If you think bitcoin is centralized and has no future..

[Tyr808]

People who parrot the same arguments over and over are really silly.

Bitcoin is valuable because nobody owns it and it has an incredibly track record of being secure.

>b-b-but bitmain

Yeah, Bitcoin is the most centralized right now than it has ever been. Currently.

As time goes on competitors enter the market and hardware gets better across the board. We're also reaching the point of diminishing returns on hardware for mining Bitcoin with the current algorithm.

If you think 2-5 years is a long time to wait for balance you probably shouldn't be in Bitcoin anyways.

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[BrewMaster]

Yeah, Bitcoin is the most centralized right now than it has ever been. Currently.

WRONG. having high hashrate doesn't make bitcoin centralized!

bitcoin is still the most decentralized system that one can find. Bitmain having high hashrate is just the drama that the media loves to spread. the fact is in the history there has been other companies with much higher hashrate than Bitmain. for instance GHASH.io which i think is in London owned more than 60% of the hashrate at some ponit but nobody ever began to talk about bitcoin being centralized!!!
it is just a new thing to fill the heads of the newbies while taking their bitcoins from them at a cheaper price.

[Tyr808]

My ass. Most of the hashing power is currently related to bitmain and co, estimated at 50% of the total, even Vitalik Buterin pointed that out.

[ssmc2]

My ass. Most of the hashing power is currently related to bitmain and co, estimated at 50% of the total, even Vitalik Buterin pointed that out.

You do realize that statistic is made up of people participating in their pool and that if a threat was ever anticipated then everyone would just move to another pool...

[stelee68]

With BTC price increase the bitmain owner (Wu) gets richer, he will then dumps..

With BTC decrease he sweats and tries to pump / support the price, but i think he is losing the battle.

Miner price dropped, BTC price drops, double whammy for him...

Unless he can miraculously find another big whale (other than Tesla owner) to support, i think the price will continue its downtrend.

just my 2 satoshi...

[Tyr808]

My ass. Most of the hashing power is currently related to bitmain and co, estimated at 50% of the total, even Vitalik Buterin pointed that out.

You do realize that statistic is made up of people participating in their pool and that if a threat was ever anticipated then everyone would just move to another pool...

Fair point.

[St4yInTh3D4rk]

People who parrot the same arguments over and over are really silly.

Bitcoin is valuable because nobody owns it and it has an incredibly track record of being secure.

>b-b-but bitmain

Yeah, Bitcoin is the most centralized right now than it has ever been. Currently.

As time goes on competitors enter the market and hardware gets better across the board. We're also reaching the point of diminishing returns on hardware for mining Bitcoin with the current algorithm.

If you think 2-5 years is a long time to wait for balance you probably shouldn't be in Bitcoin anyways.

When bitcoin was centralized and how it can be.

Bitcoin will never be centralized as per the creator of that coin but the regulations from the governments may be has some restrictions to use it but it doesn't mean it was centralized I think.

[hatshepsut93]

Centralized mining != centralized Bitcoin as a whole
There is still a huge decentralized network of nodes where each node independently verifies all transactions, there is still a huge number of developers and contributors, and there is still a big community that hodls and uses Bitcoin. Maybe Bitmain would love to takeover Bitcoin, but they can't because there is so many users that would be against them. And you know, we can do just fine without Bitmain, we can switch PoW to a different algo and maybe mine on GPU's and CPU's again, while Bitmain can't exist without Bitcoin and they know it. This is why SegWit2x and tons of other malicious forks have failed and why Bcash will fail too.

[1Referee]

And you know, we can do just fine without Bitmain, we can switch PoW to a different algo and maybe mine on GPU's and CPU's again, while Bitmain can't exist without Bitcoin and they know it.

Correct, which is one of the main reasons BCash is a thing now. Jihan fears Bitcoin forking off to such degree, that he needs a backup for all the gear that he owns, and that he will be selling. If Bitcoin forked off, all SHA-256 miners would be worthless because there are no other coins worthy enough to mine with that algorithm, but they have BCash as backup now. For Jihan it's purely a smart business decision, while Roger tries to choke Bitcoin to death for all wrong reasons.

[pawel7777]

...we can switch PoW to a different algo and maybe mine on GPU's ...

Awfully hard to pull off in practice. There's no way to define who are "we" and, by extension, "what we want". Any such fork would have to be done under different name, so effectively an altcoin. Any legally operating, registered exchange would open themselves to costly lawsuits (if not criminal charges) for simply changing what they consider to be Bitcoin based on unclear criteria.

[gentlemand]

There's no way to define who are "we" and, by extension, "what we want".

One entity trying to fuck everyone else. The most likely entity would be Bitmain as they have the most power. Bitmain also know perfectly well everyone else would love to be handed an excuse to fire them so the last thing they'll ever do is a direct assault. They will carry on sniping away at the edges.  

Truth is we simply don't know what the levels of centralisation are. The only time we'll be able to find out is some sort of event that proves conclusively that it can shake off a concerted effort from one very powerful party to upend things.

Such a happening would be the single most powerful thing Bitcoin could ever do. People really, really need to be schooled in how vital decentralisation is with a practical and brutal demonstration as it's the first thing people seem to want to throw away in the name of convenience despite the fact there'd be nothing to throw away without it. And once it's gone it's not coming back.

[BitHodler]

You do realize that statistic is made up of people participating in their pool and that if a threat was ever anticipated then everyone would just move to another pool...

Also add that there technically is no need for Bitmain to wait till they account for the major part of the network to attack it. Attacking Bitcoin could be done with far less than 50% but it would be less successful.

