Bitcoin Forum

While most people tend to market bitcoin as being anti centralization, anti govt. so on and so forth, it occurred to me that it might just be centralized too. Seemingly we still have whales out there hoarding not just 1 5 or 10 bitcoins and its many many forks mind you (free Extra money) but with thousands upon thousands of bitcoins. So in all of this it's kind of a scary dilemma. What are you thoughts and comments on this seemingly true fact? Thoughts and comments are more than welcome.

One of the main reason why the people especially the government are not intend to market bitcoin is because they afraid that the bank may down and the Cryptocurrency is the one who will benefit and being on the top. This is one of the big reason why government don't want to regulate it and they want it to make centralized in order for them to control the cryptocurrency and the market situation.
That would probably the main reasons why the government hates and don't want to regulate bitcoin to the people or masses because they afraid of the visibility of cryptocurrency.

What are you saying, that if someone has a certain amount of BTC it becomes centralized? What exactly do you mean by centralized here?  Sure, there's a number of persons out there that have large holdings, so what. This is a free market and the most fairly distributed crypto. Satoshi himself is thought to hold nearly 1 million coins.  Tim Draper has 30,000 plus coins, and someone else may only have .04, none of those facts centralize Bitcoin. Someone may only have more power to move the market than another but this is still distribution.
Another note, Bitcoin is not anti government. In fact, we need governance as a society and always have. The problem is when the governments no longer represent the peoples interests. Power centralizes and bad shit happens. Look at the USA right now.  They can even go to war with countries that have no intentions of fighting at all and because they print the money, they can do what they want. This is centralization, not Bitcoin. 

This is not the true definition of decentralization, having a lot of bitcoin doesn't mean you have control over the network, and this doesn't imply you can effect change on the working principles of the block, you are just lucky to have been an early adopter, and anyone could own volumes of bitcoin if they wish to buy this cheap a price. A time will come when it hits $100k and people will still complain why will someone have so and so volumes of bitcoin, and the simple answer is that no one actually stops them from buying cheap when they had the opportunity.

Centralization is a loose term. Some might argue Bitcoin is centralized because most miners are from China, some argue that Bitcoin is centralized because only rich people can mine it, so on and so forth.

You need to be clear with your definition of centralization. Having more Bitcoin than the others might give you more selling pressure but doesn't mean you can simply make and reject any transaction that you wish to stop (which is where the 'decentralization' part comes in).

People having a lot more bitcoin than most of us =/= centralization

Bitcoin isn't a solution for the wealth imbalance. Wealthy people, are going to remain wealthy whether you like it or not. Them having more bitcoin doesn't automatically mean that they have more control over the network. If we're talking about Proof of Stake[1], as with other coins, then sure. But Bitcoin is Proof of Work[2].

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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_stake
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_work

lets assume that what you are saying here is correct and whales aren't just accumulating thousands but millions of bitcoin. let me ask you this, is anybody preventing YOU from doing the same? so as long as the answer to that question is a big fat NO then there is no room for you to complain about it either. it is YOUR own choice not to invest in bitcoin with that kind of money so you can't blame others for taking a bigger risk.

I think the pints you are making are things that will gradually dissipate over time as Bitcoins are spread to more of the population. Theoretically at some point in the future, there won’t be individuals that hold huge numbers of Bitcoins. However, the same problem is going to happen with any new cryptocurrency. At the beginning there will be a few people that own huge numbers of that coin.

OP, you should read the answers in this topic: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5209011
The problem is the same: decentralization.

Usually the term decentralization for Bitcoin is related to the number of nodes, not about the centralization of wealth.


Although there are probably many Bitcoin whales, many exchanges' and other service providers' cold wallets may be also mistaken as whales. Also I expect many early fat wallets are actually lost forever. So the problem may be a bit smaller than some think.
Also new bitcoins are mined on the daily basis. If you are concerned about who owns them, go buy as many as you afford (although you should better don't invest more money than you afford to lose).
However, go read some of the answers there. They should be interesting and useful.

Well i find it a feasible solution for maybe a store of wealth something like gold in a sense but it's just not feasible for everyday use. I think most people would agree that it's technology nowadays is almost borderline archaic and obsolete. None the less still a fan of the Bitcoin. 9k usd anyone?

Even though whales control the market it doesn't mean that bitcoin is centralized maybe you can call it manipulated or something. Bitcoin remains decentralized whatever happens. Decentralization that people want from bitcoin is they can store and secure their assets without giving 3rd party access to their money. But if we're talking about the price being controlled or the volatility it could be different than centralization.

