Will Bitcoin become centralized sometime in the future?

[EmiLien]

Because as soon as it becomes centralized it'll cease being Bitcoin, won't it? I've always thought BTC is decentralized by its nature and hierarchy. If it is, how can it be centralized, anyway? Is that possible at all?

Don't worry dude, nothing will change the nature of bitcoin, even if it's a government. the government can only provide rules for data verification later,
but they will not be able to force it because of anonymous users, centralization is only present when you join in exchanges under the government

They can. Through mining.
We are waiting when there is a mining giant with the largest hash rate in the network. We begin to regulate crypto currency. We hang tax collections on traders and miners. The main pool with a big percent hash rate offers benefits for mining. You will receive a state-controlled system in which it will be able to block transactions, and monitoring exchanges - attaching data from bank cards to bitcoin wallets.

[EmiLien]

I got confused: some people say it can't be centralized, some say it can. Can anybody explain whether or not it is possible technically? Does centralization/decentralization depend on where the mining equipment is concentrated?

Yes. Depends. In order to centralize the system, you need power over the miners. This is easier to achieve if a pool appears on the network with most of the hash of the network.

[bangjoe]

if that happens, there will be many systems that change and make a lot of policies that are not profitable for many parties, besides that, bitcoin is also made to be decentralized. for altcoins it may indeed have a tendency to be central, they have active CEOs who can intervene at any time through many parties and even pressure the local government.

[James_H]

We have to protect bitcoin by continuing to support it earlier, this can help many people to use it as an investment and digital currency. bitcoin is freedom because of decentralization, if it gets centralized, it's not bitcoin anymore but the government tries to control it. If Bitcoin becomes centralized it defeats the core features that make people like it in the first place. I will be happy to stay the same and only improve things they can improve such as transaction time and high fees .

[bright07]

Well according to me, getting centralized of anything is the wish of government, but yes one day it will come in mains as it's results are quiet good and more over public  too doing its advertising through their profits.

[Baby Dragon]

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. 

This is possible , no one knows but in my opinion yes. But I know that many of us that if that happens it will be the end of bitcoin. It will take a long time process before this happens. If bitcoin was controlled by government there will be a lot of changes that will happen.

[SAYDAKHMETOV]

The bitcoin is essentially decentralized. I do not think that it will become centralized, then it will lose its original essence. No, you can not allow centralization of bitcoins.

[kissme09]

This can not happen because Chinese investors need large amounts of money to maintain their plants so they accept their Bitcoins at a lower price than they are trading because of the volume Bitcoin needs vast liquidity.

[Thor....]

Bitcoin does not have a centralized system that would be managed by one organization. Security control and, indirectly, the way the development of the currency is carried out by the participants - people who are engaged in "digging", launching Bitcoin software on their computers.
Sure in future it will become decentralized

[edsnowangel]

i do not think so. bitcoin will always decentralized. but wait, you said sometimes, it may be will be happen

it is almost impossibility since bitcoin was already made with the decentralized chain then if this will happen the migration will take some time and take a big problem with the users

[yurekaa]

in my opinion no. because no country can control the amount of crypto currency growth. and now, every country has its own coin market so it is very difficult if the crypto currency will be concentrated in one country. and the development of the crypto currency does not depend on just one country.

[acreed]

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. 

I think this will not happen, anyone will lost trust to bitcoin if they violate their own rules, i believe many user in here interest to bitcoin because it's decentralize.

[vendy86]

I think maybe in the future bitcoin will be centralized. Not only because lots of miner come from China. But also because so many whale that already join together and try to manipulate market price. From what i read they almost have 30% from bitcoin circulation. And it's not good for bitcoin future, and there is nothing we can do about this.

[stayeduptolate]

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. 

As to the best of our knowledge, bitcoin is a decentralised crypto currency and thus there is no such proper authentic regulating body over the bitcoin who could keep eye 👁 over all the bitcoin activities thus leading to its illegal use and this is the reason why most of the countries do not want to legalise bitcoin in their nation and inspite of all these there are few nations that has legalised the bitcoin after getting the fate and potential of bitcoin and I am sure that in the future bitcoin will get centralised all over the world.

[SilverCup08]

No way! If that happens, bitcoin will just be like any other ordinary currencies. As it is, its value fluctuates and drops tremendously at times. How much more if it becomes centralized? Besides, it has been invented to decentralized. That's the way it should remain.

[Camilla Gill]

Though Bitcoin is technically decentralized, it can be practically centralized if a central party (be it a cartel of large miners or a persuasive group of developers) becomes powerful enough to guide Bitcoin’s development towards their agenda.
Though the economics of mining would suggest that centralization is inevitable, the degree to which users require decentralization will ultimately dictate how much Bitcoin becomes centralized. If users are ardent in their preference for a completely decentralized system, miners can’t consolidate power without risking that the network (and therefore their profits!) will be abandoned.

[Dylan Bargeman]

 Bitcoin is based on blockchain technology.There are 3 parts of blockchain .public ,private and cosoritum. The main idea of public blockchain is decentralisation and open ledger available to all where we track end to end transaction.complete traceability. Though identity is anonymous transaction is tracable .if at all we think of bitcoin centralization then it will be nothing different than our traditional banks and will be regulated by third party.
 I think it is possible to centralised by taking control of all nodes across the word ,but what are we going to achieve by this centralization ,we again don't want the middleman to control and regulate the currency else it will be another fiat world currency.

[Abiky]

I think maybe in the future bitcoin will be centralized. Not only because lots of miner come from China. But also because so many whale that already join together and try to manipulate market price. From what i read they almost have 30% from bitcoin circulation. And it's not good for bitcoin future, and there is nothing we can do about this.

That's certainly true, mate. Unfortunately, something that was once decentralized is now becoming centralized simply because of greed. Now, there are lots of whales trying to manipulate Bitcoin's price within the cryptocurrency market, as they accumulate most of the cryptocurrency's circulating supply. Not to mention, Bitmain has the lead in Bitcoin's mining hashrate, which negatively affects the decentralization and longevity of the Bitcoin blockchain. Many people simply don't care about this if they able to make money with Bitcoin.

However, in the end, they'll realize the negative effects of centralization where they cannot transact free from middleman, as Bitcoin transactions would be under the control of Chinese miners and whales. That's very unfortunate, as Satoshi wanted Bitcoin to become a fully decentralized system after all. Everything is turning out to become just like the first days of the internet where it was decentralized but it became centralized due to corporate interests. Now the internet is largely controlled by Google, Facebook, Amazon and several other big companies, when it was intended to be decentralized. I believe that the same thing will happen with Bitcoin in the future.

Unless developers do something about it, and the community acts, Bitcoin will become more centralized each day. There needs to be fair mining distribution, to prevent the risk of centralization. When this is done, the risk of 51% attacks would become diminished as no one would be able to dominate Bitcoin's mining process itself. IMO, the fault belongs to the creation of mining pools which have greatly centralized Bitcoin's PoW. The best solution would be to reduce the Bitcoin block reward the bigger the hashrate there is on the network. But, that's up to the devs and the community to decide. Just my thoughts

[virtfund]

I think, BTC will be centralized. Not by goverments or an instution. Whales want to dominate the market and control the price. Thus, they will somehow come together and manipulate the market for their self-interest.

[Ronyx]

I don't think that will happen if bitcoin will be centralized because bitcoin is decentralized which makes bitcoin special and so popular, and it is likely that if bitcoin is centralized it will make bitcoin's popularity dimmer.