Will Bitcoin become centralized sometime in the future?

[Abiky]

As Bitcoin mining is partially controlled by Chinese miners, I have a feeling that sometime in the near future, Bitcoin can become centralized if no solution against this is proposed.

If BTC could manage to bring a solution towards mining centralization by preventing mining pools with the most hashrate to effectively gain control of the network, then it would aim to become more decentralized over the years.
 
As mining difficulty increases and new ASIC hardware gets developed, it would make it less possible for any average user to mine Bitcoin, thus making it more centralized each day.

Nevertheless, I would like to know your opinion about this, as if BTC becomes centralized, it might cause it to decrease in value, and most of all, violate the principles that it was created for. 

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[arnbrd]

To ensure some sort of centralisation never happen, the best way is still to spread the hashrate concentration to multiple new pools. I guess since there is more and more people coming into the game, and a lot more will come I think because of the price rise, actions will never have to be taken.

[European Central Bank]

i think it already is centralized with the possibility of a decentralized out if that centralization becomes too obvious. bitcoin could use a genuine scare to reinforce what it should all be about.

[Carlton Banks]

3D printing of ASIC processors will be what flips that game.



The trolls will wade into this thread quickly, saying: "development is centralised, let's run multiple conflicting rulesets on the network!", but of course, development has always been centralised to however many people have the private keys to commit code to the github.com/bitcoin repo.

The ability to create a fork away from github.com/bitcoin should only be used if those developers start behaving in bad faith. Only the would-be usurper devs (XT, Classic et al) have demonstrated bad faith, by proposing (likely deliberately) stupid ideas to "improve" Bitcoin that would in fact cripple it.

[Bitcoinsummoner]

I hope that it can be happen that bitcoin will be centralized

Nevertheless, I would like to know your opinion about this, as if BTC becomes centralized, it might cause it to decrease in value, and most of all, violate the principles that it was created for. 

I think it can reduce the value because its centralized and i think the people who are using bitcoin they are want privacy and become anonymous.. if bitcoin will become centralized i think more company will ask for our real identity.. this is just what i thoughts.

[franky1]

funny thing is its the blockstream paid devs that are wanting centralization. mainly to push bitcoin down a rabbit hole to commercialise it and repay their investors.

Gmaxwell proposed anyone not core should ForK off

What you are describing is what I and others call a bilaterial hardfork-- where both sides reject the other.

I tried to convince the authors of BIP101 to make their proposal bilateral by requiring the sign bit be set in the version in their blocks (existing nodes require it to be unset). Sadly, the proposals authors were aggressively against this.

gmaxwell proposed auto rejecting blocks simply because those blocks dont vote for core

If there is some reason when the users of Bitcoin would rather have it activate at 90%  (e.g. lets just imagine some altcoin publicly raised money to block an important improvement to Bitcoin) then even with the 95% rule the network could choose to activate it at 90% just by orphaning the blocks of the non-supporters until 95%+ of the remaining blocks signaled activation.

kind of funny how gmaxwell wants to cause an intentional split just to activate a soft fork.. very counter intuitive

as also shown above, gmaxwell is so desperate and depraved he calls anything not core an altcoin... makes me laugh that he stoops that low to confuse his sheep

it is actually the blockstream paid devs and their interns that have been on a campaign to centralize the blockchain, telling lies, twisting the truth and spreading rumours to try reigning their sheep into the wolfs den

as for the impending replies of the sheep.. distribution vs decentralization are two very different things.
yes bitcoin is distributed. but if they are all blindly following the wishes of just a few devs.. then distribution becomes meaningless because independence is lost

[Zadicar]

As Bitcoin mining is partially controlled by Chinese miners, I have a feeling that sometime in the near future, Bitcoin can become centralized if no solution against this is proposed.

If BTC could manage to bring a solution towards mining centralization by preventing mining pools with the most hashrate to effectively gain control of the network, then it would aim to become more decentralized over the years.
 
As mining difficulty increases and new ASIC hardware gets developed, it would make it less possible for any average user to mine Bitcoin, thus making it more centralized each day.

Nevertheless, I would like to know your opinion about this, as if BTC becomes centralized, it might cause it to decrease in value, and most of all, violate the principles that it was created for. 

It would still remain as it should be and im strongly believing on that thing because no matter how difficulty increases and miners would be more developed or upgraded it doest really mean that it will make bitcoin to be decentralized and we all know that bitcoin cant be hardly controlled by any 3rd party.If they would plan to control or centralized it then they will have a hard time on cracking it for sure.