An important point is that we do not know how many currencies are still in circulation so that there are thousands of Bitcoins produced in the first days and nobody knows about them.

These unknown coins will create a balance and decentralize the cryptosystem.
Also, the awareness of BTC holding using open-source wallets increased, decentralized platforms have evolved, and therefore the risk of central platforms is less severe.

If we simply think about centralization itself you will understand that somehow or someway Bitcoin is under control in a different way and it is inevitable to happen. May it be the governments trying to regulate it or the miners trying to control the hashrate or even the whales trying to influence the market Bitcoin itself simply isn't protected from those kinds of threats since BTC as a commodity all has some kind of demand outside the market and that is the demand to control it. We simply can't avoid this things from happening but I'm sure we can limit it.

Whales holds bigger amount to play with the market, and creates hype in the right time. Their unpredictable mindset is making more crucial to many individuals who've been following cryptocurrency. I don't know with other people who doesn't appreciate cryptocurrency, but for us who's strongly supports the progress, remained faithful with the community.

i do have in my mind that BTC is centralized due to percent of new BTC mined in China, which cannot be seen as good decentralization strategy, from global hash rate, 70% is mined in Sichuan province, which is large percent for me, and I would like to see better global coverage for BTC miners, which is not realistic due to power price and equipment manufacturers, which are mainly based in China...

All are possible especially when it comes to technology. I know that there is a way to do that. But is it really advantageous to Bitcoin to be that way or remain Decentralized so that it can function well? Well, I am open for all types of changes but I suggest that there should be a thorough study first before doing that so that it will not be open for abuse by a single entity.

Larger holdings doesn't mean that the scales are tipped to them. Centralisation means that the currency itself originates and is being regulated by a single entity which in the case of fiats is the central bank of each country. If you are afraid that a certain 1% club exists that manipulate bitcoin's price then let me cast it aside, there are whales indeed but since bitcoin is in itself secure. They can only do so much with the manipulation they are doing.

Bitcoin is not centralized, it’s still what it is – decentralized. Just because it is being held by lots of whales doesn’t mean that it has become centralized. The government cannot adopt Bitcoin and that’s because of its decentralized nature, it s not owned by anyone or country and there is no particular control unit. Every country can’t adopt the same currency, so that’s why they are not adopting it.

Yep, you’re right as times goes on a lot of people will start to adopt Bitcoin and it will spread out. Though I have also seen people that claims that it’s not going to be like that, rather whales will buy up and hold everything and when the time comes people won’t be able to buy Bitcoin again. That’s all lies, no time is late to buy Bitcoin, people trade bitcoin every minute and no matter the condition, so such is not going to happen.

Yeah, these whales do manipulate the price. But not always. Market tends to come back to its natural growth and price. They have the Bitcoin in the bulk. But do mind it, there are many such whales. You can lose money in trade if the manipulation isn't followed by the people. So, you can't always do that. If there is a trend, you can only intensify it unless and until there's a cartel of all the whales. So rest assured, I won't term Bitcoin as centralized for that.

There will always be poor, rich and ultra rich people no matter what currency are we going to use. However decentralization in Bitcoin is about not being controlled by a central entity. For example the Feds can increase the supply of US Dollar indefinitely. Also they control how much liquidity is poured into the market, etc.

But are you talking about bitcoin or Bitcoin? Because it is very easy to confuse and not to distinguish between asset and protocol: they are two distinct things.

That's exactly what I'm thinking.  Ownership doesn't come into the equation when you're talking about decentralization--with bitcoin, it means that many miners are responsible for creation of coins and maintenance of the blockchain.  None of that depends on banks or governments.  That's my understanding anyway.  Bitcoin is as decentralized as a currency can get, even if its price (which is a separate issue) could be manipulated by whales.

That's what a lot of people say, anyway.  But nobody can ever point to exactly who these whales are or what the manipulation is.  It almost gets into tinfoil hat territory IMO when people start ranting about those whales.

Well, you are partially countering your own argument.

If I have lots of Bitcoins (say, 5-10K), I can easily control the liquidity in the market.  I can easily fake pump/dump by choosing any single exchange and that will manipulate the whole market.

That's the current misery with Bitcoin. Although the Proof of Work algorithm ensures its fair-working as a currency (since lots of nodes already ensuring decentralization of chain's instance) but 'Bitcoin as an investment' is still prey to the early holders. That's what make Bitcoin a risky investment and main reason why it is referred as Bubble by many experienced investors.

