Bitcoin mining centralized

[Dimelord]

Bitcoin mining is a good concept which provides reward for miners who help to solve the transactions.But,nowadays,has it made bitcoin get accumulated in the hands of only those who can afford thousands of dollars of ASIC hardware? Has bitcoin been centralized?

[NorrisK]

I appears to have indeed been centralized for a few years now. Unfortunately, it is next to impossible to prevent things like this from happening.

There will always be people that invest a lot to gain a big share of something, in this case mining power. Even if mining power would somehow be capped, they would find a way to run tons of mini farms and get the same result.

There are not real solutions to mining centralization yet. POS doesn't work, because the rich still mine most. dPOS doesn't work, because the rich can vote themselves as delegate.

[pedrog]

Bitcoin mining has never been so decentralized as you can see in the pie chart below.

In the past it happened several times one pool to take almost 50% hashrate and even mining operations to have around 40% hashrate, those days are gone now.

[talkbitcoin]

Bitcoin mining is a good concept which provides reward for miners who help to solve the transactions.But,nowadays,has it made bitcoin get accumulated in the hands of only those who can afford thousands of dollars of ASIC hardware? Has bitcoin been centralized?

read what you just said once again and you see where you have been wrong.

you yourself are saying mining equipment is expensive and in the hands of those who can afford to invest in equipment then say bitcoin is centralized!

and besides nobody is preventing you or anybody else from starting to mine bitcoin, if you want to earn the reward or just as a hobby you can mine and fight the centralization of mining.

[Hallmader]

I appears to have indeed been centralized for a few years now. Unfortunately, it is next to impossible to prevent things like this from happening.

There will always be people that invest a lot to gain a big share of something, in this case mining power. Even if mining power would somehow be capped, they would find a way to run tons of mini farms and get the same result.

There are not real solutions to mining centralization yet. POS doesn't work, because the rich still mine most. dPOS doesn't work, because the rich can vote themselves as delegate.

Whoever has the money will control the wealth. It does not matter if that is PoW or PoS. Mining will concentrate in low cost places.

[Xester]

Bitcoin mining is a good concept which provides reward for miners who help to solve the transactions.But,nowadays,has it made bitcoin get accumulated in the hands of only those who can afford thousands of dollars of ASIC hardware? Has bitcoin been centralized?

Bitcoin in itself is decentralized but you got that point when you say that it is starting to be a centralized currency. The main reason is the bitcoin mining sector. There is a problem reaching a consensus due to personal greed of large group that wanted to be on the top of the chain. They probably wanted to have a control and power over the mining industry. Bitcoin is very valuable and thats why the greedy groups has making its way to get a hold on bitcoin network.

[NorrisK]

Bitcoin mining has never been so decentralized as you can see in the pie chart below.

In the past it happened several times one pool to take almost 50% hashrate and even mining operations to have around 40% hashrate, those days are gone now.

The mining pools may be more spread around, but this does not directly mean decentralized mining. It could still be a few large farms that instead of mining at one pool, they are now spreading their hash rates across multiple pools to give the impression of decentralization.

[calkob]

Bitcoin mining is a good concept which provides reward for miners who help to solve the transactions.But,nowadays,has it made bitcoin get accumulated in the hands of only those who can afford thousands of dollars of ASIC hardware? Has bitcoin been centralized?

I am not so sure that i would agree that bitcoin mining has become centralised.  i have been around in bitcoin long enough to remember the time when everyone was worried because Ghash.io which was a pool having to much hash power i think it was like high 40's%.  And when you look at the break up of whos finding the blocks now it seems to be far more diverse.

i am a great believer in human greed, and even if all the miners are in china, the greed of the miners tends to make me think that they will not share and will compete for blocks. 

[szpalata]

Bitcoin mining is a good concept which provides reward for miners who help to solve the transactions.But,nowadays,has it made bitcoin get accumulated in the hands of only those who can afford thousands of dollars of ASIC hardware? Has bitcoin been centralized?

It's not yet centralized but it's on it's way to centralization. Now mining belongs to the big boys with millions of dollars and high end electronic machines which shouldn't be the case so I think we are gradually getting to where it will be centralized by a few group of people and cooperation sand they will dictate to us.

