miners and full-node - the real numbers...

[r1973]

Is it true that there are much too few bitcoin miners and full-nodes in the whole world >> a total of 21(!) miners, and less than 5500 full-nodes? Is that whole eco-system?
Is it true that China holds more than 51% of hash power?

If so, these numbers are SCARY!

[achow101]

There are not 21 miners. There may be that many pools, but there are most certainly much much more miners in the world. As for less than 5500 full nodes, the number is probably a little higher, but not by much. https://bitnodes.21.co/ lists all of the nodes that it can reach. This of course will not include nodes running over Tor and nodes that don't accept incoming connections, so the number is probably a little higher.

Chinese mining farms probably do hold the majority of mining power. The power is cheap there.

[r1973]

Chinese mining farms probably do hold the majority of mining power. 

These are very bad news. Should I explain why?

[achow101]

Chinese mining farms probably do hold the majority of mining power. 

These are very bad news. Should I explain why?

Yes, please do. What makes that bad?

[r1973]

Chinese mining farms probably do hold the majority of mining power. 

These are very bad news. Should I explain why?

Yes, please do. What makes that bad?

Uncertainty! The majority of the mining power should not come from one single country/region of the world --> China, for this matter. Mining-Costs are too high for the vast majority of supportes.
If one day the Communist Party/their Central Bank feel threaten by Bitcoin,  they can ban and/or crack-down their local Chinese mining-farms anytime. This is true for many other countries as well. This leads me to think that the whole bitcoin eco-system is way too fragile. The numbers are too low (too few mining farms, which cost a lot of money, too few full-nodes, too few users... too few of everything... etc).

The blockchain technology is here to say but the token's future is very much uncertain.

[achow101]

Chinese mining farms probably do hold the majority of mining power. 

These are very bad news. Should I explain why?

Yes, please do. What makes that bad?

Uncertainty! The majority of the mining power should not come from one single country/region of the world --> China, for this matter. Mining-Costs are too high for the vast majority of supportes.
If one day the Communist Party/their Central Bank feel threaten by Bitcoin,  they can ban and/or crack-down their local Chinese mining-farms anytime. This is true for many other countries as well. This leads me to think that the whole bitcoin eco-system is way too fragile. The numbers are too low (too few mining farms, which cost a lot of money, too few full-nodes, too few users... too few of everything... etc).

The blockchain technology is here to say but the token's future is very much uncertain.

And how is that bad, how does that make bitcoin fragile? If China were to crack down on Bitcoin mining farms, how would that negatively effect Bitcoin? While a lot of mining power comes from China, they do not have the vast majority. China probably has about 50% or a little more of the mining power. If all of those miners were suddenly unable to mine, for a few weeks, the difficulty would be high and the blocks would take around 20 minutes instead of 10 minutes, a minor inconvenience. Then after enough blocks have been made, the difficulty would adjust down and everything would be back to normal.

[r1973]

Chinese mining farms probably do hold the majority of mining power.  

These are very bad news. Should I explain why?

Yes, please do. What makes that bad?

Uncertainty! The majority of the mining power should not come from one single country/region of the world --> China, for this matter. Mining-Costs are too high for the vast majority of supportes.
If one day the Communist Party/their Central Bank feel threaten by Bitcoin,  they can ban and/or crack-down their local Chinese mining-farms anytime. This is true for many other countries as well. This leads me to think that the whole bitcoin eco-system is way too fragile. The numbers are too low (too few mining farms, which cost a lot of money, too few full-nodes, too few users... too few of everything... etc).

The blockchain technology is here to say but the token's future is very much uncertain.