Most of the times what make bitcoin decentralized nature appear blur is due to the selfishness of some whales, governments and even some of us. Many whale's transaction activities are without the considering of others and therefore erupting manipulations,  the government policies too such as  tax deduction, which should not be a bad idea any way but tend to lead to ban when it is not at their exact will.
Many of us too who refuses to release the little that is right to the government are also a factor.

I think you don't  really understand what centralisation and decentralization actually means. Decentralization is the crypto space means no one controls the amount of transactions made by an individual within a day and the amount of funds the person is sending. Decentralization means financial freedom. You should also know that decentralization is cause the frequent change in the market value of most cryptocurrencies since the decentralized nature causes people to determine the market price of a particular coin. 

It's not centralized, and it's nowhere going to be. You may think that, but everyone else had that opportunity to get some Bitcoins in insane amounts when you got in it earlier than the others. You could've mined that too if you had the time to discovered Bitcoin more previously. It's lucky timing with their holdings, and I don't think it's going to be scary knowing that there are those kinds of distributions. There's nothing you could do but continue your own business, right?

Decentralization is unfortunately impossible in modern conditions, so bitcoin is likely to be centralized.

But it doesn't work that way, because the moment you try, you will find your operations don't execute instantly for the entire amount. The capacity for whale manipulation is lower than some people think. This is why this "misery" doesn't even exist.

Wealth distribution is unrelated to coin centralization, that is a fact. No one can destroy Bitcoin overnight, like governments, banks, wars, etc can with fiat. Those that invested earlier, profit the most, and there is no turning back. Bitcoin is no longer something to make money by just buying and holding, that stage is already gone. It is a coin that keeps its value over time, that's its intended purpose, and thanks to its design, its smoothly entering this stage.

Before Bitcoin the world did not have this kind of coin, now it does. Even if you (like me) missed the early days, we can still use it to at least preserve what little wealth we may have up to this point. Should you keep it in fiat, you risk losing it overnight.

Suppose a catastrophe (natural or artificial) happens in your country tomorrow, if you had moved all your money into Bitcoin, your wealth would have been kept safe even if everyone else around you enters misery due to the fiat/economy collapse. But this is a decision you can only take BEFORE it happens (even if it never happens). Once it happens, it is too late to react. The smart investor would simply diversify, just in case. It is foolish to trust your government or your central bank, especially when you know they have the power to make you poor overnight.

Well somewhat of an off subject comment but it's almost weird to conceive that digital money isn't higher than what it is when governments can print whatever they want basically whenever. Aren't people kind of suspicious of this? Also whats going on with the Dow Jones? Has anybody looked into how high it has gone in the Donald Trump Presidency? Wow, I'm loving the pump don't get me wrong but WOW..

I think you misinterpreted the meaning of centralization but in some points are true, because being decentralized in bitcoin is having the freedom for a person to have their bitcoins and to avoid being controlled by any third parties, but thinking deeply about being controlled, in market, if we indulge ourselves too deep to earning profit, we could still be controlled by the whales who set the market price of bitcoin, though, in fact, we really have the freedom on deciding what to do to our bitcoin. So to avoid being confused, these technical terms should remain properly used, or explain further to avoid misconception.

I don't believe that whales manipulate the market. I remember something about the first 100 richest addresses having the vast majority (90% or something) of BTC. However, most of these addresses don't belong to people, they belong to exchanges and other crypto companies. They move money sometimes, but it doesn't affect the prices. And this is still a big amount of people that would have to agree to make a big move, often without knowing who is who (we don't know to whom some addresses from the list belong).
Bitcoin is thus but centralised, at least not in terms of coins distribution. Mining is, and it is a bit disturbing, but it's a suicide for a mining company to attempt to affect the market.

 actual information referred to in decentralized system on bitcoin is not from who holds most bitcoin. or whales that have thousands of BTC. but more than a personal control center. Bitcoin does not have a central control. but every bitcoin holder is in control of their assets. no matter they have 1 million BTC or 1000 satoshi. full control is in the holder. as well as privacy, large transactions. all not monitored by the government. all transparent, but there is no centralization of the middle man. all goes under personal control. so this is purpose of decentralization. if it's about price. then all crypto is in whales centralization. it's not about price alone. but more on benefits and uses.

People often talk about whales as if it is some hivemind that manipulates Bitcoin and can even control it, but it's far from the truth. Whales are individuals, many of them probably don't know each other, many of them are probably anonymous, and they can have very different views on Bitcoin - some might fully believe in its cause, others might be just here for profits, some think how to short it, others want to buy more and so on. So, I'm absolutely not concerned about whales being a centralizing factor in Bitcoin.