[gentlemand]

Yes, it's centralised. And anyone who believes that hashrate distribution chart isn't the same person running multiple pools needs a big hug.

Even if you managed to roll it back to CPU mining, deep pockets would simply buy more CPUs than anyone else. We'll have to see whether the incentive to play nice to preserve their investment is enough.

There are many users who'd love to stick it to miners trying to throw their weight around.

[manselr]

Bitcoin mining has never been so decentralized as you can see in the pie chart below.

In the past it happened several times one pool to take almost 50% hashrate and even mining operations to have around 40% hashrate, those days are gone now.

How many of those pools are confirmed Jihan Wu pools? People keep posting that image to show how bitcoin mining is distributed across different pools, but how many are confirmed to be property of Jihan Wu?

[Mometaskers]

It's not centralized since no single company control all of the mining operations. Trying to mine bitcoin on your own however seem to be no longer profitable. People who have the capital to buy all the components, rent a space and pay for electricity (which is why most of the large farms are in China) have taken up most of the mining. I think it's similar to how Big Agri has taken most of the share of agricultural activity. You start large, you profit more, you use that profit to buy enlarge operation. It has always been like this in a lot of industry.

[Kprawn]

Can someone say with 100% certainty that they know who each individual is in these pools... NO. We do know one thing, Satoshi developed this network

in such a way, that they are kept honest or Bitcoin will die and they would not have benefitted from anything they have done to sabotage the network.

The problem now is, they have enough power now to veto important decisions and this can only be taken away from them, once more people start

hosting full nodes. 

[Vaskiy]

Bitcoin mining haven't got centralized, because if the network becomes centralized miners won't get profited anymore. Now too it has been a big concern for miners how to make a profit as the debate on block size is getting more direct.

[pedrog]

Bitcoin mining has never been so decentralized as you can see in the pie chart below.

In the past it happened several times one pool to take almost 50% hashrate and even mining operations to have around 40% hashrate, those days are gone now.

The mining pools may be more spread around, but this does not directly mean decentralized mining. It could still be a few large farms that instead of mining at one pool, they are now spreading their hash rates across multiple pools to give the impression of decentralization.

Well, it could all be a CIA operation and Satoshi Nakamoto just a codename in some redacted classified document.

You're just making assumptions, evidence points to mining has never been more decentralized than it is now.

[Densitymax]

In my understanding, mining has lost its decentralization already 3-4 years ago. Now most of the capacities are concentrated in the hands of several pools and large centralized firms and corporations.

[Variogam]

Bitcoin mining has never been so decentralized as you can see in the pie chart below.

In the past it happened several times one pool to take almost 50% hashrate and even mining operations to have around 40% hashrate, those days are gone now.

Actually many of those pools are public, and thousands of individual miners connects to one pool. The Ghash.io example shoved those individual miners are capable of switching to other public pools when necessary. So while there are many thousand individul miners (estimated about 100.000), the only centralization which we can talk about is geographical, ie where the costs to mine are lowest - but then, the reason so many places have such high costs to mine are ecological subventions to renewable energy production and high cost of workforce.

[Vaccinus]

it's true that it is centralized, because the majority fo the mining farm are in china, but bitcoin can still be mined casually by people around the world, if you have very good electricity you can mine bitcoin, every pool now is below 20% we should not worry about 51% attack, is from that moment that bitcoin become centralized imho, but it isn't happening any time soon

[SvenBomvolen]

I think it's wrong to call bitcoin centralized only cause of miners. Miners just mine bitcoins and that's it, they don't control it and add to that bitcoin is limited by 21 milions. So while there is bitcoin it will be work for miners and who knows what is going to happen when all 21 milions will be on hands of users. How it will affect on bitcoin and it's price?

[dirokkl]

Bitcoin mining is a good concept which provides reward for miners who help to solve the transactions.But,nowadays,has it made bitcoin get accumulated in the hands of only those who can afford thousands of dollars of ASIC hardware? Has bitcoin been centralized?

Formally, bitcoin can not be centralized. However, if you think about it, China has an impact on the production of this crypto currency and on the formation of its price. Therefore, it can be assumed that bitcoin is controlled by Chinese miners