[calkob]

I dont really care at the minute where in the world the mining is done as long as no 1 miner has anywhere near 51% of the hash power.  Like has been said before if mining was centralising in Sweden it would probably never be mentioned.   

[data1]

when all the blocks where mined after that i dont think chaina will have  the capibilty they have right now. or if people are thinking about the transaction fee devidation then let me tell you that the compitation level will be highest at that time because the difficulty will remain same and every body can invest a fixed amount on a machine and can mine and get a portion of the total transaction fees

[manselr]

As Bitcoin mining is partially controlled by Chinese miners, I have a feeling that sometime in the near future, Bitcoin can become centralized if no solution against this is proposed.

If BTC could manage to bring a solution towards mining centralization by preventing mining pools with the most hashrate to effectively gain control of the network, then it would aim to become more decentralized over the years.
 
As mining difficulty increases and new ASIC hardware gets developed, it would make it less possible for any average user to mine Bitcoin, thus making it more centralized each day.

Nevertheless, I would like to know your opinion about this, as if BTC becomes centralized, it might cause it to decrease in value, and most of all, violate the principles that it was created for.  

Im not as concerned about mining centralization as I am about node centralization.

According to experts like Andreas Antonopoulos, we will see a second big decentralization of mining:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-fUosBOu58

It's worth watching the entire talk, but that explains it nicely. We will see, I think things will change in the future and china will stop being a bitcoin mining superpower, they will always have the cheap electricity advantage tho.

In any case, the big danger is the anti Core/Anti Blockstream paid government trolls like Roger Ver trying to turn Bitcoin into Paypal 2.0, in other words a ridiculous hipster token that is easily controlled due its huge blockchain that will be hosted by datacenters instead of random people on their basements.


https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4irowq/roger_ver_paypal_20_is_an_acceptable_risk_for/

So beware of all those XT/Classic/BU hijack attempts that try to stop the conservative approach that has made software a robust and reliable software. They are also conveniently against segwit which would give us Schnorr sigs, Confidential Transactions, default decentralized coin mixing on the wallets, cool sidechain stuff like mimblewimble... in other word's government's greatest nightmare. XT/Classic/BU with no segwit is way easier to control.

[franky1]

So beware of all those XT/Classic/BU hijack attempts that try to stop the conservative approach that has made software a robust and reliable software. They are also conveniently against segwit which would give us Schnorr sigs, Confidential Transactions, default decentralized coin mixing on the wallets, cool sidechain stuff like mimblewimble... in other word's government's greatest nightmare. XT/Classic/BU with no segwit is way easier to control.

might be worth you doing some fact checking.

its core that wants to handcuff bitcoin to turn everyone over to LN (paypal2.0). yet those opposing bitcoin want more real permissionless transaction on the mainnet.

its core that while handcuffing bitcoin, they want to bloat transactions with kilobytes of data (confidential payments) where the reality is that these confidential payments will only be confidential for a few days before the 'hidden value' is revealed.

its core that want certain LN (paypal2.0) hub managers having a masterkey to move peoples funds without their consent to use to mix other peoples funds with only a moral judgement that these masterkey holders would put funds back.

thus LN/mimble wont be permissionless, trustless, or even frictionless. those making LN are already putting in stumbling blocks and penalties to charge people extra just for the 'privelidge' of using LN. after all their desire is to repay blockstreams investors so they need to handcuff bitcoin to force people into LN(paypal2.0) to get those penalty fee's to hand back to blockstreams banker investors.

it really makes me laugh pretending blockstream are not involved with the banks..

[franky1]

a simple rule that would avoid mining centralization would be that no pool can submit a block hash solution if it has already solved 2 out of the last 6 blocks. that way a pool will never get more than 33% control, they would automatically get rejected at the 3rd attempt within the last 6 blocks.

seems like a simple rule that solves the 51% attack worry right??

though that can be worked around by a pool running 20 pools and quickly pool hops as soon as it solved 2 blocks.
so for every problem there would be a work around, found.

the problem is not that one pool hits 51% to do something. its the extra fact that a couple separate pools can agree to do something if their manage to control a majority of the blocks that are being solved.

and no matter what solution you find. someone else WILL find a work around. or a way to twist the rule in their favour EG if a rule is created to reject a block if the submitter is submitting too many. that same rule can be abused to deny independence , much like gmaxwell proposes to intentionally reject blocks if they do not collude with core

[Vikingr]

No it will not happen if the bitcoin community collectively not help any power to collect the data of the users of bitcoin. Till the time when there will be anonymous wallets and exchanges will be available then bitcoin is a decentralized while in other way it will tend to be centralized which is not favorable.

