all his bitcoins in one go causing his craft's market to cascade.

I can say that bitcoin is about 85% decentralized. well, you can choose to become anonymous or not while using bitcoin. Many bitcoiners only care about making profit from trading so that they reveal their true identity to an exchange in order to register an account. Bitcoin is always a good currency for people who do not want to provide their identity to the world

As per me, bitcoins are decentralized so far its in your personal wallet; once you transfer it to the bitcoin exchanges then you have to follow their rules and i think its quite necessary to them for smooth transactions.

This is a big misconception that bitcoin provides privacy. If you even once went online then your footprints remain there forever. To these tracks, you can monitor all your actions and the movement of money. Bitcoin is just an illusion of anonymity.

I think mining centralization can be a serious nuisance for the Bitcoin network, although not an existential threat. Launching 51% attack, which is the worst case scenario, is very unlikely, because of giant costs of it, and it can only stop the network and make some double spending. But there are other attacks that can be achieved by having significant amounts of hashing power. Right now majority of miners come from China, so we can imagine scenario when Chinese government orders miners to not include transactions of some foreign companies, creating artificial delays for victims. Miners also hold some political power over Bitcoin, because they can block proposed changes. In the long run, miners follow the market, but in short term miners also have some influence over the market.

I come to disagree with your core statement

That Bitcoin is internally decentralized since it is obviously not. You refer to miners as external factors but they are an integral part of the system which were there from the beginning and cannot made separated from it without destroying Bitcoin itself (or turning it into something else). Thus the miners are something which obviously belongs to the core of the system. So if Bitcoin mining is centralized (as it is today), it could be said that Bitcoin is centralized too (at least, in this aspect), and it is a logical outcome of the flaw in the Bitcoin blueprint or design (if we consider this situation as detrimental, of course)

Yes it is. No one individual can control Bitcoin, but rather it is controlled by a host of nodes running all over the world which each must approve of every transaction.

Bitcoin allows me to safely store my money. I can make fast and low cost money transfers with Bitcoin. Money control is entirely mine. I think Bitcoin is decentralized.

This is something that we have known for quite some time, bitcoin has less points of failure than most systems but that does not mean that it does not have them, however as the price goes higher and higher it becomes possible for others to enter the mining game and defy the Chinese hegemony.

Bitcoin is less decentralized than it used to be but it is still good enough. The hard fork to BitcoinCash is more or less a proof that there are powerful people and miners in Bitcoin who are very unhappy with the direction of the network that all they can do is hard fork away instead of gaining control.

We all know miners want bigger blocks. If the network was centralized, we would have bigger blocks by now.

Yes it is, because if it is not. Perhaps, perhaps all government to all countries has capability to control our coin. And sure the quotation will no longer be post here that "we are the bank of our own savings" but because of bitcoin was decentralized we are capable to become the bank of our coins which is Bitcoin.

Maybe from some countries have a way with the ability to control all the coins in the US so completely decentralized bitcoin on the direction of the network that can hold larger blocks have but it would be difficult to gain control of coin bitcoin. so not being able to be a coin bank that we have

We already have bigger blocks by now

I refer to Bitcoin Cash obviously. This could be thought of as a nice workaround instead of a direct attack against original Bitcoin which would likely hurt it seriously if not kill it on the spot. In other words, the network is centralized (at least, was before the split) but the miners chose by far less risky way to exert their influence since, as I already said, exerting this influence directly would most certainly wreak havoc in Bitcoin, thereby killing the golden goose that Bitcoin has been for the last couple of years

It's more complex than that. One potential issue is geographic centralization, particularly as it relates to national boundaries. The vast majority of global hashpower (something like 70%) is controlled by Chinese mining pools. Let's ignore for the moment the possibility of miner collusion to commit selfish mining or 51% attacks, or that Bitmain itself might control a majority of all hashpower.

The issue I'm pointing out is that having so much hashpower under one national jurisdiction means it could all be shut down quickly by one national government. That could cause massive and prolonged network disruption if difficulty were to drop that way. It would be far better for hashpower to be geographically decentralized.