And how is that bad, how does that make bitcoin fragile? If China were to crack down on Bitcoin mining farms, how would that negatively effect Bitcoin? While a lot of mining power comes from China, they do not have the vast majority. China probably has about 50% or a little more of the mining power. If all of those miners were suddenly unable to mine, for a few weeks, the difficulty would be high and the blocks would take around 20 minutes instead of 10 minutes, a minor inconvenience. Then after enough blocks have been made, the difficulty would adjust down and everything would be back to normal.

you may be right, but as I said before, the Bitcoin numbers are too low:
- Bitcoin owners: probably 2-3 million. Bitcoin users (actively spending, trading, following news): 200k-500k.
- owners/users, who actually run a full-node on their PC > currently around 5500 nodes, which is a drop compared to 6200 a few months ago.
- the whole eco-system is based on a lotal of less than 30 mining-farms, worldwide.

Am I wrong on these numbers?

[achow101]

you may be right, but as I said before, the Bitcoin numbers are too low:
- Bitcoin owners: probably 2-3 million. Bitcoin users (actively spending, trading, following news): 200k-500k.
- owners/users, who actually run a full-node on their PC > currently around 5500 nodes, which is a drop compared to 6200 a few months ago.
- the whole eco-system is based on a lotal of less than 30 mining-farms, worldwide.

Am I wrong on these numbers?

Yes, you are wrong. There are definitely more than 30 mining farms worldwide. Where are you getting that number from? There are probably about 30 notable mining POOLS but mining POOLS are different from mining FARMS. And mining farms are not the only ones supporting the Bitcoin network. There are many people who own miners but not enough to be considered a farm.

But you still haven't explained how Bitcoin is fragile.

[r1973]

you may be right, but as I said before, the Bitcoin numbers are too low:
- Bitcoin owners: probably 2-3 million. Bitcoin users (actively spending, trading, following news): 200k-500k.
- owners/users, who actually run a full-node on their PC > currently around 5500 nodes, which is a drop compared to 6200 a few months ago.
- the whole eco-system is based on a lotal of less than 30 mining-farms, worldwide.

Am I wrong on these numbers?

Yes, you are wrong. There are definitely more than 30 mining farms worldwide. Where are you getting that number from? There are probably about 30 notable mining POOLS but mining POOLS are different from mining FARMS. And mining farms are not the only ones supporting the Bitcoin network. There are many people who own miners but not enough to be considered a farm.

But you still haven't explained how Bitcoin is fragile.

I take the numbers from this post, titled "The 21 companies that control bitcoin":
http://uk.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-pools-miners-ranked-2015-7

[achow101]

I take the numbers from this post, titled "The 21 companies that control bitcoin":
http://uk.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-pools-miners-ranked-2015-7

That article is incorrect. POOLS ARE NOT COMPANIES. POOLS ARE NOT MINING FARMS. While some companies may have their own pools, the vast majority of mining pools are not run by a company and do not use their own hardware. The mining hardware in a mining pool comes from miners, including mining farms, who connect to pools and contribute hash power to the pools. This increases the odds of a pool finding a block and the block reward is distributed among the miners in that pool.

You can see the current pool distribution on https://www.blocktrail.com/BTC if you scroll all the way to the bottom.

[Amph]

china hold more than 60% of the network, last time i've checked, but they are not all in the same place, and under the same man, they are far away from each other

and plus there is competition between each of those big farm, so no problem from this point

[Sturgeon]

The biggest support

AntPool — 17.82%
Lennart Tange/Flickr (CC)
These ants aren't mining bitcoin.
AntPool is run by Bitmain, a Chinese mining hardware company headquartered in Beijing. It boasts that its technology accounts for 56% of global bitcoin miners. It also claims to be the largest cloud miner in the world.

Bitmain was launched in Q1 2013, and co-founder Jihan Wu is the CEO.

source :http://uk.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-pools-miners-ranked-2015-7?r=US&IR=T

[ranochigo]

Chinese mining farms probably do hold the majority of mining power.  

These are very bad news. Should I explain why?

Yes, please do. What makes that bad?

