Bitcoin Forum

After the years in trading Bitcoin it came more and more clear to me that Bitcoin is technically not decentralized anymore... its mainly owned by huge mining farms or early adopters who are able to manipulate the market at will, many exchanges playing with Bitcoin and Altcoins by making fools out of the normal Joe who wants to enter the Crypto world, i know many here will think that you should be ready and get informed before taking any step into the crypto world, but does it not bother anyone that some people are enriching them self by kicking the crap out of your wallets??


Bitcoin Mining is dead unless you own a mining farm with the necessary hashrate, again only big companies having access to Bitcoin!!!


What is your thought about this??

You've mixed up some things, I believe.

In the same was money distribution in the world is not uniform, in the same way Bitcoin distribution is not uniform. Some were luckier, some had money to invest, some have missed the train.

But this is is not related to mining. Bitcoin mining has became a business, indeed, average Joe cannot mine anymore. On the other hand this is good, helping blockchain safe against attacks and this also keeps the price high, so some of the "average Joe" can invest and gain (although, as said, this doesn't happen in many cases, but I'll get to this too).

And all this is is not related to decentralization as known for Bitcoin. Bitcoin decentralization is about how many full copies of the blockchain there are, it's about the full nodes and the number of mining pools. And these are fairly dispersed and decentralized.

Now about your concerns:

* Market manipulation is indeed bad, but isn't this concern out of greed "you want a piece too"? Bitcoin should be a coin, not necessarily an investment. Also the average Joe doesn't afford investing, this is the sad reality in the world. Bitcoin is not about easy money.

* Bitcoin mining is not dead. Just may not be a good business for average Joe. And we get back to the greed part.

* You are unhappy about the scams. Isn't like this everywhere in the world? The world is full of fake shops, of people trying to steal from you and so on. Here there's no difference, that's why one has to inform himself before trying this or that.

Bitcoin exists in the free market, small users cannot influence who will have what amount of Bitcoin and where people who mine Bitcoin will be located. Who's fault is that you and I are not mined Bitcoin in the first days, months or years when it was possible to do it with ordinary home computers and when the reward per block was 50 Bitcoins? I wouldn't say we can blame anyone for that unless you think Satoshi should have sent one mass e-mail or SMS to all people in the world?

People get rich, but they also lose everything they have when it comes to cryptocurrency - but why do you think it hits someone who just holds coins in his wallet? No one can get rich from something I don't want to sell at the moment, only weak and inexperienced hands make losses.

Bitcoin is not perfect, you have to learn to adjust and not bother with things you can't change.

Miners own mining, they don't own Bitcoin's protocol or Bitcoin network or Bitcoin community. Miners don't influence the price in any special way, and there's also no solid proof that anyone successfully manipulates the price on a large scale, it's just rumors of frustrated traders who lose their money doing bad trades.

Bitcoin is still the most decentralized cryptocurrency, because it has the biggest network and community and the most decentralized development with hundreds of contributors.

First and foremost, do you really understand what decentralization means? In as much that there are huge mining farm companies mining Bitcoins, they do not actually control the entire Bitcoin ecosystem and the amount of transactions made on the bitcoin blockchain network. Decentralization is about the freedom to make transactions without needing a third party to confirm the transactions. The nature of Bitcoin mining does not make the entire Bitcoin look not decentralized.....

What really is decentralization:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralization

Learn that first and feedback later...

Mining has nothing to do with decentralization around bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency transactions.

When someone talks about bitcoin being decentralized it means you can exchange it anywhere, whenever you want as long you have a network (internet) and an exchanger.
There is no centralized bank that approves each individual transaction but rather a diversed network surrounding miners and exchangers.

There's been a lot of discussion about it in the past.
Bitcoin is one of the most decentralized currency ever. People may argue large amount of bitcoin is hold by limited individuals and companies and earned by large mining farms. But it's distribution is still much more decentralized than any other currency.
A context, 26 richest people owns more than rest of population
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jan/21/world-26-richest-people-own-as-much-as-poorest-50-per-cent-oxfam-report

People always get their ideas tangled up. The bitcoin network, per se, is still decentralized as long as there are still thousands upon thousands of individual machines having a copy of the entire blockchain on their storage systems. While it is true that mining became so centralized, particularly in China, it doesn't necessarily mean that bitcoin in itself is centralized as well. Miners can alter or choose which transactions goes through, but then again by doing so they are limiting their profits and that's not what they want to do.

We are still not bound by heavy regulation unlike any other markets out there so I guess we're still doing pretty good.

I think you certainly have a valid point. I was thinking the same thing about corporations and especially governments like China mining Bitcoins.  I still think it’s technically decentralized because no one government controls Bitcoin and it’s still an open ledger, but mining is no longer something a regular individual can do anymore.

Yes to a degree of course. The current developers have had quite the few disagreements in the past which has happen to split the chain during the past hard-fork. Other than the numerous hard-forks that have taken place over the past few years, Bitcoin seems to be recovering quite well from it's 2017's pump/bubble fiasco. I think Bitcoin still remains decentralized in honor of Satoshi Nakamotos original plan to keep things knowingly transparent and open source. If it wasn't for Bitcoin and Block-chains decentralization, there wouldn't be any other similar projects around right now.

Decentralization is a system that allows one person to transact peer to peer across the globe without the need for middlemen/ banks. Decentralization also means that you do not need to ask permission from another person in order to use it and can absolutely show the transparency of the transactions from the public ledger called blockchain.

Mining is just one of the contributing factors that make bitcoin decentralize, mining helps the verification process of bitcoin transactions to make sure that it is true and to prevent double-spending. On the contrary, I think that mining helps bitcoin to become more decentralized due to an increasing mining space done by large companies and big businesses.

We also cannot blame big investors by having a large amount of money who has the capacity of controlling the market, which in turn normal joe cannot keep up with continuous price increase. We all have a different status in life specifically in the financial area and we all must accept that fact.

We cannot outrun the fact that scamming is continual in this world. That is why reading informing oneself is a must not just crypto-space but in real world as well.

OP focused on 2 points
-centralized mining
-centralized trading

Both are wrong.

You said yourself that mining is centered around big farms but this IS decentralization. If mining was done in 1 or 2 farms it would be centralization. Farms are all around the world mostly in China but also in Russia and the USA. This makes mining decentralized.

Trading is also not centralized because it's not done on 1 platform but on a number of them. Also there's no 2 or 3 big whales who own everything that is being traded.
One more thing. Traded coins are not all coins. In fact coins that are traded on exchanges are less than half of all coins in circulation. Most of the supply is not traded at all.

Decentralization only comes to the part where full nodes and hash rates are computed. In financial terms, Bitcoin as of now isn't decentralized and equal. Mining pools and whales indeed got a large part, contribution, and power over the network. Proof of work forces them to gather as mining pools, but the rewards are still split up though, but the power remains on those powerful enough, such as huge holders like exchanges.

Bitcoin is far from perfect, but in terms of decentralization it's still the best bet we currently have.


I think we still have a couple of small(ish) miners on Bitcointalk that would disagree? Profit margins and economics of scale have pushed towards mining consolidation, that's true, but despite all that Bitcoin remains uncensorable and secure. And that's the important bit.