There is no cloud without a silver lining

That event, while certainly causing a lot of havoc in the markets as well as plenty of pain in the ass of every Bitcoin holder, would likely be a perfect opportunity to make a huge leap ahead and finally get rid of rogue miners altogether. I refer first and foremost to changing Bitcoin network security model from PoW to PoS model. Right now such move is next to impossible to make since no miner in his right mind and solid memory will ever agree to this, but in that case (when they choose to attack the network), their voice will be irrelevant for pretty obvious reasons

If you want decentralization come to Bitcoin Cash

I disagree, it is VERY possible, and it will be the end result in the long run.

As long as we keep using this PoW , which is asic friendly, there would be more and more concentration of mining power by fewer people, as mining companies are bought by even bigger mining companies.
that's what big companies do, buy smaller ones to increase power and eliminate competition.

The end result could be no other than 1 powerful owner with close to 100% mining power, and we can do nothing, so the entire btc money supply is at the mercy of this guy.

it WILL happen, it is just a matter of time.

we need to change the PoW and make it change its properties over time, so it would be impossible to make an asic for it, GPU usage levels the plain field for everyone, the smaller and the big miners, anyone can buy a GPU, but not asic chips in lower quantities, only the powerful asic companies produce them, because you need to manufacture millions to justify the expenses of production.

if you want truly decentralization, it is the only way, with standard consumer products, like GPUs.

thanks my point of view.
indkt.

Bitcoin is truly a decentralized coin because it is not controllable by the government, if bitcoin is not centralized then we can see a lot of governments that already controlling bitcoin on their will, bitcoin is not owned by any person, organization or even company so putting our money in bitcoin will help us to void the government just for example is the inflation rate of fiat.

its decentralized, yet influenceable

Yes, truely Bitcoin is decentralised. Because Bitcoin is not having any central control. It's having freedom . It's not having any information repository. so Bitcoin is decentralised one.

I think you'll find that most bitcoiners oppose proof-of-stake. Has there been shown to be a viable proof-of-stake model as a proof-of-concept, let alone at scale? I haven't even seen a whitepaper that was altogether convincing, and that didn't make grand assumptions about the incentive model underlying PoS.

For now, PoW has been shown to work. Even facing a majority of rogue miners, I think that most bitcoiners would prefer to switch PoW algorithm and continue trying to address mining centralization than to go the route of PoS.

Since segwit, I don't know. I'm concerned about DCG

Thats true, no controls in bitcoin. The proof you have full control over the bitcoin you have in your wallet. You are free to do anything in bitcoin without any prohibition from any party, and that is included in decentralization, but the risk is certainly no one to be your complaint if exposed to problems, because the bitcoin is decentralized

Nothing is purely decentralised.

i think bitcoin isnt decentralized, because the rules decision from all miners.

I think it's been proven that bitcoin is decentralized, you're free to trade for any purpose, even if it's illegal and without intervention from anyone. You keep your own bitcoin without any government or dev intervention, I think it's proved that bitcoin is decentralized

Of course, this is because until now there has been no person or agency that states officially can control the bitcoin, so it can be said that Bitcoin truly decentralized.

The government in all countries are dreaming to control all bitcoin community in the entire world. But why they can't do anything about it to control it? it is because each government in the whole world are being categorize in centralization, while bitcoin was decentralization, that's the reason why bitcoin is can't be control by any of the officials of the government. and it is the reason why? we the bitcoin enthusiast are the bank of our bitcoin/altcoins.

But I refer to "if the network was centralized" then the whole network would have big blocks by now. That is why I said that to some boundary, Bitcoin is still decentralized. No one entity has 100% control over the network.

Which Bitcoin do you refer to specifically?

I made it clear that I meant the Bitcoin Cash network (as I wrote right away). But this is in fact irrelevant since in a few months we will likely have large blocks in the main chain as well anyway. Would it mean that by then we will have network centralized? Regardless, to exert control over something, you typically don't have to control 100% of it. It is usually a lot less than that, and sometimes even less than 50%

Tell that to the customers of BTC-e, or Alphabay. Fungibility is not ideal in bitcoin; you need to be very careful spending your UTXOs in order to avoid linking your identity to transactions somewhere along the way. Hopefully Tumblebit will help with this, but I'm not sure how far away we are from seeing a working implementation for Bitcoin.

Mining is arguably somewhat centralized (but that is neutralized by incentive). I'm more concerned about privacy than anything else at this point.

i believe bitcoins have a decentralized nature. Nobody has a 100% control over bitcoins. Considering the idea that some countries may have the capacity to control all fiats is absolutely right but in case of crypto currencies same countries do not stand a chance. They wish they can control it.

