Is Bitcoin truly decentralized?

[deisik]

Bitcoin is less decentralized than it used to be but it is still good enough. The hard fork to BitcoinCash is more or less a proof that there are powerful people and miners in Bitcoin who are very unhappy with the direction of the network that all they can do is hard fork away instead of gaining control.

We all know miners want bigger blocks. If the network was centralized, we would have bigger blocks by now

We already have bigger blocks by now

I refer to Bitcoin Cash obviously. This could be thought of as a nice workaround instead of a direct attack against original Bitcoin which would likely hurt it seriously if not kill it on the spot. In other words, the network is centralized (at least, was before the split) but the miners chose by far less risky way to exert their influence since, as I already said, exerting this influence directly would most certainly wreak havoc in Bitcoin, thereby killing the golden goose that Bitcoin has been for the last couple of years

But I refer to "if the network was centralized" then the whole network would have big blocks by now. That is why I said that to some boundary, Bitcoin is still decentralized. No one entity has 100% control over the network.

Which Bitcoin do you refer to specifically?

I made it clear that I meant the Bitcoin Cash network (as I wrote right away).

You had me confused. I refer to the real Bitcoin. The one with the more hash power. Until BCC becomes the blockchain with the more hash power, I will remain calling BTC Bitcoin, BCC BitcoinCash.

But this is in fact irrelevant since in a few months we will likely have large blocks in the main chain as well anyway.

Do you mean Segwit2x? Do not make any conclusions yet. Let us see it happen first.

Would it mean that by then we will have network centralized? Regardless, to exert control over something, you typically don't have to control 100% of it. It is usually a lot less than that, and sometimes even less than 50%

Yes. That is why I said Bitcoin is still "fairly" decentralized enough

I think you should rather say fairly centralized

But this is not the main point here. If you refer to the regular Bitcoin as well as its network and claim that if "the network was centralized, we would have bigger blocks by now". We don't have bigger blocks by now (apart from Bitcoin Cash, but it's an altcoin whatever you look at it), and we might not have bigger blocks as part of the Segwit2x deal in a few months. But if we will, that would pretty much mean that the Bitcoin network is (massively) centralized already, according to your own reasoning. I mean just accepting bigger blocks would prove that it is already centralized now since otherwise bigger blocks wouldn't be possible in a few months at all. Do you follow me?

[aysg76]

Without any need of cross-examination, yes bitcoin is truly decentralized. And that's for sure...

[ekoice]

Yes,bitcoin is decentralized.Otherwise,its security would have been compromised.Governments and bankers would have taken control of it and destroyed it much earlier.But it may look like some ascepts of bitcoin looking a little bit centralized.For example,china has largest number of mining farms in the world.So,naturally have a major share of bitcoins.Untill few months back,Chinese dominated bitcoin market and they used to dump their bitcoins at once and trying to manipulate bitcoin price.Bitcoin market suffered a lot due to them.But when PBOC regulated chinese exchanges,they started losing their control and people all over the world started to buy bitcoins.Now,they are no more able to manipulate bitcoin price.But still,they tried their best to stop segwit being activated so that they could earn more fom miner fee.But at last,segwit was activated.Now,we could hope that bitcoin is almost free from chinese and it remains decentralized.

[Barbarian]

Bitcoin is still decentralised. Miners can somehow influence its price but it is minimal. They can't control it entirely unless some miner or group of miner controls 100% of the hash power which is close to impossible.

It's more complex than that. One potential issue is geographic centralization, particularly as it relates to national boundaries. The vast majority of global hashpower (something like 70%) is controlled by Chinese mining pools. Let's ignore for the moment the possibility of miner collusion to commit selfish mining or 51% attacks, or that Bitmain itself might control a majority of all hashpower.

The issue I'm pointing out is that having so much hashpower under one national jurisdiction means it could all be shut down quickly by one national government. That could cause massive and prolonged network disruption if difficulty were to drop that way. It would be far better for hashpower to be geographically decentralized.

