Which country has the highest percentage of miners?

[Kprawn]

Can this affect the network in any way?

Most of the hashrate is in china. If china were to someone block the miners from connecting to the network, that could be disastrous since we would be losing over half of the hashrate

Why would it be bad?  Would it stop the confirmation of transactions or just slow down the network?  If it just slowed the network down would it make the other miners rich for awhile?

If China were to block the miners, miners in that entire large country would not be able to mine, slowing down the network assuming that they control a huge portion of the hashrate. Other miners won't be rich since the difficulty is going to remain the same till after 2016 blocks from the last difficulty change. There is a limit to it too (Max change is by a factor of 4) however. Another issue is that, if they control too much of the global hashrate, the drop of hashrate could create opportunities for people to make a 51% attack.

I doubt that China will ever block bitcoin mining. It adds a lot to fresh money coming in from other countries, when people buy these bitcoins on their exchanges.

It would be a extremely bad move for them to try a 51% attack, because a sustained attack, would effectively kill the price, when people find out about this. The bitcoins

they mine will become worthless. You never kill the cow that provide the milk. 

[stingers]

Can this affect the network in any way?

You should be pretty sure of the fact that China is in control of more than 51% of the hash power(ofc the total power is distributed among different people). Those people create the hardware and use it for themselves. And in some parts electricity is cheap too.

[VirosaGITS]

Can this affect the network in any way?

You should be pretty sure of the fact that China is in control of more than 51% of the hash power(ofc the total power is distributed among different people). Those people create the hardware and use it for themselves. And in some parts electricity is cheap too.

So you,re saying that, "China" is actually in control of all the China pool, private mine and subcontractor, including Bitmain? Because even though that there is at least 40%~ of the hashrate pointed in the hand of people in China, the control of that hashrate is segregated.

You make it sound like they're setup for a 51% attack while its absolutely not the case.

[mattjack]

China and USA are on top, with number of highest percentage of miners and users

[tommorisonwebdesign]

Can this affect the network in any way?

You should be pretty sure of the fact that China is in control of more than 51% of the hash power(ofc the total power is distributed among different people). Those people create the hardware and use it for themselves. And in some parts electricity is cheap too.

So you,re saying that, "China" is actually in control of all the China pool, private mine and subcontractor, including Bitmain? Because even though that there is at least 40%~ of the hashrate pointed in the hand of people in China, the control of that hashrate is segregated.

You make it sound like they're setup for a 51% attack while its absolutely not the case.

I conquer. China has several mining pools and as far as I know they are all separate pools. a 51% attack will not happen.

[VirosaGITS]

China and USA are on top, with number of highest percentage of miners and users

What numbers are you using to say that USA is on top? Its a pretty bad place to make mega datacenter so they don't have that much there. The electricity there is expensive. And if you look at the pool data, there's not that much pointed outside Asia and Europe.

[wearepoor]

I guess Japan or China has maximum miners. There are some rumors that Satoshi was a japanese so if its true then there are all the chances that maximum miners are in Japan but still i am not sure.

[coinzat]

I think the answer will be China of course because it has the biggest population in the world and their cheep power can help them in mining to get more profit

[smith coins]

The country that has the electricity cheap is China,
As far as i know a good percentage is covered by hydro centrals and it is cheap.
The mining rigs are also produced in china so it is cheap to use/mine in the same country.

[Raimonn]

I think that its China, and its about electricity price. Japan has higher prices of electricity. There are more countries with low electricity cost, but don't have good internet connections.

[unholycactus]

Can this affect the network in any way?

Most of the hashrate is in china. If china were to someone block the miners from connecting to the network, that could be disastrous since we would be losing over half of the hashrate

How is losing hash rate "disastrous"? It wouldn't be nice but it would be very far from disastrous.

[VirosaGITS]

Can this affect the network in any way?

Most of the hashrate is in china. If china were to someone block the miners from connecting to the network, that could be disastrous since we would be losing over half of the hashrate

How is losing hash rate "disastrous"? It wouldn't be nice but it would be very far from disastrous.

That much hash rate overnight would crash the block chain, people would mass dump, it would take a long time to recover, if ever. Its obligatory because if they would reconnected, the two BTC fork would crash and the lesser would get destroyed. Basically if that much hashrate split, BTC is done.

[onemorexmr]

Can this affect the network in any way?

Most of the hashrate is in china. If china were to someone block the miners from connecting to the network, that could be disastrous since we would be losing over half of the hashrate

How is losing hash rate "disastrous"? It wouldn't be nice but it would be very far from disastrous.

That much hash rate overnight would crash the block chain, people would mass dump, it would take a long time to recover, if ever. Its obligatory because if they would reconnected, the two BTC fork would crash and the lesser would get destroyed. Basically if that much hashrate split, BTC is done.

if bitcoin looses half its hashrate that means 20min blocks: not too bad
a bigger problem with a fork and the merge afterwards are "lost" transactions. but they are already signed and miners will pick them up. this leaves the potential for doublespends though: which is a problem. if miners are clever they can mitigate that risk by ignoring all transactions which spent outputs already spent in the losing fork

[VirosaGITS]

Can this affect the network in any way?

Most of the hashrate is in china. If china were to someone block the miners from connecting to the network, that could be disastrous since we would be losing over half of the hashrate

How is losing hash rate "disastrous"? It wouldn't be nice but it would be very far from disastrous.