Decentralization is an extremely relative term. If we proposed to measure the degree of btc's decentralization using some metric, what unit of measurement would we use? Abstractions relating to decentralization and similar concepts are prone towards being vague and ambiguous rather than an exact science.

Bitcoin's degree of decentralization is also in flux and constantly changing. If russia or another nation devoted resources towards bitcoin mining things could easily become more decentralized or the opposite could happen in the future.

Exactly, it is decentralized but it isn't fully decentralized as we'd want it because there are people with huge sums of it and miners with great hashing powers who will do anything to centralize the network to their advantage .

We could draw a few analogies here

For example, the value of decentralization for a PoS coin would be wealth distribution, i.e. how many coins each holder has relative to the total number of coins mined or circulated. If everyone and his grandma have the same number of coins that would make a nicely decentralized coin. Obviously, it is not as easy in respect to a PoW coin. But here we can proceed from what the stake in a PoS coin may mean in a PoW coin. That seems to be the hashing power distribution, i.e. how much hashing power every miner (mining pool) has in respect to total available hashing power. I guess that would cut it pretty close to being a viable metric for assessing (de)centralization of a PoW coin

Anybody can start mining bitcoin to gain dominance over chinese miners, Bitcoin mining is free for everyone.

Bitcoin is open source so anybody can come up with their own version of software or solution for problems related to bitcoin network. I think you are talking about bitcoin core team, They have done really good work till now and majority of community follows them that's why they seem to be only developer behind bitcoin but that is not true.

Yes since the bitcoin is open source , all most any one can develop their own versions of block chain.So I don't think it can be controlled by some specific mine groups.So Bitcoin is certainly a decentralized system for sure.

It seems to me that this is all clear, but how will things stand in the future when the government will want to legalize Bitcoin. If today there is no binding to a person's personal data, there is not one Bitcoin wallet, what will happen next. How will it be with the fact that my bitkoin storage will lie for a very long time in the Bitcoin wallet and what will happen to them if all this happens. It worries me.

I think it is true because if it would not happen then everyone will be able to control our money and also the possibility is the some countries have the power to control the coins, so bitcoin is really decentralized or It will be manipulate by often by the who have a lot of bitcoin  it will surely make bitcoin a well trusted currency for the users. 

Yes, Bitcoin is decentralized without question. The very nature of how it is coded is such that it is decentralized... there is no possible way that it could not be, as each node must approve of every transaction... without exception.

You had me confused. I refer to the real Bitcoin. The one with the more hash power. Until BCC becomes the blockchain with the more hash power, I will remain calling BTC Bitcoin, BCC BitcoinCash.


Do you mean Segwit2x? Do not make any conclusions yet. Let us see it happen first.


Yes. That is why I said Bitcoin is still "fairly" decentralized enough.

I think you should rather say fairly centralized

But this is not the main point here. If you refer to the regular Bitcoin as well as its network and claim that if "the network was centralized, we would have bigger blocks by now". We don't have bigger blocks by now (apart from Bitcoin Cash, but it's an altcoin whatever you look at it), and we might not have bigger blocks as part of the Segwit2x deal in a few months. But if we will, that would pretty much mean that the Bitcoin network is (massively) centralized already, according to your own reasoning. I mean just accepting bigger blocks would prove that it is already centralized now since otherwise bigger blocks wouldn't be possible in a few months at all. Do you follow me?

Without any need of cross-examination, yes bitcoin is truly decentralized. And that's for sure...

Yes,bitcoin is decentralized.Otherwise,its security would have been compromised.Governments and bankers would have taken control of it and destroyed it much earlier.But it may look like some ascepts of bitcoin looking a little bit centralized.For example,china has largest number of mining farms in the world.So,naturally have a major share of bitcoins.Untill few months back,Chinese dominated bitcoin market and they used to dump their bitcoins at once and trying to manipulate bitcoin price.Bitcoin market suffered a lot due to them.But when PBOC regulated chinese exchanges,they started losing their control and people all over the world started to buy bitcoins.Now,they are no more able to manipulate bitcoin price.But still,they tried their best to stop segwit being activated so that they could earn more fom miner fee.But at last,segwit was activated.Now,we could hope that bitcoin is almost free from chinese and it remains decentralized.