How about miners censoring transactions in the future? You think this is not possible? I have read couple of posts concerning this. One of the fears is that transactions can be censored if mining is centralized by a single group/entity. The entity can even decide to stop mining altogether when mining equipments become scarce or hard to produce

Miners censoring transactions would require an amount of centralization that's probably nothing short of what is required to run a 51% attack. As long as some miners are willing to mine a "blacklisted" transaction it will enter the blockchain eventually.



The minute Bitcoin is controlled by a single entity it's dead. That has been known from the beginning. And it's luckily very unlikely to happen.



Any major miner stopping mining altogether is a win for decentralization as other miners take their place. If ASICs for some reasons stop existing, people will regress to GPU and CPU mining. Simple as that.

One thing that i know, Bitcoin is really decentralized and the only problem with the manipulation its because they already horde a lot of it and if they buy or sell a lot of bitcoin then it will surely be depends on the market circulation if they will keep it up or down the value. And its like a game that you should rrally think of if its a win or lose situation.

And it is only becoming centralized from the exchanges and if its required a KYC.

Bitcoin is created for decentralization but if people use like centralization then It's people’s fault not bitcoins fault.If you start trading in centralized exchanger and use KYC in exchanger it’s your fault mate.Bitcoin have there own wallet to hold,there are exchanger which don't allow KYC and if you use that then you are hiding yourself.If you own your keys and using then no one can control your money without you.So it’s decentralized.But if you use third party to mine or trade then it turns into centralized.That's why I am telling that people making bitcoin centralized and decentralized,but bitcoin created for decentralized.           

I see you are more focused on mining as a decentralized characteristic of bitcoin. But what about considering your personal usage of the bitcoin? Because for me, it does not necessarily mean that you need to mine bitcoin just to satisfy what you want in having bitcoin as decentralized. In addition, Bitcoin as decentralized is not also based on the huge exchanges operating in the market. In the first place, you can still create transactions without any third party, and you can send money without your anonymity being exposed.

Not all early adopters can manipulate the market, I guess you are talking about whales, and to get your assumption correct I think it should be "Whales are manipulating the market" and Bitcoin is always decentralized and that kind of thing will never be taken out to Bitcoin because it is a part of it when Satoshi created it.


This is pretty much well known here, that it is not advisable to mine anymore if you had a good cool place, a lot of mining farm, free internet, and low cost electricity.

I must say I completely agree with @NeuroticFish . Bitcoin is not about the price but the coin itself.
Yes it is still decentralized because many number of people hold bitcoin. Decentralization is not about the quantity that people hold but it's about the number of people who hold the particular thing. In this way, bitcoin is still decentralized.

I do agree that the distribution is not at an equal rate but we can't do anything about it. The distribution will get better as time passes by and more number of people join in.

Mining and the market are not that related. Mining is largely controlled by big entities, sure. And even though it does not mean it's fully centralized, it is not that decentralized, so to speak. But miners only produce and possess a very small amount of bitcoins, they cannot use that to control the market. Now, some believe that the market is manipulated by the big whales, but there's no proof of that. It's true that there are about a hundred of the richest addresses that own the vast majority of BTC, but it's not even close to one entity, and many of those addresses belong to exchanges or other big companies and are pretty much off the money movements. So in the end, it's not that bad.

I agree it is not decentralized as farr as mining is concerned and many people cannot take part due to capitalization of mass mining factories. The little guy has no chance. This was not the vision of bitcoin. Bitcoin was ment to bring profit on even the most basic pc. Of course someone will invent an asic just like people will invent bots to do manual tasks over and over. It would be great if anyone could just mone but so far we have no solution to it and even other coins that only use CPU there seems to be no profit.

The mining community may influence the market with its holdings but it doesnt mean that bitcoin is centralized. Common man can still buy/sell their bitcoin freely and hold it till they want. Bitcoin is truly decentralized and if more people get into it then more decentralization.

Bitcoin is already confirmed as a decentralized asset, I'm wondering what is the use of this thread?

We can freely but and sell bitcoin through many various platforms, that's how decentralized works right? So I think decentralization in this asset does really working. If you will compare trading to mining, it's very different as the mining can be controlled by many companies.

In trading, it can be also centralized, once the platform requires KYC to the users 'cause we can't buy bitcoin freely and anonymously.

I guess not, that isn't valid at all. Having corporations investments on bitcoin does not make it any centralized or being control, they can somehow manipulate but it is uncertain. Yup, technically it is decentralized however corporations are taking advantage of trendiness of it for them to generate and backed they assets since it is hitting the market now.

But even a 51% owning of bitcoin does not make it a centralized one, they could just somehow exceptionally manipulate and impact on the market, even having 75% cannot do the job of being centralized. And we can't just tell that miners are holding a lot of mined bitcoins knowing they are maintaining the expense of mining cryptorrencies such as electricity and equipments.

It seems that the OP has to go deeper into the meaning of decentralization, this shift in the meaning of the fundamental financial system cannot change just like that when "some people" are suspected of being able to manipulate the market. Bitcoin, since its inception, is a decentralized financial system because there is no official or central authority behind it that controls and is responsible for all aspects of the economy, including printing money, imposing taxes, giving approval to banks to service accounts, etc., not such a thing, yes right?

This is what I mean, even though there are some people who have large amounts of bitcoin, it doesn't mean that they can control bitcoin fully, they can't, that person can indeed be a market maker that affects the price of bitcoin, but can't fully control it like the authority owner.

Bitcoin has always and will forever be decentralized. No one has single control of the network not even the US or the Chinese miners, for you to be profitable in mining, you need a specialized mining machine like the Asic miners. The distribution of bitcoin mining reward per block is decentralized, so no miner can lay claim to every 1,800BTC reward per 24hrs, which is approximately 12.5BTC per block for every 10mins. What usually case price dump and sudden rice is just what I will call emotional trading occasioned by majorly by FUD. This somewhat price manipulation is expected because of still developing bitcoin market. Even the stock market is based on speculations, the strong always win.

Bitcoin is still decentralized mate if not it might have suffered from a 51% attack by now. Just because many folks have it in larger quantity does not mean that bitcoin is not decentralized. Among all the coins in this industry, bitcoin is one of the cryptocurrency that can boast of full security and decentralization. Keep in note that, all these huge mining farms are there to keep the network stable from hackers. Can you count the number of coins that have been hacked successfully? Please spare us this FUD!

It is decentralized and will remain decentralized as long as there's no single point of failure.

Some of you don't get what decentralization is. Your fiat is centralized because it's all in the hands of your central bank. This is a single point of failure. As long as there's more than 1 bitcoin mine and more than 1 exchange Bitcoin will be decentralized.

Crying that most mining is in China will not change anything because even if chinese miners are taken down all at once because of some natural disaster there will be plenty left to finalize transactions without them.

Mining is not related to Bitcoin's decentralization, the problem here is how you understand and look at bitcoin. From the start, bitcoin was decentralized, and at that time, only a few people held large amounts of bitcoin. So until now, or at any moment, no matter how a big company owns a lot of bitcoins. It's decentralization remains unchanged. Do you understand?
Here, you have misunderstood the term "decentralization", you should refer to the answers above!