What you are saying is try but like any crisis that will create an opportunity for bitcoin, many people that cannot enter on the mining market will have the incentive to do so and if such a thing happen china  will be seen as a bad place to make business so mining operations will be more distributed after that.

[no0dlepunk]

Decentralized until certain point. If someone has too many Bitcoins this one can control the market influencing the price, it's a kind of centralization. In a decentralized world only those who deserve becomes rich and powerful, but when they achieve it they can control others very well if they wish.

Someone owning a vast amount of coins isn't centralised. They bought them freely off people who sold them freely. If people were prevented from buying or selling as many as they wanted it would become more... centralised as some authority figure would be dictating that. 

I think we would probably end up going batty attempting to define decentralisation in the context of everything.

Aha! at last I have found a good answer. I totally agree with you mate (gentlemand); Anybody with money can mine bitcoins (which you cannot do with gold because you need permits from the mofos up there), anybody can HODL bitcoins (which you cannot do with fiats for long term because of the signatures  ), anybody can buy and sell bitcoins anonymously (which you cannot do with fiats because the IR will interrogate you where did you get that money)...

I suggest that you guys should not think too much whether someday the bitcoin will be centralized or not... let us all enjoy what is happening at the moment - the future is our grandchildren's problem, not ours. 

[illyiller]

Aha! at last I have found a good answer. I totally agree with you mate (gentlemand); Anybody with money can mine bitcoins (which you cannot do with gold because you need permits from the mofos up there), anybody can HODL bitcoins (which you cannot do with fiats for long term because of the signatures   ), anybody can buy and sell bitcoins anonymously (which you cannot do with fiats because the IR will interrogate you where did you get that money)...

It's getting harder and harder. I have some old contacts from LocalBitcoins that may not necessarily ask for ID from every customer. But LBC traders are being treated as money transmitters now. Fiat onramps will always be patrolled by the authorities.

I suggest that you guys should not think too much whether someday the bitcoin will be centralized or not... let us all enjoy what is happening at the moment - the future is our grandchildren's problem, not ours.  

This is true to some extent. As much as I am a "Bitcoin Maximalist" (to use Vitalik's term), I'm trying to be open to the idea that Bitcoin could face future scaling problems, network splits, and devastating existential issues that we can't even think of right now. So, our grandchildren might all be using an altcoin someday.

[Arkann]

Bitcoin can not be completely decentralized. It is partially managed by separate groups, but its full functioning depends on the community. Crypto currency can not be controlled by anyone, otherwise it will be anarchy. This also can not be allowed.

[Funeral Wreaths]

Aha! at last I have found a good answer. I totally agree with you mate (gentlemand); Anybody with money can mine bitcoins (which you cannot do with gold because you need permits from the mofos up there), anybody can HODL bitcoins (which you cannot do with fiats for long term because of the signatures   ), anybody can buy and sell bitcoins anonymously (which you cannot do with fiats because the IR will interrogate you where did you get that money)...

It's getting harder and harder. I have some old contacts from LocalBitcoins that may not necessarily ask for ID from every customer. But LBC traders are being treated as money transmitters now. Fiat onramps will always be patrolled by the authorities.

I suggest that you guys should not think too much whether someday the bitcoin will be centralized or not... let us all enjoy what is happening at the moment - the future is our grandchildren's problem, not ours.  

This is true to some extent. As much as I am a "Bitcoin Maximalist" (to use Vitalik's term), I'm trying to be open to the idea that Bitcoin could face future scaling problems, network splits, and devastating existential issues that we can't even think of right now. So, our grandchildren might all be using an altcoin someday.

agree.. What may happen in the future may come, but we cannot predict or stop if it is going to happen, the main problem is that we always think a lot  about what may happen.. I totally agree that what may happen let us just enjoy what we have right now, we cannot control everything within our hands.. And let us also think that let us stop from setting our standards, live life to the fullest and enjoy.