What you are saying is try but like any crisis that will create an opportunity for bitcoin, many people that cannot enter on the mining market will have the incentive to do so and if such a thing happen china  will be seen as a bad place to make business so mining operations will be more distributed after that.

Aha! at last I have found a good answer. I totally agree with you mate (gentlemand); Anybody with money can mine bitcoins (which you cannot do with gold because you need permits from the mofos up there), anybody can HODL bitcoins (which you cannot do with fiats for long term because of the signatures  ;D ), anybody can buy and sell bitcoins anonymously (which you cannot do with fiats because the IR will interrogate you where did you get that money)...

I suggest that you guys should not think too much whether someday the bitcoin will be centralized or not... let us all enjoy what is happening at the moment - the future is our grandchildren's problem, not ours.  ;D

It's getting harder and harder. I have some old contacts from LocalBitcoins that may not necessarily ask for ID from every customer. But LBC traders are being treated as money transmitters now. Fiat onramps will always be patrolled by the authorities.


This is true to some extent. As much as I am a "Bitcoin Maximalist" (to use Vitalik's term), I'm trying to be open to the idea that Bitcoin could face future scaling problems, network splits, and devastating existential issues that we can't even think of right now. So, our grandchildren might all be using an altcoin someday.

Bitcoin can not be completely decentralized. It is partially managed by separate groups, but its full functioning depends on the community. Crypto currency can not be controlled by anyone, otherwise it will be anarchy. This also can not be allowed.

agree.. What may happen in the future may come, but we cannot predict or stop if it is going to happen, the main problem is that we always think a lot  about what may happen.. I totally agree that what may happen let us just enjoy what we have right now, we cannot control everything within our hands.. And let us also think that let us stop from setting our standards, live life to the fullest and enjoy.

I think so. Codes cannot be cheat that's why Im pretty sure that it was really decentralized. If they find a bug the developers and creator of the blockchain may find a way to fix the bug and make it more secured.

As a matter of fact, it is truly decentralized. But the op believes it is not, because of China having the highest rate of miners or so. Maybe other countries should upgrade. But such doesn’t make it centralized (or being controlled, because it’s still decentralized and anyone can make use of it.)

Bitcoin is decentralised, China holding or mining large amount if Bitcoins doesn't make Bitcoin centralized.Otherwise if Bitcoin was centralized  then it's security would have been compromised and may be government would try to bring it down.And also I think that bitcoin is open code anyone can develop a version of software of block chains but it doesn't make them controlling it.

bitcoin nodes are distributed...

but that does not mean that its decentralised.
think beyond distribution when learning about decentralisation.

think about the deeper aspects

also .. no im not talking about the FUD rhetoric found on reddit about "china"
think deeper about the network and puppetmasters.. not ASICS

Given the current situation in China with the vast majority of mining physically done there it's hard to say that it's truly decentralized. If the government wanted to step in and take over many of the very large and very obvious mining farms that directly rely on government power sources, it wouldn't be difficult. Especially considering they're already a single party state that has a history of attempting direct control of the economy for obvious political reasons considering it calls itself communist.

Bitcoin would probably survive such actions in the long run. But the cost and the damage done to the market could be huge.

Actually, Bitcoin is decentralized, however there are lots of aspects which have evolved over time that are not.

For example, there are companies which run like banks and own "our" private keys therefore this is like a real life bank.

There's a couple major threats to Bitcoin's decentralization. One, as you mentioned, is geographic centralization of mining power. Indeed, the Chinese government could instantly cause a shutdown of most of the hash rate, leading to major network disruption.

Another is centralization of chip manufacturing. Bitmain has a majority market share of ASIC manufacturing, and there is apparently even a potential backdoor built in whereby your miner could be shut down remotely. They also probably singlehandedly control a majority of the hash rate, which means they can do selfish mining or block withholding attacks... or they could seriously manipulate the markets. They might just be doing that with this whole BCH thing.

It depends on how you use it. If you use a software wallet and send money to my address and I send money to you that's pretty much decentralized. But as soon as a service has to get ball such as an exchange, a portion of that decentralization has to be given up. There's a difference between Anonymous and decentralized. And exchanged it doesn't deal with Fiat may not have to take any of your personal information and they simply use a database to store usernames, passwords and wallet addresses. They have to centralized that data or they can't do their job. But, all you are as user name to them and probably an IP address.