Of course bitcoin is still decentralized, as long as there is still no party who can control bitcoin. As long as we as bitcoin users still can conduct
transactions without the intervention of third parties in this case the bank, and as long as the transaction is transparent it can be seen by anyone
on the network blockchain. If all of that is still valid then bitcoin is still decentralized. So there is no decentralized relationship with mining and
trading according to me. Most people misunderstand the notion of decentralized, no matter whales have a lot of bitcoin and do manipulation
price. Then China controls the mining farm, because in the country its electricity costs are cheap. All that has nothing to do with decentralized.

Hmmm. BCash and BSV have different mining pools on their network and plenty of exchanges their shitcoins are listed at, yet they remain heavily centralized. In both cases it's one team/entity deciding what the development roadmap is. In both cases chains have been rolled back more than once and checkpoints were put in place for 'security' purposes.

In a sense that's actually great for those who control both networks. In case of a large scale hack they just roll back the chain and undo the theft. If your Bitcoins get stolen you can't do anything but cry yourself to sleep. That's the definition of an immutable ledger. No one can mess with it. Rolling back chains is a no go.  :-X

I think this is the best explanation so far on this thread.

Always ask the question, what can i do to stop it?

In the case of centralized money, this might mean arrest the creator, confiscate a company, destroy a (few) datacenter(s) or stage a coup.

Tell me exactly how can you stop Bitcoin? I can tell you how to stop many altcoins, especially those that depend on some millionaire, few devs can revert blockchain transactions or a dictator change the rules of the coin on a whim.

Indeed most fiat currencies cannot pass this test. If the US gov falls, and the American economy collapses, so will the USD. But Bitcoin would remain not affected. Just because your government is great and "never" allows such tragedies to occur, doesn't mean that such a tragedy might never actually occur.

Some countries have a longer standing record for "proper" monetary policy, but in the end you have to trust people. Not with Bitcoin, it remains the same unless the vast majority accepts a change. All your wealth holds pending on an executive decision... Not with Bitcoin, there can never be surprises with Bitcoin.

early adopters doesn't necessarily have the power to manipulate though, that's just your assumption and just because some portion of circulating bitcoin supply owned by individual doesn't make it centralized. however, the "centralized" hash power mainly coming from china might be your concern but it's okay if they can't 51% attack the blockchain and recently there's china's news or rumour regarding the raid of crypto related company, that could potentially decrease the miners.

well you are not the first person to fail in trading bitcoin and lose money then end up trying to find someone else to blame for their losses. but you are the first one that is linking it to decentralization, probably because you don't understand what being decentralized really means.
all the market manipulations and the things that led to your losses have nothing to do with bitcoin being decentralized, they are all stemming from the fact that there are a lot of people who don't understand what bitcoin is, and how its market works but they still want to trade it and only trade it. so the result is a lot of weak hands that could be easily manipulated and cause the wild market swings that lead to a lot of losses for the same people.

You can bitcoin transactions among users without the need to take care of permission from anyone, it's already called decentralization.
Just because there are some people who hold large amounts of bitcoin and manipulate the market you say that bitcoin is now centralized.
It is natural to happen, there are always pros and cons in any sector. Depending on how you respond to it because I was used to such conditions in previous years.

Miners does not own the bitcoin network.
Bitcoin is still decetralized what is currently centralized are exchange websites and the whole mining industry. Because there are people or group of people who owns various exchange and mining company. So totally the whole bitcoin network is still decentralized for sure.

I'm not a technical guy but I think that what you are saying is totally false.


First of all, Bitcoin is still decentralized as always. Its just that rich investors, exchanges, and miners are owning more than an average person since they have many fiat money to invest into it. Its the same as paper money that rich people are owning most of it but the only difference is that Bitcoin is decentralized while the other doesn't

Yes big companies does have access to Bitcoin mining so it is not dead. Simple, they have money to invest to Bitcoin mining that is why they are mining. Go to China and you will see many miners there. Bitcoin mining isn't dead.

I think that Bitcoin quite objectively reflects the concept of decentralization. For example, large miners can be in completely different countries, besides consisting in economic confrontation. Bitcoin is a phenomenon similar to the Internet. Bitcoin mining is possible by any individual or legal entity, unlike Fiat money, which is printed by Central banks. Yes, I think Bitcoin is truly decentralized.

Well!! Did you know?

Bitcoin is decentralized: Bitcoin does not have a central authority. There is no central server; the bitcoin network is peer-to-peer. There is no central storage; the bitcoin ledger is distributed.

decentralization is the basic nature of bitcoin, but when in a potential market price control can indeed happen, especially for those who have a lot of money. but I believe that the nature of bitcoin is still decentralized, maybe if we look at the market we can assume that the nature of bitcoin is not decentralized because there are many whales there

How do you say that Bitcoin Mining is dead? I don't think so, It's just a matter of time that Bitcoin and cryptocurrency are passing a poor time because of international politics, not only that but also Blockchain system is being a serious issue in recent time around the developed countries, so the last couple of months are nor running with our expectation, This is the reality, you have to face both good times along with bad time also, so you don't have any scope to ignore this situation, I hope at the start of 2020, we will get something special to us regarding this issue.

As we all know blockchain and cryptocurrency are connected to its consensus alogrithm, ,i think you should check on this video https://blogchainzoo.com/debate-is-proof-of-work-the-ultimate-solution-video/  because there i found what i think is better decentralize mechanism than PoW by Bitcoin lol

Yes,,, this is what people think it looks like that miners own bitcoin but all we need to remember is what happened back in 2017,,, miners who were rich and all that they thought they could force a decision with Segwit2x. We all know what happened after that, did not work out and even they split up and could not agree among each other. They all eventually saw the way forward and we are still standing.

It is just that, people, businesses, and projects to their best to make bitcoin a center for profits that is why it seems so centralized. But in fact, the way you hodl and store your bitcoin is a sign that bitcoin is still decentralized. This decentralization will just be taken out if you are to allow them to do so, especially if the freedom you have turns you out to invest your money and trade it to centralized exchanges where you don't have your private keys that solely make your account decentralized.

Market manipulation is inevitable at this time, cryptocurrency is a big market as I think which we could think that some influential individual would likely to show it's power. Above all, and even bitcoin was meant to have some manipulation but I keep believing that bitcoin still remains to it's decentralized form.

I also believe that bitcoin has a high decentralization nature but the market sometimes says different things, there are quite a lot of manipulations for the price. we must be careful of these price manipulations because those who can manipulate prices are big whales

With all the things going on now I'm actually confused with these things. There are times that I feel that it is decentralized but there are also times that it seems controlled by the government. But since most of the countries don't allow crypto to be fully operational, I still see it as decentralized so far.

It depends if you want decentralization at an individual level or organization level. I think Bitcoin should be decentralized at the individual level. Any regular individual should be able to run a full node. and monitor remotely, without anyone's permission and without big hurdles. Same with mining. further, it's decentralized in distribution. whales can still affect the price but the point is there is no central issuance of the currency and no central point of failure and no single entity can decide to control the supply, and if they do we can just make a new currency and ignore the bureaucratic Keynesian bullshit currency. that's what decentralized and permission less.