[Achargeturry78]

I think so. Codes cannot be cheat that's why Im pretty sure that it was really decentralized. If they find a bug the developers and creator of the blockchain may find a way to fix the bug and make it more secured.

[setupbounds]

Yes, Bitcoin is decentralized without question. The very nature of how it is coded is such that it is decentralized... there is no possible way that it could not be, as each node must approve of every transaction... without exception.

As a matter of fact, it is truly decentralized. But the op believes it is not, because of China having the highest rate of miners or so. Maybe other countries should upgrade. But such doesn’t make it centralized (or being controlled, because it’s still decentralized and anyone can make use of it.)

[Akash1243]

Bitcoin is decentralised, China holding or mining large amount if Bitcoins doesn't make Bitcoin centralized.Otherwise if Bitcoin was centralized  then it's security would have been compromised and may be government would try to bring it down.And also I think that bitcoin is open code anyone can develop a version of software of block chains but it doesn't make them controlling it.

[franky1]

bitcoin nodes are distributed...

but that does not mean that its decentralised.
think beyond distribution when learning about decentralisation.

think about the deeper aspects

also .. no im not talking about the FUD rhetoric found on reddit about "china"
think deeper about the network and puppetmasters.. not ASICS

[Marlo Stanfield]

Bitcoin is truly a decentralized coin because it is not controllable by the government, if bitcoin is not centralized then we can see a lot of governments that already controlling bitcoin on their will, bitcoin is not owned by any person, organization or even company so putting our money in bitcoin will help us to void the government just for example is the inflation rate of fiat.

Given the current situation in China with the vast majority of mining physically done there it's hard to say that it's truly decentralized. If the government wanted to step in and take over many of the very large and very obvious mining farms that directly rely on government power sources, it wouldn't be difficult. Especially considering they're already a single party state that has a history of attempting direct control of the economy for obvious political reasons considering it calls itself communist.

Bitcoin would probably survive such actions in the long run. But the cost and the damage done to the market could be huge.

[BitcoinBallerina]

Actually, Bitcoin is decentralized, however there are lots of aspects which have evolved over time that are not.

For example, there are companies which run like banks and own "our" private keys therefore this is like a real life bank.

[illyiller]

Bitcoin is truly a decentralized coin because it is not controllable by the government, if bitcoin is not centralized then we can see a lot of governments that already controlling bitcoin on their will, bitcoin is not owned by any person, organization or even company so putting our money in bitcoin will help us to void the government just for example is the inflation rate of fiat.

Given the current situation in China with the vast majority of mining physically done there it's hard to say that it's truly decentralized. If the government wanted to step in and take over many of the very large and very obvious mining farms that directly rely on government power sources, it wouldn't be difficult. Especially considering they're already a single party state that has a history of attempting direct control of the economy for obvious political reasons considering it calls itself communist.

Bitcoin would probably survive such actions in the long run. But the cost and the damage done to the market could be huge.

There's a couple major threats to Bitcoin's decentralization. One, as you mentioned, is geographic centralization of mining power. Indeed, the Chinese government could instantly cause a shutdown of most of the hash rate, leading to major network disruption.

Another is centralization of chip manufacturing. Bitmain has a majority market share of ASIC manufacturing, and there is apparently even a potential backdoor built in whereby your miner could be shut down remotely. They also probably singlehandedly control a majority of the hash rate, which means they can do selfish mining or block withholding attacks... or they could seriously manipulate the markets. They might just be doing that with this whole BCH thing.

[JohnBitCo]

It depends on how you use it. If you use a software wallet and send money to my address and I send money to you that's pretty much decentralized. But as soon as a service has to get ball such as an exchange, a portion of that decentralization has to be given up. There's a difference between Anonymous and decentralized. And exchanged it doesn't deal with Fiat may not have to take any of your personal information and they simply use a database to store usernames, passwords and wallet addresses. They have to centralized that data or they can't do their job. But, all you are as user name to them and probably an IP address.