Centralization to me is not within the shareholders, but instead in the nodes that run the network, which is.more of a concern to me rather than these whales. China has established a centralized network of nodes, consisting of more than 50% of the network. And outright ban by the Chinese government would bring adverse impact on the market, regardless of these whales.

I already said this before, but if financial institutions, exchanges, and custodial services control most of the coins in circulation, then Bitcoins as a permissionless, censorship-resistant cryptocurrency would fail.

Bitcoin market is not only about trading where whales or people who owns massive bitcoins are ruling, its a complete financial ecosystem where everyone has complete control of his funds. Crypto exchnages are no way decentralized rather they are centralized too. Do not look at bitcoin only from perspective of buying high and selling low.

It seems you misinterpreted decentralization and centralization.
What you're describing is capitalization, where anyone who has a lot of bitcoin can control everything about bitcoin.
Though it's not like that, even if you have hundreds of bitcoins it will never happen like that because bitcoin doesn't depend on anyone. There is no third party that can intervene in your bitcoin assets.

I really don't think that Bitcoin is centralized yet it  is the mining share that has become centralize instead, because in order to really mine you need a warehouse of rigs just to make a good profit. Early birds who got within mining early on happen to culminate the field and they took over. This is way back when people were scared of a 51% attack. This is the sole reason I believe another cryptocurrency will eventual be poised to replace Bitcoin as the gloabl cryptocurrency, being that the Proof of work algorithm has been rendered outdated and rather costly to continue it's use. More Eco friendly and simpler algorithmic consensus solutions have been achieved like "Delegated Proof of Stake".

Having some whales doesnt signify centralization.It isnt really that equal nor a valid presumption.
There would be always people who would really have much more coins that on other people since we
know that we do differ when it comes to financial capacity.Jelousy isnt a bad thing but we shouldnt
conclude about centralization even though these whales can affect price but doesnt mean they can
control the entire market as they like.

In addition, having this consensus is quite obsolete as you said to the point that many cryptocurrency is already utilizing more efficient consensus that they are using to efficiently generate transactions which mainly attracts more users to adopt to that particular currency. In my opinion, bitcoin being centralized is just based from the market manipulation which in the first place, indirect centralization because they really not control the funds you have. Thus, allowing you to freely decide for your choice.

Yeah right, I think like that, everyone's perspective is different about this centralization. But I am very confident that centralization in general is not seen from the shareholders, but from how the network is run, regulation is also a factor of centralization.

The whales can definitely manipulate the climate of bitcoin but not to an extreme extent that fiat is being manipulated by the top 1% of the richest. The whales can pump or dump but can only change bitcoin's flow by hundreds and rarely thousands of dollars. This is because of how bitcoin is secured and volatile, along with other factors that affect bitcoin more than these whales do.

There are a bunch of whales potentially with big wallets but that should change as they sell to lock in gains.  It will eventually allow the 21 million coins to be distributed among more people over time.

decentralization does not mean not being subject to government regulations.
the creation of decentralization of many conventional banks that manipulate currencies with a variety of reasons.

for the government, bitcoin is very detrimental and can be called anti-government. but there are also many people who really like bitcoin. hopefully bitcoin can be a decent place in the government and can be used as a whole.

Perhaps centralization will solve the problem of mass adoption of cryptocurrencies, but then the whole point of using cryptocurrency as a whole is lost. Therefore, the struggle between state regulators and decentralized systems will be long and victory will not be on the side of the state.

Anyway, spreading the scope of legislation related to cryptocurrencies leads to some sort of centralization gradually. Do not be surprised if in the next couple of years authorities would require the same type of identity verification for wallets as now for opening bank accounts.

That's true it's already in progress there are numerous bounty and ICO who don't give out their details but request users for KYC even for bounty participants. I think this is a gradual step towards the centralization which is against the whole concept of cryptocurrency and if this continues then crypto will become just like centralized wallets and digital payment method.

Of course without privacy, just like with wire bank transfers. They would explain, that without this fighting against pump and dump (what is banned on stocks) is virtually impossible and that cryptocurrencies cannot be widely adopted thanks to their volatility caused by P&D.

And once it is done, we might even face a situation that trading cryptocurrencies above some threshold/trading volume (or trading specific cryptos) would require you to obtain a state-issued broker license. Only having such license uploaded to exchange in a form of KYC would unlock trading limits.