Bitcoin was never fully decentralized anyway! Worse is, you can never jump to that conclusion just by trading. You also seem mad because you are a trader and people with more bitcoins are able to manipulate the market. That literally has nothing to do with bitcoin being centralized. You can start a mining farm and control a good proportion of it as well? Or buy some bitcoins now and maybe after 10 years you'd be a whale?

It is what it is. If you don't like it, move on to something else. There are better coins in terms of security, anonymity, and decentralization if that's your need.

But that does not describe the real meaning of decentralized. No one knows how much money I have kept in my piggy bank but that does not means the money is decentralized. And not only just the anonymous accumulation a truly decentralized coin is untraceable during the transaction also.  The governments are now trying hard to trace every bitcoin transaction to make it more centralized.

Manipulation of the market doesn't mean its not decentralized anymore, anyone with a will to manipulate can try to manipulate the market, you can spread fud to manipulate the market even with less BTC in your wallets.

What they mean when it comes to decentralization in bitcoin is that no central authority controls it, not even the miners. It will not even reach to 51 attack and miners will move to another pool.

Indeed, there are still no organization or group of people who are taking responsibility about cryptocurrency, there is no person involved taking care about it, the forum itself have moderators but as a whole, there is no one. We can say that there are people you make cryptocurrency possible but where are they now, we did not even know who they are, the only thing we are thinking about behind all these is Satoshi Nakamoto. But we cannot find him, yes we can find the wallets he used and that is actually full of bitcoin.  

I think the main concept of bitcoin is decentralization. For now, there are really many people acquiring and mining it. But of course the process of decentralization is still there, otherwise transactions will be more complex. Its about the fast and efficient service that is the goal for decentralization. Those huge miners are most likely have there own but mostly the process is still the same.

I do really appreciate the blockchain and cryptocurrency projects that are focusing on creating a system for faster transaction but also, one thing to consider to fully achieve the perfect decentralization for me is to focus on enhancing the security features that they already have and to have a centralized standards on how to build it, as a result, the product or the cryptocurrency will still be decentralized but backed with a strong backbone to secure the funds and security of their users.

I still have question about bitcoin being a decentralized system, we all know that bitcoin as a digital cash and it could send bitcoin to anyone using the miners which is the one that process the transaction who owns the blockchain if the transactions were all anonymous there could be someone who maintains the system of the bitcoin or is it just the bitcoin wallet that they need to maintain and just using bitcoin as an assets?

the decentralization of the project varies from project to project and I also appreciate projects that build decentralization efficiently outside of bitcoin. and so far I also still see that decentralization is still good in the bitcoin ecosystem, there are no third parties so far and all systems are structured.

I think until now bitcoin has remained decentralized. although there are indeed groups of people or large whales who can manipulate the price of bitcoin by buying or selling bitcoin in large quantities but they do not fully control bitcoin. because bitcoin price fluctuations are also influenced by FUD news, FOMO and also small bitcoin traders who make sales or purchases I think also affect the bitcoin market. and bitcoin now has a large community so I don't think it's easy to control.

The beauty is that there is no single exchange nor there is a single mining farm that controls or manipulates bitcoin price. There are hundreds of such entities in the bitcoin ecosystem. That's why I think bitcoin is decentralized still in many ways. Even if somebody wants to set up his own mining rig there is no hurdle in that also.

Bitcoin is still rooted in decentralization, but things change when most users make an effort to buy and sell through centralized exchange, so the effect of change lies in the medium, not the original system.

For prices that still appear manipulative, accompanied by fud and fomo, it still makes sense because great interest always has a speculative impact. A greater change will occur if the institution welcomes bitcoin with various intervention steps.

decentralized says it all  . means no one controlls it  .

 yeah you are right that its only the wallet and the miners that do the rest of the job when we send or recieve our btc's    .

btc is really decentralized , no question about that but other people arent contented on what btc has to offer but some of them says that they need btc to become centralized and become regulated , which is i think not  good idea to me  ,  idk why  .

I slightly disagree with your intention. greed is not centralization. the owner of a large Bitcoin can't be said to be the center of control. maybe they can move the market. but can't change the bitcoin profile (network, number, algorithm, etc.) because when a person / company can control bitcoin from the inside. then it will be centralized. so, decentralization / centralization is not just about value. not about market movers. but full control over all about bitcoin. so I say Bitcoin remains decentralized.

I still believe that bitcoin is still decentralized, because no one has been able to control bitcoin until now. Remember to manipulate prices does
not mean controlling bitcoin. And also bitcoin transparent. Everyone can see all the bitcoin transactions that are recorded on the network
blockchain. The last reason why bitcoin still decentralized because bitcoin is very safe because all bitcoin transactions cannot be changed. For
that reason bitcoin until now still decentralized.

That's exactly what i mean, the main issue is when a company like Bitmain has the potential to take over 1/3 of the total hash-rate things become scarce, China alone has 65% of the hash-rate... it costs the average USA miner around $6K to mine 1 BTC with today's electricity prices, while in china it costs $3K for 1 Bitcoin as they use renewable energy and i dont know what else. If a single company can hold such an amount of Bitcoins that they can for example manipulate the BTC price in the Exchange than the decentralization does not make much sense anymore!

Which is the miner that will keep on mining if the price of BTC falls under $6K, the only one remaining are the one with the lowest electricity price to mine a BTC.

If they can manipulate the price of BTC due to the amount of BTC they own that things are technically not decentralized anymore!

I cant really agree with your view on this, as there are clear main players in the ecosystem and the biggest of them all is Bitmain, Anyone mining for profit in farms use their miners who are already outdated once they are sold to the public... Bitmain already uses miners that are far more powerful then the one used by  conventional mining farms, its a joke, they proved it with ETH at that time when everyone believed that Ethereum was Asic resistant  ;D...  They have dozens of mining farms across China and recently one in USA Texas, they do control a huge stack of the market believe it or not, they will get rid of mining farm competitors just wait an see!

That's absolutely spot on! It's like exchanges and Big mining farms are able to get together and create a sort of conglomerate!

Ther can easily manipulate the price but trying to manipulate the entire market seems to be impossible. But whom to get these benefits, of course not only the whales but also we are especially when the price went high and earn profits. May we condemn their actions but actually, we are so thankful that because of them (whales) the market remains strong.

I think the transaction is not anonymous because anyone can trace it on the blockchain.  Though I still believe Bitcoin is still decentralized even though the distribution is not proportional.  Anyone can mine Bitcoin as long as they have good enough hashes to compete on the mining industry.  Anyone can send Bitcoin without anyone interfering it as long as the tx fee is sufficient.  I believe being decentralized and not proportional distribution is two different category.

I think the same as all of you. Although bitcoin is decentralized, it will not be a problem, and the manipulations for the price will not happen forever. There will be a real moment from traders that can move the price, and that will not depend on the whales. But yes, the whales can manipulate the market, but they cannot do it forever for their purposes. We can use the benefits by following their movements so we can make a profit too.