[manselr]

So beware of all those XT/Classic/BU hijack attempts that try to stop the conservative approach that has made software a robust and reliable software. They are also conveniently against segwit which would give us Schnorr sigs, Confidential Transactions, default decentralized coin mixing on the wallets, cool sidechain stuff like mimblewimble... in other word's government's greatest nightmare. XT/Classic/BU with no segwit is way easier to control.

might be worth you doing some fact checking.

its core that wants to handcuff bitcoin to turn everyone over to LN (paypal2.0). yet those opposing bitcoin want more real permissionless transaction on the mainnet.

its core that while handcuffing bitcoin, they want to bloat transactions with kilobytes of data (confidential payments) where the reality is that these confidential payments will only be confidential for a few days before the 'hidden value' is revealed.

its core that want certain LN (paypal2.0) hub managers having a masterkey to move peoples funds without their consent to use to mix other peoples funds with only a moral judgement that these masterkey holders would put funds back.

thus LN/mimble wont be permissionless, trustless, or even frictionless. those making LN are already putting in stumbling blocks and penalties to charge people extra just for the 'privelidge' of using LN. after all their desire is to repay blockstreams investors so they need to handcuff bitcoin to force people into LN(paypal2.0) to get those penalty fee's to hand back to blockstreams banker investors.

it really makes me laugh pretending blockstream are not involved with the banks..

What are you talking about? the only Paypal 2.0 is the big blocksize approach, just like the ones proposed by Bitcoin Unlimited. Again, I literally put a link where Roger Ver (guy that is blocking segwit and pushing for whatever gets rid of Bitcoin, in the past was XT, then Classic, then Bitcoin Unlimited and then they will try again with god knows what) says that its ok to turn Bitcoin into Paypal 2.0... what more do you want?

LN is way more decentralized than bitcoin with big block sizes that dont allow for people to run nodes, but even if you are too paranoid about LN, you can still send money directly through the blockchain paying the fee and waiting extra time, because it doesn't come cheap to have world class encryption backed by the biggest decentralized network on earth. There are no magic solutions unfortunately.

[Akash1243]

If bitcoin become centralized not only government can easily destroy it but also users anonymity will be gone as more information would be needed
As the miners are mostly Chinese so it could become centralized

[kiklo]

I dont really care at the minute where in the world the mining is done as long as no 1 miner has anywhere near 51% of the hash power.  Like has been said before if mining was centralising in Sweden it would probably never be mentioned.  

But if 5 mining pools control over 51% and colluded with each other behind the scenes , you can stay happy and clueless.  
Nice little delusion, you got there.  


 

FYI:
BTC has been centralized for over a year.
BTC= Better Trust China

[franky1]

What are you talking about? the only Paypal 2.0 is the big blocksize approach, just like the ones proposed by Bitcoin Unlimited. Again, I literally put a link where Roger Ver (guy that is blocking segwit and pushing for whatever gets rid of Bitcoin, in the past was XT, then Classic, then Bitcoin Unlimited and then they will try again with god knows what) says that its ok to turn Bitcoin into Paypal 2.0... what more do you want?

LN is way more decentralized than bitcoin with big block sizes that dont allow for people to run nodes, but even if you are too paranoid about LN, you can still send money directly through the blockchain paying the fee and waiting extra time, because it doesn't come cheap to have world class encryption backed by the biggest decentralized network on earth. There are no magic solutions unfortunately.

lol you have no clue the link you provided. you seemed to have read the title but you didnt read it all to understand the context

unlimited is about scaling bitcoin.. LN is about commercializing offchains and pushing people away from bitcoin. open your mind beyond the sheep stories. its like you sheep only have one story to tell. and that story is in the fantasy section.

its core that developed locking funds for x days (like bankers business days) -CLTV
its core that developed revoking payments (like bankers chargebacks) - CSV
its core that have flipped fee's from reactive to exponential (like inflation) - fee average

you need to look passed the spoonfed info handed to you on a plate and actually read, research learn, understand and make an informed and independent opinion. the trouble is when i see you and the other sheep repeat the same crap over and over it begins to sound like a script. a pre-rehersed chorus to a song celebrating blockstreams takeover of bitcoin.

core 2013-2017 is not the same bitcoin ethos of bitcoin-qt 2009-2013, stop deluding yourself that those in core 2017 are the same people of 2009+.. since blockstream entered the arena and sidetracked development via showing bitcoin dev's millions of corporate dollars fanned infront of their faces.. bitcoin has changed. even the 90+ unpaid devs have turned into blockstream interns hoping to impress blockstream with blind allegiance hoping to oneday get part of that fiat cashpot blockstream has.

if your only real devotion to core is the past. then its time to wake up and realise that the past does not have influence over the future. so "trusting" devs based on the past and ignoring what they are doing in the present, and want to do for the future.. is foolish.


atleast take a day and really try to learn things beyond whats been prepared and handed to you on a plate.