Uncertainty! The majority of the mining power should not come from one single country/region of the world --> China, for this matter. Mining-Costs are too high for the vast majority of supportes.
If one day the Communist Party/their Central Bank feel threaten by Bitcoin,  they can ban and/or crack-down their local Chinese mining-farms anytime. This is true for many other countries as well. This leads me to think that the whole bitcoin eco-system is way too fragile. The numbers are too low (too few mining farms, which cost a lot of money, too few full-nodes, too few users... too few of everything... etc).

The blockchain technology is here to say but the token's future is very much uncertain.

They can't do much even if they feel threatened. Bitcoin mining sites aren't declared publicly and it is impossible to stop users to connect to mining pools or nodes. There are mining farms in Sweden, US too. KNCminers have a huge one in there and another have one in the US IIRC. Node numbers aren't accurate. There are some nodes which limit users hence bitnode won't be able to connect on those.

Despite the fact that there are huge mining pools based in China, some users can be from the nearby countries or far away. Main attraction is the fees and payouts.

[pedrog]

Chinese mining farms probably do hold the majority of mining power. 

These are very bad news. Should I explain why?

Yes, please do. What makes that bad?

Uncertainty! The majority of the mining power should not come from one single country/region of the world --> China, for this matter. Mining-Costs are too high for the vast majority of supportes.
If one day the Communist Party/their Central Bank feel threaten by Bitcoin,  they can ban and/or crack-down their local Chinese mining-farms anytime. This is true for many other countries as well. This leads me to think that the whole bitcoin eco-system is way too fragile. The numbers are too low (too few mining farms, which cost a lot of money, too few full-nodes, too few users... too few of everything... etc).

The blockchain technology is here to say but the token's future is very much uncertain.

If that ever happens people will just move their mines to other countries, the reason the majority is located in China is because of cheap energy.

[Mickeyb]

OP you don't need to worry about it so much. As said, the article is pure BS. Also, Satoshi has thought about all of this. Even he has said that at the end there will be only large mining entities, everyone else will be running lite wallets.

Also your numbers about users, etc, give it time. Bitcoin is young and it's attracting new people in every day. We need to give it time and let it grow.

China as well, if their government closes all of the farms, they will just move elsewhere. But this will never happen. All of this is a huge business for them as well.

[2double0]

Can you please share where you got those numbers from?
But yes, I can confirm that China does have more than 51% hashing power.

[r1973]

Can you please share where you got those numbers from?
But yes, I can confirm that China does have more than 51% hashing power.

When saying there are less than 30 pools/farms - I got the numbers from:
https://blockchain.info/pools
http://uk.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-pools-miners-ranked-2015-7

These days it's becoming too expesive to set up new pools/farms - worldwide, thus the competition in this field (i.e. mining) is dropping. It's impossible to compete the Chinese...

[achow101]

Can you please share where you got those numbers from?
But yes, I can confirm that China does have more than 51% hashing power.

When saying there are less than 30 pools/farms - I got the numbers from:
https://blockchain.info/pools
http://uk.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-pools-miners-ranked-2015-7

These days it's becoming too expesive to set up new pools/farms - worldwide, thus the competition in this field (i.e. mining) is dropping. It's impossible to compete the Chinese...

Pools and Farms are different entities. Pools do not cost very much to run. I could in fact set up my own for a few dollars a month for hosting. A mining farm costs significantly more to run since hardware, space, and electricity needs to be bought which can easily run into several millions.

[defaultking]

Also, wouldn't there be an issue of supply and demand. If for whatever reason China's lost all it's farmers, wouldn't the price of bitcoin go up because there are people still looking to buy BTC, but not as many people mining it now and bitcoin would become more "rare"? Just like when refineries or oil rigs get shut down the price of gas/oil goes up respectively until they come back on or the supply gets replaced by someone else. This would make farming more attractive to people in areas with more expensive energy. Once those farms got set-up than bitcoin would settle back down to a price to support these farms or until China got all their operations back up and running.

The free market is a very scary place, but continues to function everyday.

[BeginToMine]

These numbers are too low, 21 miners, that's a joke. 5500 nodes are to few either.