Hey
Well the thing is , in bitcoins there is just one rule
*The more you hold , the more control you have over the market.*
That seems reasonable too , also whales and everything they are gonna be there , firms and companies holding bitcoins and talking it out with each other to sway the market and make some profit , it happens , it's politics that people made here , not the bitcoins , therefore I think , it's not the bitcoins you need to worry about , it's the people.

the whales also won't always succeed in price manipulation, I'm also sure about that. Price manipulation will not be as easy as we think, because truly pure market price movements will always be their challenge. but if you want to go with the flow we might be at risk because you need accuracy, because price manipulation will happen quickly

This is correct. However, lest we assume that decentralization in Bitcoin means rich people can control over the market, huge mining farms can dictate on the network, in other words certain players can influence more on Bitcoin, let us remember that decentralization is not about all these things. It could also mean those but that is only after stretching decentralization a bit. Decentralization in Bitcoin is basically the lack of a central authority. There is decentralization because there is nothing in between transactions; everything is done on a peer-to-peer basis. There is decentralization because there is no central entity or authority that decides on its fate.

Youre both right. People somehow misunderstood the decentralization in nature of bitcoin which is the reason why some declared bitcoin to fail in the aspect of decentralization due to whales manipulation and decentralization simply mean having equal privilege but the higher holder or investor still have the control capability than others.

I think yes because Bitcoin is working like before as of now so that many rich people can control the of it.

Agreed with you my friend, little guy like me, privately, abviously dont have any chance here anymore, it is too hard to say it, but it is the fact happened now, oh i wonder bitcoin will rise and give me more chance like couple years last. im too emotional to say this, im sorry my friend :(

at first I also had a thought, that whales can control the market, meaning the decentralization in question is not working. but that is not what is meant by decentralization, they only take advantage of opportunities to get money, especially since not many people use it so that the supply can be controlled by a group of people

I think the case here is not the large groups that could basically control or manipulate the price of bitcoin. What is important to determine decentralization is the freedom of individuals to control their money and spend it with their own purpose. In the first place, the security of bitcoin and the main characteristic of it is still there which is to use a currency without any third parties that will interfere or will serve as a mediator for their transactions.

Imagine that you happen to invest at a cheap rate and then all of a sudden the price levels up to 10x the rate that you bought at, isn't that a profit for you? Yes it is. Bitcoin was created as a volatile coin, and when there is an increase in the demand, the price keeps leveling up to match the demand and the early birds starts benefiting from it, but that doesn't mean that it is still not decentralized.

Bitcoin is still decentralized, because there is nobody, organization, government or whatsoever that controls it. If you are too afraid to use it, you can make use of stable Coins like USD PAX and the rest of them.

We all know bitcoin's nature is being not under any organization or government groups control or manipulation which makes the fees on transaction less expensive is called decentralization. As year passes by, it's definition changes as more and more mining company show up which take over the mining of bitcoin and affecting it greatly since their demand has a high number and high effect on bitcoin. The meaning of being decentralized has already changed as they conduct and build more and more mining company while manipulating bitcoin's price.

Do you really understand what decentralization means? Decentralization is a system in which overall decision making is left to the system user and the absence of one individual can impose his will on other individuals without the consent of the majority of system users. Bitcoin is still the most decentralized cryptocurrency because it has an extensive network and the largest and most decentralized development community with hundreds to thousands of contributors.

Well, I'm rather confused when  this question is involved. Bitcoin users very often point out that Bitcoin is independent and decentralized and but every time or almost every time when price goes down many of them say that this is product of whales manipulation. So, if Bitcoins is independent and decentralized how come that minority group of people has so big influence on price and can manipulate it according to its wishes?

price has nothing to do with decentralization.


probably so. they all still has to race to solve blocks. pools and big mining farms competes. yet no entity is governing bitcoin, the big mining companies that are there today can they invalidate the previous transactions with their hashrate?

if NOT then bitcoin still is decentralize and can go on stand on its own. why would companies support a coin and one of them to the extent of delisting all else except BTC if its centralize.

but for me the nature of bitcoin is decentralized, whereas market manipulation is somewhere else. and I don't think market manipulation will always happen because of pure bitcoin price movements. when the use of bitcoin is not used properly it may be that market manipulation will continue to occur and make people confused about the decentralized nature of bitcoin

At first I don't want to believe the market manipulations, but what's happening nowadays proved it already. That was being played by biggest investors who had a huge capitals, they can manipulate using their powers and connection. FUD was arising while bitcoin tried to recover, and the market transparency has not begun to show it's unpredictable trend which has been dominated seriously. Decentralized bitcoin was still there, and for its kind it has more potential to initiate more spikes and bounce.

Depends on what is your interpretation of "Decentralize" and "centralized"

Even gold can be manipulated despite having huge market capitalization therefore it's a no brainer that manipulation could happen to significanly lower market cap like bitcoin and it's just a piece of cake. What become our concern right now is the centralized mining power, but I'm sure the mechanism of bitcoin's blockchain could handle this problem very well just let the time prove it.

IMO the fact that the strongest processing system could take over the minority is not decentralizing but cmiiw

If you look it that way, bitcoin was never decentralized. The main problem with the decentralisation is that anyone can buy whatever amount they want.

So, the initial investors or who had enough money were able to acquire a lot of btc and now they are millionaires or billionaires just because of that. Those people can easily manipulate the market as there isn't any centralized authority too to check upon them. Added to that, exchanges who have all the data about the stops and entry price of trades, can manipulate the trade as well.

There are some decentralized exchange in the market right? Why not to utilize it instead of being involved in a centralized exchange if you don't want to pay transaction fees and to be so called "manipulated"? In addition, huge investors aren't really just affecting the market too strong, yes they are buying and selling huge amount of bitcoin, and what happens is that, the people who can see their activity do the same things until everyone in a community is doing, so it is not them that really control the market but with the participation of the people like us.

If Bitcoin were centralized, the government would probably already have used Bitcoin and its price would have been stable long ago.

Re: Is Bitcoin really still decentralized??

Yes, it is the best decentralized system on this planet as it is well distributed, open and for everyone accessible.
@Satoshi Nakamoto: Distribute the early mined coins and make Bitcoin stronger. We need your support.

Seriously? The reason why it's ATH was $19,665.39 during 2017 bull run is because of it's decentralized. Now if you make bitcoin as a centralized then what will happen. The higher officials will just abuse it and use it to useless or personal desires. Bitcoin was very powerful now, why did you end up thinking that centralization will help bitcoin to grow?  ???

Bitcoin was a decentralized technology we know and it kinda confusing. The bitcoin technology was created or made by Satoshi when is now used in a lot of bitcoin wallet.
It is not like the bitcoin wallet or the company is the one who is controlling the bitcoin but they just using bitcoin as an asset storing bitcoin, Also the transactions happened in the blockchain every transaction was made is processor powered by every miner's hash power and they are getting a reward from doing this there is no government that controlling this bitcoin because it is powered by the community and the market price is also depending in the supply and demand of bitcoin.

Yes of course bitcoin is a decentralized cryptocurrency, as the popularity of the bitcoin is rising continuously in the crypto market.