That much hash rate overnight would crash the block chain, people would mass dump, it would take a long time to recover, if ever. Its obligatory because if they would reconnected, the two BTC fork would crash and the lesser would get destroyed. Basically if that much hashrate split, BTC is done.

if bitcoin looses half its hashrate that means 20min blocks: not too bad
a bigger problem with a fork and the merge afterwards are "lost" transactions. but they are already signed and miners will pick them up. this leaves the potential for doublespends though: which is a problem. if miners are clever they can mitigate that risk by ignoring all transactions which spent outputs already spent in the losing fork

No its a extremely huge problem. People don't know *which* fork will be validated later on, the transaction from the destroyed fork will be invalidated, and will never get confirmed in the chain that survive.

What will everyone do if that happen? They will dump it down to 10 cents in one hour.

[onemorexmr]

No its a extremely huge problem. People don't know *which* fork will be validated later on, the transaction from the destroyed fork will be invalidated, and will never get confirmed in the chain that survive.

What will everyone do if that happen? They will dump it down to 10 cents in one hour.

why not? as i said they are already signed and miners can just pick them up

[VirosaGITS]

No its a extremely huge problem. People don't know *which* fork will be validated later on, the transaction from the destroyed fork will be invalidated, and will never get confirmed in the chain that survive.

What will everyone do if that happen? They will dump it down to 10 cents in one hour.

why not? as i said they are already signed and miners can just pick them up

No they can't. For example block X get mined on fork #1, it include XYZ transaction, that fund then get used later on, its on block X2.

Meanwhile the same happen on Fork #2, the same block has been found by someone else and fund are already moved are spent on fork #2 and it include different transaction. All those transaction can't be validated since the funds cannot be used twice. And destroyed transaction aren't returned to the mempool to be retried.

Instead the block chain repair itself and after the forks return to one chain, every fund that was spent on the other (destroyed) chain will be back to where it was when the fork happened.

Which means no one can put FIAT value on it since they don't know if the transaction done at the time will be validated.

[achow101]

No its a extremely huge problem. People don't know *which* fork will be validated later on, the transaction from the destroyed fork will be invalidated, and will never get confirmed in the chain that survive.

What will everyone do if that happen? They will dump it down to 10 cents in one hour.

why not? as i said they are already signed and miners can just pick them up

No one is actively broadcasting those transactions. By the time the forks combine, the transactions confirmed in one fork would no longer be unconfirmed, and thus no longer broadcast. When the forks combine, the nodes on one fork would not know of those transactions and would not ask for them, and the nodes on the other fork would not know to broadcast them. Thus those transactions are essentially dropped and forgotten.

[onemorexmr]

No its a extremely huge problem. People don't know *which* fork will be validated later on, the transaction from the destroyed fork will be invalidated, and will never get confirmed in the chain that survive.

What will everyone do if that happen? They will dump it down to 10 cents in one hour.

why not? as i said they are already signed and miners can just pick them up

No they can't. For example block X get mined on fork #1, it include XYZ transaction, that fund then get used later on, its on block X2.

Meanwhile the same happen on Fork #2, the same block has been found by someone else and fund are already moved are spent on fork #2 and it include different transaction. All those transaction can't be validated since the funds cannot be used twice. And destroyed transaction aren't returned to the mempool to be retried.

Instead the block chain repair itself and after the forks return to one chain, every fund that was spent on the other (destroyed) chain will be back to where it was when the fork happened.

Which means no one can put FIAT value on it since they don't know if the transaction done at the time will be validated.

that is only true if some party tries an malicous doublespent. in that case you are right.
but you should not assume that all bitcoin users are thieves. in case of a large split exchanges and other services will find ways to detect that (which probably means way longer conf-times on both chains than we are used to atm)

edit: btw this assumes that someone is able to broadcast a tx in both forks. if there is an internet connection between two forks there will be no fork at all

[onemorexmr]

No its a extremely huge problem. People don't know *which* fork will be validated later on, the transaction from the destroyed fork will be invalidated, and will never get confirmed in the chain that survive.

What will everyone do if that happen? They will dump it down to 10 cents in one hour.

why not? as i said they are already signed and miners can just pick them up

No one is actively broadcasting those transactions. By the time the forks combine, the transactions confirmed in one fork would no longer be unconfirmed, and thus no longer broadcast. When the forks combine, the nodes on one fork would not know of those transactions and would not ask for them, and the nodes on the other fork would not know to broadcast them. Thus those transactions are essentially dropped and forgotten.

i expect miners to pick transactions up from the lost fork. for the same reason they are putting transactions in a block right now: to get their fees

[achow101]

No its a extremely huge problem. People don't know *which* fork will be validated later on, the transaction from the destroyed fork will be invalidated, and will never get confirmed in the chain that survive.

What will everyone do if that happen? They will dump it down to 10 cents in one hour.

why not? as i said they are already signed and miners can just pick them up

No one is actively broadcasting those transactions. By the time the forks combine, the transactions confirmed in one fork would no longer be unconfirmed, and thus no longer broadcast. When the forks combine, the nodes on one fork would not know of those transactions and would not ask for them, and the nodes on the other fork would not know to broadcast them. Thus those transactions are essentially dropped and forgotten.

i expect miners to pick transactions up from the lost fork. for the same reason they are putting transactions in a block right now: to get their fees

They can't. They don't know those transactions exist because no one is broadcasting them. The other nodes don't know that the other nodes don't have those transactions, so they aren't broadcasting them. Thus no one is broadcasting those transactions and thus those transactions that were lost will never be included.

This is assuming that nothing is done by the devs to deal with said fork. I believe that Bitcoin Core will go into safe mode if it detects a fork and the devs will probably issue an alert regarding said fork.