Bitcoin technology is similar to Internet one. Both were born to be decentralized systems, but then, little by little, few people gain lots of power and are now able to set and determine many crucial decisions. There's no alternative, in my opinion. Every decentralized system is doomed to be like this.

But there's a crucial difference between Bitcoin and the Internet. Because the Internet is one and there are no meaningful alternatives, while Bitcoin has many alternatives called altcoins. If you don't like it, you can switch to altcoin, although they could have the same problems.

I guess the answer to the emphasized part should be negative as well

In short, you don't send money to someone directly in the way you hand over cash. Your transaction still has to be confirmed by a third party, i.e. miners. And if mining is centralized as it is, you can't claim that using a personal wallet and sending money to another personal wallet is decentralized just on account that the whole process of transaction confirmation is hidden from you (though, strictly speaking, you can see that in any block explorer)

Correct but the reason people are worried about that is because they can clearly see that mining is centralized, a handful of persons control exclusively almost all the hash power, but I think that as bitcoin becomes more successful more people will begin to compete against the current mining giants.

Even though Chinese miners hold majority of the hash power, why would they stop mining if its profitable to them? If the reason is to control the network of bitcoin, they just wasted an opportunity. If they used their mining system to take down or change log in bitcoin system, they have to redo all the prevous transactions and the probability of coping with latest transaction is decreasing exponentially when the hashpower of hackers is greater than the normal miners.

Good point. The mining team has a great stake in sketching the future of Bitcoin. These giant Bitcoin miners can decide as a group and the Bitcoin Core team will have to listen to them considering that these giants will severely affect the fate of Bitcoin if they will decide to leave BTC once and for all.

One of the major importance of bitcoin is that it is decentralized, bitcoin has no central management control or system, bitcoin is the first system of decentralized money and banking, these digital currency is a technological advancement of paper money, this technology will help increase the economic growth of the world.

Bitcoin is decentralized because that is one of the reason, bitcoin is not depending on any central bank and it is also dependent on any organization or government so it is a complete package of freedom. Bitcoin is offering freedom to the people and that is what people like, because of the freedom it attracts people to use bitcoin because they don't need to feel scare about the government and they have the complete control for their money that they putted in bitcoin.

I’m not 100% sure about how genuine the market is, But all i’m sure is that there is no Central Bank which is a very great thing as the price of bitcoin is determined by the factors of demand and supply

I suggest, actually it's decentralized.It is understood to see hoe it going from birth.And how are going forward.See it public support, you understand.

It is decentralized but can be easily manipulated by big players on this market. that's why it got such a big trust and popularity.
CH (https://ico.crowdholding.com/) tried to do the same and I am pretty sure they will manage to decentralize current way of doing business.

I agree. I think 100% decentralization is impossible. Even the fact of a potential possibility of 51% attack shows that Bitcoin is not fully decentralized. But I also think there is no much sense for someone to take control over Bitcoin. Because as soon as someone does that, people will no longer trust Bitcoin and sell off all their coins, so eventually this someone will be left with Bitcoin network all by himself.

If anything the miners are furious that the devs are not listening to them, they are very powerful and have invested great amounts of money in bitcoin and yet the devs are doing what they think it is the best for bitcoin and that is why we have these forks and potential forks in store.

There is no one repository of bitcoins so obviously it has decentralized nature. It has no central control and no central point of failure. By decentralized nature, I mean it has market based centralization. You can say that the Bitcoin exchanges or web wallets are centralized but bitcoin itself is not.

Such comparison doesn't make a lot of difference

It is like saying that fiat money is decentralized on account that individual cash, hand to hand transactions are completely decentralized (as they are). But this alone doesn't make fiat decentralized. Apart from that, banks can also create credit money in a perfectly decentralized way, and they are not even limited in the amount of money thus created unlike Bitcoin which has a cap on the total number of coins to be mined

It's normal that China has 70% of the total Bitcoin mining hash-power, they have about 15% of world population.

Anyway, Bitcoin was just the first cryptocurrency. I believe there will be much more and the system will be less imperfect. In any case, Bitcoin is decentralized due to the logic of the system.

Nothing is perfect even bitcoin. We just hope it improves and covers its disadvantages soon.

Three whole months on this forum and you say you have no idea about Bitcoin?
The what are doing here, in god's name?