Straight answer of your topic title is Yes. Bitcoin is a decentralized crypto currency from beginning and still it is. Concern is, day by day some organisations like exchanges acting that they are controller. But it doesn't mean Bitcoin it self is centralized. Problem is centralized exchanges want to manipulate as they like and the fucking KYC system is clear sign of centralisation unfortunately. It was not really aim of Bitcoin, it was created for enjoy financial freedom without third party involvement. But seems always third party want to bashing it. Don't feel that bitcoin going to centralized itself, it will not happen ever in my opinion.

Good point.
Definitely agree with you!

I have been working on finding a consensus algo that is easier to participate in mining.
Compared to the high threshold of Bitcoin mining, it may achieve market success.
It may be the fairest and easiest for "average Joe" if normal PC can be used for mining.
Do you have an idea for an algorithm with this characteristic？

I also believe that to date bitcoin is still decentralized, and what makes bitcoin a centralized response is when bitcoin is on the market. when in the market people who have lots of funds make the view that bitcoin is governed by a group or organization. but I am sure that bitcoin is still decentralized and will always be decentralized

Monero's new RandomX seems to be a hit for CPU miners.
But I'll warn you: there's a pretty high chance the CPU mining is unprofitable. Check your consumption, check the electricity price and do the math.


As an overall rule, from my experience, if a coin can be easily mined by anybody, usually the price will not rise (why buy when I can mine?), hence it's not profitable.

The point about quote. I don't agree, but I don't know how to refute.
Looks reasonable.
I need more thinking.

What do you think about Spacemesh, I recently discovered a project released 2 years ago. Based on POST (proof of space time), they claim energy savings.
Copy from their website:

It takes a lot more than just 51% to be able to do any kind of significant changes or damage to bitcoin. Even if some miner or group of miners or mining pool has 60% to 70% of the hashrate, what's the worse they can do? The best they can do is still just mine like everyone else and get more blocks. The smart thing would probably be to break up their mining power so it doesn't look like they have as much, and still mine profitably, normally.

I didn't really get your point. What makes you think that Bitcoin isn't decentralized anymore? Just because of the fact that miners produce Bitcoins after each verification of the transaction? Then what about blockchain which records are impossible to change or break?

There are at least 20 major mining pools. The biggest ones have only about 16% of the hash power. It is unlikely that any single pool will get more than 30% because as soon as that happens, some miners will simply switch to a different pool. A few years ago, the deep bit pool got close to 50%, miners switched to the other major pools and the hash rate "normalized" for all of them rather quickly.

Miners still have the incentive to mine honestly.

Mining naturally centralizes due to the costs (hardware, electricity) varying across regions, but UASF has shown that miners do not get to dictate what Bitcoin is. I can still run a full node on a small device like a Raspberry Pi from my home, validate my own transaction set and make censorship resistant payments with confidence that the chain won't be rolled back.

Miners spent money into the tech and took tge risk, thereby they made fortune. You will find lot of examples of taking risk and making insane money from that.

Early adopters spent money too when rest of the world made fun of them. Now they are rich cause pathfinders are always a step away from the followers.

Bitcoin is example and application of block chain and block chain is decentralized concept

Is this why all other or most PoW coins are changing their algorithms to fight ASICS..? To skip a centralised mining cartel?!! You should really think about that, decision are taken by a group of people who dictate when there is is a hard fork or what will be done next, they don't ask people what should be done next, the same as miner with Segwit a few years ago... so don't tell us it is decentralised, everyone is shaking now and even paying taxes to the government, was bitcoin not supposed to avoid these kind of things...?

Taxes owed to the government are a separate issue. What they do is make you pay taxes on capital gains, usually applied to other investments such as in real estate or in the regular stock market.

Segwit, a few years ago, was a consensus change which everyone agreed to. I mean, if you did not agree to it, then you simply don't run the software or hard fork.

Bitcoin takes awhile to get updates or changes because they do ask all these questions from the community, and anyone can contribute to the code; it is all open source.

Actually this topic is getting raised by science and analysts

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03085147.2019.1678262

 ;)


More of interest IMO:  ETH ( with Buterin, with PoS,..)  and XRP

I think that a little bit people who are interested in earning money from manipulation come to the cryptocurrency market and these people know their job. Everywhere there are those who set the direction of movement and those who jump onto the train along the way. As for decentralization, this is a difficult question. For 100 percent, it is not known exactly who the bulk of the miners belong to.

Your concern is not a uncountable issue but there have less amount wrong thinking, Firstly,  currency it not would be as like mine,  Secondly, Nobody washing is not a basil leaf,  Everywhere have froud everywhere have a chiting at all who try to give ladder to ripe rice, So what do I leave! No, Never! In this situation if we away from benefit point and take wrong side effict then it will be Nonsense type task. We need to invest ‍and should have wait on it for right time.

One of the coins that you can participate these days with easy mining is ONION, with about 250 ONIONs or less you can PoS mine from your laptop or desktop computer. There are many other altcoins that will allow you to mine via PoS.

BTC might not be fully decentralized yet, but it is in the hands of people to bring back decentralization by using or helping decentralized exchanges, or supporting PoS in bitcoin if that is still possible to implement.

It depends on how it is finally governed and how open it is for any sort of regulated / compliant competition

That's the problem everywhere not only in bitcoin, there will always some people who dominate the market. Bitcoin itself can be bought whatever amount you want as long you have the money and you know there's always some big fish. but, I will still consider it's decentralized due to the fact that there's no miner who dominate 51% of the hash power and people who owns more than a half of bitcoin total supply.

Bitcoin still decentralized because so far the are different miners sharing a percentage lower than 51% of the network, BTC will continue decentralized because more investors are buying it. with the halving, there will be fewer rewards for miners which will make it more difficult for small companies or individuals to acquire a big piece of cake, because of a higher price of hash mining power.

bitcoin will always decentralized because that is how this designed and the function as well,yeah there are some issues but not enough for bitcoin to be called centralized mate.

i am just thinking how could be there issues about Bitcoin is becoming centralized?can some others clarify this things?

we have been here for long and the reason is decentralization and privacy right?

Shouldn't the question be, is bitcoin still centralised? Because, Bitcoiner as I am, and as un-technical as I can be, it's impossible to deny Bitcoin started out centralised -- but that's just the nature of something that has to come out from somewhere and be born. The software was run first by one, then two people, and then a handful of pre-early adopters. Might even have been dominated by a few developers and enthusiasts a year after, still centralised. They were the users, the miners, the developers.

It's nothing like that today, hasn't been for many years. Even the first user, the first centraliser, the founder -- he walked away so this dream of decentralisation could happen.

Due to large mining farm and big whales, I guess the decentralized property of bitcoin ecosystem will not get disturbed. Let's look into what are basic decentralization, we are enjoying with bitcoins, for example,  no one issues bitcoins - no one able to freeze our BTC savings - value is not depending on one or any government's policy; I guess nothing of these get disturbed due to whales or mining farms as far as I understand.

If these whales or mining farms are able to alter the total supply of bitcoin or able to double spend or working on 51% attack or trying to chargeback btc payments then we can start saying that bitcoin is no more decentralized as its basic things are getting changed due to some people.

