Actually, in bitcoin and all other PoW coins, decentralization IS about how mining is distributed over the different participants.  You are right that the industrial efforts in PoW lead to specialisation, which is exactly why PoW is a failure in maintaining decentralization.  It is not because you *know* that it is going to centralize, that you should waver that away.  All PoW coins with "reward" are centralizing, and that's inevitable, because of economies of scale and specialisation.  But that's just a fundamental error in the game theory of PoW, not a fatality for crypto.

Why is this true centralization ?  Because decentralisation is a political, not a technical notion.  It is about decision power.  The whole idea of decentralisation is immutability of the rules, because all of politics is about modifying the rules so that you can win advantage over others.  The problem of all forms of central decision power is a funny notion, which we call "corruption".  It is the naive idea that we set up a hierarchically controlled power structure with a goal of "common good", just to find out that the deciders in that hierarchy are using their power of decision for their own advantage - which is in fact the most logically expected outcome.  People take decisions because they think that taking them brings them advantage.  People with hierarchical power don't do anything else: they use that extra power to their advantage. 

This is why democracies, big companies, and everything else are "corrupt": because they are made up of people, and we naively thought that they would put their individual essence aside to decide for the common good, instead of for themselves, like everybody else. 

If you can dictate the rules, you can put that to your advantage, directly or indirectly.  This is where decentralization comes in.  The idea is that you "flatten out the hierarchy" and have the decision be taken by consensus of entities with opposing interests.  Any rule change in the advantage of A, will be to the disadvantage of B and vice versa.  If A and B are placed in hierarchical relationship, then it is the highest one that will be able to get his advantage, over the advantage over the lower placed.  That's why the general lives, and the soldier dies.

If nobody is higher up than any other one, then the only thing people can agree upon, is the common set of initial rules.  No rule change is abl to be pushed, because no majority exists as long as the entities are non-colluding.  There is only one point of symmetry between all these different entities: the existing set of rules.

Of course, if it turns out that these different entities can agree upon a collective change of rules, nothing stops them from doing so.  If different sets of entities want different rule sets, they can part and each do their thing.  That's the essence of decentralisation.

In order for that to work, there needs to be a "voting mechanism".  In bitcoin, the voting mechanism is proof of work.  So who-ever can vote with proof of work, has decision power in bitcoin.  The distribution of the voters by proof of work is hence the decentralization in bitcoin.

That's the distribution of mining pools.  Majority needs 3 mining pools, >95% needs 10 mining pools.  That's the state of decentralization in bitcoin.

There's another aspect of decentralization: the actual "writing of the rules".  It is nice to think upon other rules politically, you have to have them running in code.  So actual decentralisation is the number of actual rule propositions.  In crypto, that's the number of independent protocol implementations.  In bitcoin, that's one: the repository on Github of bitcoin Core.   

That's it.


According to that definition, Facebook is highly decentralized.

Bitcoin, and most of crypto, have a myth about decentralization, while it isn't.  But that's not even a problem.  A zero-sum game that more or less works is good enough to be usable.  The myths are there to sell the religion, and to make believe. 

Bitcoin is nor decentralized, nor a currency.  But that doesn't mean it doesn't work.  It is a great gambling asset in a great zero-sum game.  Given that most financial assets in the big derivative market are similar, bitcoin has a great future.  But not as a currency, nor as a decentralized system.  It never was, and never will be.  It is a gambling token in a new financial zero sum game casino.  And that has a great future.  It simply needs a story that gives it some "moral high ground" even though it is entirely bogus.

Note that bitcoin needs alt coins to avoid being a simple greater-fool game, and to form a large casino ; in the same way that you cannot have one single financial speculative asset in the financial markets.  They need one another for people to bet on, so that the winners can reap in the money from the losers, but that the losers keep coming back, hoping to be winners one day.

delete thread

If you really had any proof of any of this and were writing a big story on it then you wouldn't post it here, you'd be keeping it hushed up ready to publish your story and shock the whole crypto community. It would be a million dollar story if not more.

The market so far has been down for the year. When do you feel the market will recover? Too much FUD going around with negative news floating around. Will Bitcoin go down further to USD 8-9k??

Not as funny as the $4,100 bottom call though! 

No, Bitcoin is decentralized.

Heheh can't believe you still around poking bulls. Are you now pursuing a solo career since your other half left you to go troll for Bitcoin.com 'professionally'?

Dude. BCash (LOL) is a scam. I can tell from some of the pixels and from seeing quite a few scams in my time.

That clock is still ticking...

Why would anyone use Bitcoin Cash over any of the other fast transaction coins? I just don't understand this.

Dont you think that your reasoning is being obfuscasted by emotions brought by squeezed shorts?

You clearly shorted bitcoin, a lot of it, if not all of your stash. You still can go back, even if you'll have less. The price will increase anyway, and you can try to short again, once it reaches a new steep high.

Seriously Matilda -> $60000
Don't you think you are pushing it a Little to high 

Just out of curiosity Matilda, what do you think the Bitcoin Cash Price will be end of 2018?

How do you keep track of what exchanges are adding BCC?

How do you keep track of what exchanges are adding BCC?

Depends on merchant adoption. Many merchants are removing bitcoin because of transaction fees and delays - but if they adopt bitcoincash instead that's a different story.

Bitcoincash has this coming 12 months to make it's mark. If it can get merchants to adopt it instead of BTC, then it has legs. If it doesn't it will die in a year's time.

Yeah, I don't see Bitcoin Cash taking over anytime soon.  Bitcoin acts like an index fund because every single exchange in this world trades BTC into altcoins.  It's very difficult to buy a random coin without Bitcoin.  I can't buy Ripple on Bittrex without BTC.  Every single coin on Bittrexs is traded with BTC, not Bitcoin Cash.  That's the reason why BTC can bring the entire market down or even lift the entire market up.  Bitcoin Cash will remain second rate until this changes but I don't believe this will happen anytime soon.

Congrats, you win on the <$10k call. Your BCash got even more decimated though.  

Major panic selling going on now obviously. It might keep dipping to 7 or 8 thousand. Probably in a month we'll be back at $14k or so though.

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Bitstamp low is still $10,162 in any case he didn't take the bet. So point is moot. (maybe he still would have won!)
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Time for someone to pay up.  Bitcoin dipped below 10k.  I bought some at 9600.

Shouldnt the correction be to 0.618 level?

At least this is what it looks like historically: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1J19gwjumJ8

The 0.618 level in your retracement is between 6k and 7k.

Also, notice theres only one red candle above it, which can point out to institutional investors joining the market.

Come now - we are in a bear market. $11,000 is 42% down from the all time high of around $19,000. By any definition it's a bear market. With a bit of luck it will go sideways for a time, but we could go as low as $8000.