No it shows not.
It is decentralized as long as 51% of the miners are not acting against the others and with one entity controlling them all.

Think of it like normal persons who enjoy different tastes. Everyone is free to choose their own favorite color.
But the moment 51% decide that there would be one color alone in the world, there is no longer a free choice it's dictatorship of the majority.

Decentralization works until all the independent nodes start acting the same way under someones order.
Basically it ends where centralization happens.
Not really the case until now in the BTC enviroment.

Well, I absolutely that bitcoin is decentralized and its not depend on any bank. In addition to that, bitcoin is decentralized you can your own bitcoin and you can also use on any things that you want. Bitcoin is a digital currency and its own power. Lastly, bitcoin do not depend on any bank or government so that you can say that bitcoin is decentralized.

All the things you do said was right.Bitcoin isnt related or not connected on any bank or institutions which it can stand alone without the need of those things. Bitcoin is a decentralized crpytocurrency on which it does give you the full control of your funds and not only that you can make transfers from point A to B without any 3rd party involved and do have less fees which i can say that this thing is really a great innovation on a new payment system.

The market is a market in which nobody can directly alter its affairs which makes it a very safe market to be on. The value is determined plainly by the laws of demand and supply only.

And the US after the second world war had about 66% of the gold, a powerful nation is going to have a lot more bitcoin than its number of citizens for the simple reason they are more productive, now about the hash power I think that is going to change as bitcoin becomes more popular and it becomes profitable to mine in other countries.

I think it is still centralized since it is handed not by the local government. In fact it is not yet fully legalized by the government. It is not yet taxed and if that happens it is very beneficial to the projects of the government.

Do you understand what you're saying? I think you're either missing the whole idea about decentralization or you've mixed up some text that needs to be edited.

I think that mining is an important aspect of the current Bitcoin operations. Nevertheless, Satoshi is not thinking on keep mining forever if there is a better way to do the same easily. Since mining itself is a way of adding transaction records to Bitcoin's public ledger of past transactions.  The tricky side of the question "is Bitcoin truly decentralized?" is that descentralized could refer to a system or to the geography of one or more components of the business operations. That said, I can say that Bitcoin is mostly decentralized, especially in mining but not geographically talking. At the end is a business, and this factor will likely reduce or cancel some levels of decentralization.

"Decentralized" by itself is not valuable, but if it leads to you being able to choose your own monetary policy and it leads to you being able to pay whomever you want to pay without interference, then it's valuable, and that's what Bitcoin allows you to do. What I'm getting at is that I hear often how Bitcoin being decentralized is one of it's biggest appeals. That's usually followed up with, it can't be manipulated by bureaucrats, or something similar. I just don't see the difference when something like the fork happens. The developers and miners are acting out of their own self interest and opinion which may or may not be good for the future of the currency, the investor, or casual bitcoin user.

However, bitcoin is decentralized if compared to any existing currency on earth. There is no one person who could control it, and therefore you. He is not dependent on any state and can not be subjected to his pressure.

I don't think almost anything can be 100% decentralized. We still rely on the internet for bitcoin to happen and there is not a network in place to faciliate it happening(we would need our own internet).

Countries can ban it and ban exchanges and ban mining and ban buying it. So in the aspect of that we are still beholden to some centralized power of government allowing us to use it(unless we do so illegaly and anonymously).

Beyond that, the top 20 miners obviously controll how bitcoin goes and what chain to mine on. It will be confusing soon when there is 3 different bitcoins they will switch between.

segwit1x or segwit2x is going to die off without having EDAbuilt in.

It's not really decentralized. I'd say it's become less decentralized by the year since 2011 up 'till now. I don't think it can be helped, though. Not until it reaches a state where upgrades will not be necessary for years and there will be no need for any active dev team.

Bitcoin is decentralized in terms of technology. But from the point of view of the influence of large investors on the course, it is not so transparent

I think BTC is decentralised as much as possible, there will never be a fully decentralised currency as long as technology keeps changing and improving, someone needs to update the code or be able to fork. Unless of course an AI controls and auto-updates the currency.

I think that it is really decentralized and we can observe it by the speed of transactions...it becomes a problem that needs to be solved in the near future

Based on what I see in the company of bitcoin, this rumors are not true; in fact bitcoin established a centralize and well-organized organization wherein all process are smooth, efficient and not time consuming.
In this way they can save more time and money instead of spending it in manual procedures.  Bitcoin helps the whole society itself to that innovation for the bright future.