Exactly, Bitcoin isn't under influence of any government or central authority. But does only that really makes is decentralized and independent?
Here on forum we see claims all the time, comming from community that whales are designing Bitcoin price and manipulating the market. That is totaly oposite to origin idea of Bitcoin and I'm not sure that Bitcoin is so decentralized as some like to believe.
Maybe there isn't formal centralized authority that controls Bitcoin but it seems that whales tend to do that. Or is this just a legend?

One of the main reasons why bitcoin and crypto users have stopped using it is because of misinformation and misinterpretation of what's happening inside the cryptoworld. If we read more articles about it, we will be more knowledgeable and there will be no more confusions regarding this topic.

To clear things out, bitcoin is decentralized and there is no way that those miners will have control of it.

You're getting it wrong, Bitcoin is decentralized but most of the exchanges that we all know today are centralized. So these exchanges are the ones that made everything seem like it's centralized.

There are decentralized exchanges, but people are not interested in making use of these decentralized exchanges because some of them thinks that they are difficult to use and there is no protection in place since you're trading p2p, unlike centralized exchanges like Binance where they act as the middlemen and carry out the trades themselves to protect their traders from the getting scammed; one of the advantage of using centralized exchanges. So, there is nothing like Bitcoin being centralized, it is decentralized except for exchanges, and not all exchanges are centralized.

Good point but maybe they are thinking that government can give some taxes if that happens but I think it is still not. The possibility of the bitcoin being centralized is too low as of now. Bitcoin is a digital money and the internet is a wide area network, it is decentralized also so bitcoin is. The government can only ban or legalize the usage of bitcoin but I dont think they can really enter into this just to get some taxes.
Indeed, the exchangers are centralized but still government cannot collect some taxes right? So do not be afraid if the bitcoin becomes centralized but it is maybe a good thing for us if that actually happens. Just wsit to the most awaited halving can happen this year.

And we say that these exchanges are trying to manipulate the market and turning Bitcoin away from being decentralized...that was likely to happen in the coming days. That is why we could think sometimes that whales are now controlling in the market because everything will be changed once they move their funds.

I hope it won't go that way, we'd love to keep bitcoin being in decentralize but we can't also deny that some people are so greedy that would like to control the market. Things can be changed as the journey continues, and whatever it is I'm still supporting Bitcoin.

Ofcourse!

Bitcoin is decentralized and it's already proven due to many transactions that occured in blockchain. Bitcoin is getting centralized when there are third party platforms that manipulates the market to change the current price value.

That's why, DEX are still good and the most reliable exchange for me.

I think it's a really wrong way of thinking about it, Bitcoin's protocol didn't suffer any major changes since Satoshi's initial release, there were only updates and fixes. Small peer-to-peer network and centralized network are not the same, even in early days Bitcoin gave its users full control over their money. So what that there was less developers, you could always choose to not follow their version and stay on the old chain in case of hard fork, or follow some other developers.

Wrong or not -- and I use Bitcoin and want it to succeed even more than it already has -- but if you had a few guys who knew each other mining, securing and developing it, it was centralised. What do you mean "suffer any major changes"? Why is change a bad thing if consensus is achieved? And if it was change the few wanted, they would have gotten.

Don't see my comment as a criticism. It's the unavoidable reality that you can't help but centralise it at the beginning. That Satoshi, Finney et al were all willing to work without malice was incredible. I totally agree that Bitcoin never had a centralised architecture, but politically, until more peers joined the network, it was. This isn't a criticism, it's just the way it was.

Theoretically Bitcoin is decentralized. But now a big sums of Bitcoin are collected in the hands of big cryptocurrency exchanges and big mining pools. So it is really difficult to say about fully decentralization of Bitcoin. For simple miners now it is possible only mine through a mining pool, so no wonder that the big sums of Bitcoin are collected in the biggest mining pools.

If we are talkin about mining power - bitcoin is more centralized than even before.
And exchanges are graet points of finance centralization

First of all, Bitcoin mining isn't dead and if it does there will be an impact on Bitcoin circulation. Not gonna lie whales, miners whatever they are, do have big part in manipulating the market but this not necessarily mean they got the crypto market entirely.It is decentralized simply because everyone is free to make transaction without involvement of third parties.

Mining has always converged into several big mining pools. Pools are made up of individual miners. In a sense, each pool is made up of decentralized miners.

To keep themselves in check, pools attempt not to get too much of the total hashpower of the entire network. There are several so they can easily divide and not get more than say 30% of the network.

If you go here, you can see the current pool distribution: https://www.blockchain.com/pools

It would look like this:


https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/pools1.png

Still, while it looks like only a few pools dominate, they will self-regulate and never get too large a share. In theory, they can, but people are just going to disconnect their miners and go to a different pool.

As we know the mainstream media has been spreading poor and misinformation about bitcoin and other cryptos. People need to read some good sources of information and avoid mainstream media which their business is basically to misinform to society, their goal is to profit from telling lies, people need to stop watching any centralized media.

It only look as you have said, but it is not so, I have  some times thought it doubtfully if the decentralized character of bitcoin is still valid, considering some influence of certain nations or people on the market value, but I later understood that there are certain people who much manage the market, mining and updates and they are not spirits or Angels. As you can see on this platform, there are executives who manages our posts,being decentralized will make anyonr else be part of them without descrimination.

This is when we are to adopt to the systems of cryptocurrency centralized exchanges. In the first place, we have the option to choose whether to store our cryptocurreny to exchanges or store it in the safest wallet possible which are hardware wallets. In addition, mining pool for miners isn't set by the exchanges, there are still bitcoin that hasn't been mined and that is where the reward of the miners came form. Lastly, being decentralized is what bitcoin freely offers, if you don't want this characteristics, then it's up to you not to trust exchanges mostly those that requires KYC.

Really liked your post, yeah, bitcoin was centralized at first, there is no doubt but to my mind bitcoin had sweet spot in 2011-2012 years and even till 2016. Then some things went well and opposite. Nowadays bitcoin isn't decentralized, at least I think so and have enough arguments for that. Governments are going to set regulations on it, exchanges hold almost 10% of whole bitcoin supply and as time goes number increases. Mining turned into business cause mining at home isn't beneficial at all. And for example we see shady behaviors of Bitmain that releases novel miners after getting most out of it.

Bitcoin is still decentralized. You can just check the price movement of it and the transaction fee that it offers. It is not controlled by the government back then. As of now, people think that bitcoin is now controlled by the government since some of the other countries set the rules and regulation about it. Little did they know that it does not affect bitcoin at all. It will move freely no matter what happens.

You sound like complete different from what is my understanding on decentralization. Even, when only one person was using bitcoin it was still a decentralized one because the mining reward belongs to anyone who has more hash power (the second person may join at any time and the first person has no authority to stop the 2nd one from joining). I mean to say we need to consider what are the things which define decentralization within bitcoins: the production of bitcoin is not controlled by an individual nor by a group and no one got power to revert/charge-back a transaction or to freeze an address and its balance. I strongly believe these are the features which define that bitcoin is a decentralized and definitely not by how many users/miners/developers are involving.