1. even upto 8mb blocks are not an issue for the network or home computing.. the chinese firewall limitation is a myth, the datacentre requirement is a myth.. but even knowing 8mb is acceptable. the community think that 2-4mb is more than acceptable and even compromised down to 2mb base block to overturn the fake doomsdays.

anyone arguing about data costs/bloat are late to the party and just shouting out fantasy scripts of yesteryear. every time i see someone say 2mb is bad, i facepalm them that they are soo ill informed and so scripted with their rhetoric that i begin feeling sorry for them

core refused 2mb until they realised for their confidential bloat making fee increasing transactions to have a chance of forcing people offchain they need to bait the community with fake promises of more transactions just so they can push upto 4mb of bloated fat transactions.
but even knowing they had to push the bloat to 4mb with bloated future features of confidential transactions that are over 1kb a tx.. they had to keep legacy (old lean) transactions at a limitation. so they decided to keep base block at 1mb. instead of opening up scaling onchain properly.

2. other implementations want bitcoin to hold lean transactions where increasing the 'weight' actually causes real and positive scaling. not one time boosts that become diminished after the bait has been successful to then switch them over to bloated tx's that dilute the transaction count again.

3. core have funnily proposed to actually intentionally split the network just to force in a soft fork, that alone shows how desperate core are

If there is some reason when the users of Bitcoin would rather have it activate at 90%  (e.g. lets just imagine some altcoin publicly raised money to block an important improvement to Bitcoin) then even with the 95% rule the network could choose to activate it at 90% just by orphaning the blocks of the non-supporters until 95%+ of the remaining blocks signaled activation.

if you cannot see the truth behind what core is doing. then you are a lost sheep stuck in the wolfs pen thinking the wolves are the sheep dogs to protect and guide you. by the time you see and react to the wolfs teeth, it will be too late for you.

[Kprawn]

I am not losing any sleep about this, because I think most miners will act in good faith. How would they benefit from the devaluation of

bitcoins due to centralization? Do we really know who are behind the mining pools and if they are really mostly Chinese? As Bitcoin becomes

mainstream, more Western companies will want to get in on the action and we will see more decentralization. I feel strongly about this. The

Chinese have a slight advantage, but other countries will slowly catch up to them. Silicon Valley have not even entered the scene yet. 

[franky1]

I am not losing any sleep about this, because I think most miners will act in good faith. How would they benefit from the devaluation of

bitcoins due to centralization? Do we really know who are behind the mining pools and if they are really mostly Chinese? As Bitcoin becomes

mainstream, more Western companies will want to get in on the action and we will see more decentralization. I feel strongly about this. The

Chinese have a slight advantage, but other countries will slowly catch up to them. Silicon Valley have not even entered the scene yet.  

looking at the actual numbers.
we have slushpool.. sheep think they are chinese but the pool manager is in thailand.
we have BTCC.. sheep think they are chinese but they have offices and stratums all over the world
we have antpool.. sheep think they are chinese but they have stratums all over the world and farms outside of china.

the actual percentage that are chinese is far far far less than say Ghash.io of 2013.

and out of those 'chinese' numbers you have to realise that they are not colluding.

there are over a billion chinese people. so saying that just because they are chinese is more fictional than saying Ghash was colluding with eligius
there are over a billion chinese people. so saying that just because they are chinese is more fictional than saying Gmaxwell was colluding with hashfast

why would i presume ghash and eligius were tied together... nothing more than both being white.
why would i presume gmaxwell and hashfast were colluding together.. nothing more then being corporate schemers.

but hey if anyone thinks all the chinese are all, yes all >1 billion of them are all in the same boys club.. then those of you that think this must have subscribed to youtube channels that promote that the earth is flat also.

all this "chinese miner" debate is doing is sidetracking the drama and trying to sway peoples gaze away from the real threat.. developer centralization, removing node diversity, and basically handing bitcoin rule creation to a handful of well paid devs that are contracted to make financial profit for the banks

[carlisle1]

as they are in the control of the large bitcoin mining we can really feel that in the future bitcoin will become centralized and as they are in control I guess they can also determine the identity of every users and can be able to impose a tax to any individuals who are using bitcoin .