Yes bitcoin is truly decentralized because there is no central authority that controls it. Governments can “ban” bitcoin but they can’t actuallt do anything to stop transactions. As long as you control your private key you have complete control and no one can stop you from making transactions.

Yup the bitcoin is decentralized system wherein each group has a own central management;  through this the system is well organize and there is a process implemented in each organization which builds a high level of assurance that all things are in accordance of the policy.  That is the one of the reason why there are successful;  they much focus on their goals so every service they provide is excellent.

I think the one point that prevents anything from being truly decentralized is finding peers--at some point you have to know (and trust?) at least one other peer.

I believe the current way that the bitcoin client finds its first peer is:
  1. IP addresses of well known nodes
  2. DNS seeding

It's possible that all of these IP addresses are offline and/or DNS address(es) stale; or worse: maliciously changed, so that you cannot get your first (good) peer.

Forgive me if this information is no longer correct, I am a noob.

yaah no doubt about that Bitcoin is decentralized and it's not depending on any central bank, government or regulatory agency.

Bitcoins have no centralized control mechanism: there is no single repository of information, no centralized management, and there is no point, the rejection of which could lead to failure of the entire network. And yet, most of today's companies and projects, build on the basis of the Bitcoin ecosystem, are centralized. These projects are run by specific people, at specific computer facilities, and they are subject to certain legal restrictions.

Bitcoin is the first decentralized digital currency (C) Wikipedia  ;)

This brings us closer to the freedom of a society that has always wanted to keep us head down and eyes closed. Open your eyes gentlemen and bet together for cryptocurrencies

Your post is definitely true, decentralized means there is nothing regulating it. But if 40% of Bitcoin is owned by 1000 people ( which is true ) than they can easily decrease/increase the price if they want to. Big question marks right here in my opinion, it is decentralized from banks but not from people owning a large chunk of it.

I do not know if the bitcoin is centralized. but according to my research. Bitcoin has no central control: no central repository of information, no central management, and, crucially, no central point of failure. And yet, most of the actual services and businesses built within the Bitcoin ecosystem are centralized.

I think it is not. Because of exchanges. But I am not sure, if you never use a credit card, maybe no one can find you. Just a little chance :)

It is not safe to assume that Bitcoin is independent because the trade occurring and the payment for transferring fees are all part of them being connected to other sectors.

I search some article they said that it's Pseu-decentralized means but bitcoin for me  has no central control no central repository of information, no central management, and, crucially. that's why governments fear bitcoin.

Indeed true. And because of it's protocol and decentralized system, even the government nor the people who wants to destroy it will not succeed as it is irreversible and uncontrollable.

The system of bitcoin is quite complicated and complex. There are only few sets of people who knows how bitcoin really goes and I think that's the reason why we cannot conclude that it is a decentralized currency completely. No one can fully gain control on bitcoin that's why it is decentralized somehow but that doesn't matter that much as long as we are doing our job on it.

Yes. It is for those that invest. The investors will surely benefit. If the users that pay for it benefits, they pay for it so it is not directly that they benefited.
The benefits from the investor is when they already sold it and also as an experience that they can share it to others.

Not that sure.. but no one's controlling bitcoin or manipulating bitcoin in an odd way just like the local government does with the centralized currencies. It's just the natural flow of fluctuation because of the use of the currency/token and the demand for it. But I think the company who holds servers and stuff for bitcoin has a connection about the topic you're referring into. Of course they make sure of those things, for the benefit of those who demands for Bitcoin especially investors, traders, and miners.

Yes bitcoin is decentralized and I have three year here and I search about bitcoin in detail even I ask from a lot of people about bitcoin that from where it’s going to operate and who ids the owner of bitcoin but still I did not get a correct answer because everyone they are giving different answers so bitcoin is still decentralized but I think very soon bitcoin will be centralized and once it become centralized so its price will go more high.

Agreed of your statement , Bitcoin mining is centralized , but we cant compare with stock market , we see that they are not completely independent, Bitcoin is independent in this specific issue. It's damn cool that how exactly the transactions and operations are maintained. I hope every media will follow this system (cryptographic module). Thanks for the post.