Regardless of 1 or 1000s of people involving, the feature I have mentioned will not get changed. So, it is always decentralized so far. Without identifying what belongs to decentralized, it will not make sense debating whether it is still decentralized or not.

You missed my second response which was about the political centralisation, rather than the architecture (which, mind you, if operated by 1 or 2 people still means the decisions would be made by them).

You talk about only 1 person using bitcoin but you have to remember that 1 person at the time had also to run the actual client, full node and verify the transactions and include it into the new blocks. Imagine a theoretical today, where only 1 person was doing that on a full node. if 1 million new users theoretically today only join only as users, and that one guy decides to shut down his computer, you're not going to get magic blocks every 10 minutes.

Anyway, there's even enough evidence without going to the extremes of Satoshi or Hal Finney sitting alone firing up the network to demonstrate that Bitcoin was centralised at first.

A mining company called Ghash in 2014 found themselves unwittingly in ownership of "powers that circumvented the decentralisation (https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/06/after-reaching-51-network-power-bitcoin-mining-pool-says-trust-us/)" when their mining pool got so popular they crossed the 51% hashrate threshold several times. I wasn't around at the time, but they apparently voluntary shut down to prevent this.

Again, I'm totally saying Bitcoin is decentralised today. But this privilege did not come without challenges, nor should it ever be taken for granted.

some decent drama and doom about that iirc. i usually was at other pools but i do remember reordering my failover pool list to prevent me joining ghash if my main pool went down. so it was last in the list, so maybe not preventing my joining but only as a last resort.

enough miners figured they would just switch away if ghash got too carried away that i wasnt worried.

i dont recall how exactly how ghash handled it. prevented new miners from joining sounds familiar.. but cant remember.

 

Oh yeah! When I really got chatty with Bitcoin people in 2016, they were still talking about it. I can't find the news articles I remember reading but I'm almost 100% certain Ghash themselves decided to shut down eventually. Like you said, they tried all sorts of things, closing new miners, shutting down capacities etc. but they thought the drama was getting too much and there was the worry this would affect Bitcoin's reputation so they simply closed the pool. No idea what happened next and what I can dredge from Google doesn't say either.

I'm sorry to break it to you but that's how all businesses and world in general work. The strong will always beat up the weak and in this case uninformed. Sad but true.

The question is what makes a product decentralized? When a product is decentralized it doesn’t have any Central authority and I know for sure that Bitcoin doesn’t have anyone; there is Central authority when it comes to Bitcoin, no one have the control over it and that’s the number one. The next thing is that Bitcoin is still peer-to-peer and you can easily send money to your friends and family or anyone you do business with, without the need for a middleman to carry out the transaction. That’s another thing that decentralization is made up of. I don’t even need to keep going far because the two points I have mentioned here should already convince you to know what’s right.

You are talking not about decentralization. All that you described is building a market and playing big players and companies. Yes, this is a problem, but it does not make Bitcoin someone’s property that can be spoiled or destroyed. Bitcoin is decentralized, no one controls coins, except its flow that calls a volatility

For few among the populace to own larger share of Bitcoin does not make it not to be decentralized. In the same vein, only view controls the wealth of this world and not equally distributed. It is like things are missing up here, heBitcoin is infact the first distributed ledger on the blockchain.

The more people use bitcoin the more decentralize bitcoin becomes, probably within 5 years from now we can see a more tangible decentralization of the BTC network, what is needed now is mas adoption of bitcoin first and then altcoins.

I think bitcoin is still decentralized because we can still do a peer-to-peer trading of different cryptocurrency. Even though it is managed by a huge mining farms, as long as it's managed by the central authority or government, it will still be in decentralized. As long as the number of people who uses bitcoin, the more it will become decentralized.

i think p2p is what makes it decentralize because other centralized payment methods can do p2p trading too  but the only  difference is cryptos can hide your infos if you wanted too but cex payment methods are i think not possbile and i often see you and the other traders details after every transaction  ,


its not decentralized if its manage by someone  . btc isnt manage by mining farms  but no one owns btc , though we need miners to process the transaction  . increasing number of btc users dont also indicate for a more decentralized economy   .  

It is still decentralized only mining farms become centralized because of the costs it takes to mine a satoshi.

I believe that it will still decentralized and nobody can hold the blockchain alone.

Bitcoin cannot be called as completely decentralized but semi-decentralized where chances of mining it through a miner are still available for small miners but the cost to do it will be huge and the smallest miner mining it will still be called a fish because they spent big on the hardware. It is not fully decentralized because of the exchanges which have the Monopoly to stop/block your account for any reasons and you still can't do anything except agree to what they want 'eg. KYC'.

It is just that 'decentralized' that everybody is free to invest and take part in mining

It is also more decentral if the protocol is set in stone - no governance needed

Approximately bitcoin evolve in the free market and its really stabilizing economy decentralize because it has a digital currency which is easy to store to transfer to divide which is covered by the world class investors,practically miners will do anything to save bitcoin to emerge as more decentralize.

Yes you are right now a days this digital currencies has not go to the first decentralisation concepts of the developers of bitcoin and many digiital currencies having place in crypto market .

Bitcoin has no central control, no central repository of information, no central management, and, crucially, no central point of failure. But I believe in terms of trade, there are some big whales who can take the market anywhere(like up or down) they want.  So some times it can be manipulated.

I know many here will think that you have to be ready and get information before taking any steps into the crypto world, but does it not bother anyone that some people enrich themselves by kicking the crap out of your wallet? Miners have mining, they don't have the Bitcoin protocol or the Bitcoin network or the Bitcoin community. I don't think it's just a matter of time when Bitcoin and cryptocurrency go through bad times due to international politics, not only that but also the Blockchain system has become a serious problem in recent times in developed countries, so the last few months also did not go as we hoped, This is reality, you have to face both the good times together with the bad ones too, so you don't have the scope to ignore this situation, I hope that in early 2020, we will get something special for us about this problem. You can always buy the latest ASIC and have a few network crumbs and everyone here can but of course those who have the ability to scale will have a bigger part. It's certainly decentralized, no one can attack or rearrange the chain. I think Bitcoin quite objectively reflects the concept of decentralization. For example, large miners can be in a completely different country, apart from being made up of economic confrontations. Bitcoin is a phenomenon similar to the Internet. Bitcoin mining is possible by any individual or legal entity, unlike Fiat money, which is printed by the central bank. Yes, I think Bitcoin is really decentralized.

Individuals consistently get their thoughts knotted up . The bitcoin organize, essentially, is so far decentralised as long as there are so far tons of individual machines having a replica of the entire blockchain on their capacity frameworks. While the facts demonstrate that mining clothed to be so concentrated, especially in China, it doesn't really imply that bitcoin in itself is brought together also. Excavators can modify or pick which exchanges experiences, yet on the opposite hand by doing in order that they are constraining their benefits which isn't what they have to try to to . :) :)
We are so far not limited by overwhelming guideline dissimilar to another markets out there so I surmise we're despite everything doing entirely great.

Thank you all for your participation in this exciting thread, really liked all the different views on "Is Bitcoin really still decentralized?? ".