[Francis Freeman]

Bitcoin technology is similar to Internet one. Both were born to be decentralized systems, but then, little by little, few people gain lots of power and are now able to set and determine many crucial decisions. There's no alternative, in my opinion. Every decentralized system is doomed to be like this.

But there's a crucial difference between Bitcoin and the Internet. Because the Internet is one and there are no meaningful alternatives, while Bitcoin has many alternatives called altcoins. If you don't like it, you can switch to altcoin, although they could have the same problems.

[deisik]

It depends on how you use it. If you use a software wallet and send money to my address and I send money to you that's pretty much decentralized. But as soon as a service has to get ball such as an exchange, a portion of that decentralization has to be given up. There's a difference between Anonymous and decentralized. And exchanged it doesn't deal with Fiat may not have to take any of your personal information and they simply use a database to store usernames, passwords and wallet addresses. They have to centralized that data or they can't do their job. But, all you are as user name to them and probably an IP address

I guess the answer to the emphasized part should be negative as well

In short, you don't send money to someone directly in the way you hand over cash. Your transaction still has to be confirmed by a third party, i.e. miners. And if mining is centralized as it is, you can't claim that using a personal wallet and sending money to another personal wallet is decentralized just on account that the whole process of transaction confirmation is hidden from you (though, strictly speaking, you can see that in any block explorer)

[Barbarian]

Yes, Bitcoin is decentralized without question. The very nature of how it is coded is such that it is decentralized... there is no possible way that it could not be, as each node must approve of every transaction... without exception.

Correct but the reason people are worried about that is because they can clearly see that mining is centralized, a handful of persons control exclusively almost all the hash power, but I think that as bitcoin becomes more successful more people will begin to compete against the current mining giants.

[Ilegendph]

Proponents of Bitcoin claim that Bitcoin is a decentralized system. And because it is decentralized, nobody can control it - not you, not me, not the central banks, not the Federal Reserves, not anybody. Bitcoin nodes are distributed extensively and not kept in a centralized system (for instance, in one server) which can be susceptible to hacking or take over. While the inherent system is designed to operate in a decentralized manner, external factors are making Bitcoin less decentralized. Why? Because Bitcoin transaction requires miners to validate and update transactions on the Bitcoin network. To do that, miners need hashpower. The greater the hashpower, the greater control the miner or group of miners have on the system. Currently, Chinese miners control more than 70% of the total Bitcoin mining hashpower in the world, making China the undisputed world leader in Bitcoin mining. Talk about decentralization. According to blockchain.info, 4 (19%) of the total of 21 mining pools control more than 50% of the hashing power, while the rest of the 81% are left with 47% of the remaining hashpower. Doesn't sound so decentralized, does it?

Moreover, Bitcoin developers are controlled largely by Bitcoin Core group that is being run by people hired by Blockstream, a private company. So now, you have bitcoin mining controlled by a small handful of miners and the developers controlled by a group of people belonging to a single private entity. Some argue that this is exactly what makes Bitcoin decentralized because none of them can gain control over it. Really? Because from the outside, it looks more like a company being run by two hard-headed CEOs who are only looking out for their own self-interest. When two CEOs clashes against one another, is that what they refer to as decentralized?

So while Bitcoin's inherent system is decentralized, the governing factors (hashpower dominance by Chinese miners and software development by a small group of developers) makes it less so.

Even though Chinese miners hold majority of the hash power, why would they stop mining if its profitable to them? If the reason is to control the network of bitcoin, they just wasted an opportunity. If they used their mining system to take down or change log in bitcoin system, they have to redo all the prevous transactions and the probability of coping with latest transaction is decreasing exponentially when the hashpower of hackers is greater than the normal miners.