There is too much at stake for Bitmain to participate in shady business. It's in their best will to let Bitcoin be as strong as it needs to be. As long as that is the case, there is not much to worry about.

People keep focusing on Bitmain, but if it wasn't Bitmain there would be something else potentially way worse in its place. It's the same as with all dictators, once they are no longer there, you realize that they weren't all that bad.

[hatshepsut93]

...we can switch PoW to a different algo and maybe mine on GPU's ...

Awfully hard to pull off in practice. There's no way to define who are "we" and, by extension, "what we want". Any such fork would have to be done under different name, so effectively an altcoin. Any legally operating, registered exchange would open themselves to costly lawsuits (if not criminal charges) for simply changing what they consider to be Bitcoin based on unclear criteria.

If Bitmain or any other entity would execute a 51% attack to double-spend coins or censor transactions or mine empty blocks, I'm pretty sure that almost all users will decide that a PoW change is needed because Bitcoin started to fail. Maybe it won't happen immediately, if the attack would be only short, as it might be considered unsustainable, but if it will keep happening, users will vote with their nodes and with their wallets against it.
There are a few possible scenarios, PoW change might start as an altcoin, or maybe it will come directly from Core devs and will get full support from users, maybe there will even be multiple contentious forks. But Bitcoin community have already demonstrated unity when it stood together against SegWit2x, which was a sort of 51% attack so I wouldn't worry about hard forks - they are only contentious when there's no consensus within community, and I'm sure that all users think that 51% attacks are unacceptable.

As for exchanges, last year they were giving their users access to forks like SegWit2x and Bcash, so names don't matter enough to cause them any big legal trouble, as long as their users don't lose any value.

[fabiorem]

Jihan sells machines for mining. If he attacks bitcoin, his business will be attacked as well.

[Pursuer]

they have turned Bitmain into some sort of scarecrow or a boogyman to scare people with every time they want to spread FUD and I believe it is mostly because they ran out of ideas and all their previous boogymen got busted like China banning bitcoin and killing it FUD. they all come to an end eventually since there is no reality to any of them and meanwhile people will always fall for the drama and get stuck in this web of deceit while the silent majority is accumulating bitcoin at cheap prices.

[vlom31]

I'd say nothing is perfectly decentralized and there will always be ways to skew the balance in favor of the few, but still, bitcoin is one of if not the most decentralized cryptocurrency, if only for the fact that it is possible for anyone to not only participate but also grow their power in the process.


Mehdi

[pawel7777]

...
If Bitmain or any other entity would execute a 51% attack to double-spend coins or censor transactions or mine empty blocks, I'm pretty sure that almost all users will decide that a PoW change is needed because Bitcoin started to fail.
<snip>

What if they reach 51% or 60% and don't attack anything? What if they play fair, just doing what they do best and expect the competitors to step their game up? How easy do you think PoW would be then?

You're never getting full user support for the idea that fucks over all the mining business (both honest and dishonest players), simply because there's too many people involved. And even if, you still get stuck on what to change it to (different algo? PoS? Hybrid?).

But the key point, you're missing, is - you'll never get the community consensus, because you cannot measure the community or its opinion. All you have is social media noise with all the trolling, sock-puppets and echo-chambers. If you think there was ever any "unity", you were clearly stuck in the latter.

Just a reminder: Core devs needed to pull the Hong Kong farce-agreement to choke block increase attempts, and later do the same with NY agreement to push the SegWit through (support wasn't moving above 25%). That's how reaching community 'consensus' looks in practice.

[pitiflin]

People who parrot the same arguments over and over are really silly.

Bitcoin is valuable because nobody owns it and it has an incredibly track record of being secure.

>b-b-but bitmain

Yeah, Bitcoin is the most centralized right now than it has ever been. Currently.

As time goes on competitors enter the market and hardware gets better across the board. We're also reaching the point of diminishing returns on hardware for mining Bitcoin with the current algorithm.

If you think 2-5 years is a long time to wait for balance you probably shouldn't be in Bitcoin anyways.

I don't think you understand how centralization and decentralization works. Centralized usually means, those who invent it, control it. Decentralized means anyone can control it. Know what I mean? And about no one owning bitcoin: That's not true either. People DO own it, for it is currency. They mine it and they own it. The way you understand things,is misleading yourself.

My ass. Most of the hashing power is currently related to bitmain and co, estimated at 50% of the total, even Vitalik Buterin pointed that out.

That doesn't change anything. And 50% is a little much exaggeration.

[exstasie]

My ass. Most of the hashing power is currently related to bitmain and co, estimated at 50% of the total, even Vitalik Buterin pointed that out.

You do realize that statistic is made up of people participating in their pool and that if a threat was ever anticipated then everyone would just move to another pool...

That's true, except for the "everyone" bit. We really don't know how much of the hash rate at Antpool, ViaBTC, BTC.com, etc is controlled by Bitmain. According to Greg Maxwell, Jihan Wu has claimed in private they control a majority of the total hash rate. We simply don't know.

If they do, in terms of incentives, I don't think Bitmain is motivated to attack the network. They're obviously heavily invested for the long term, and doing so would only damage their massive company valuation prospects.

But the true danger lies with out-of-band incentives. For example, what if the Chinese government is involved in Bitmain's operations? What if they had leverage over its directors? We assume that Bitmain is just a rational profit-motivated actor, and we hope that's true. But we don't actually know.

[pawel7777]

...
But the true danger lies with out-of-band incentives. For example, what if the Chinese government is involved in Bitmain's operations? What if they had leverage over its directors?

China is not your western democracy, their government DO HAVE leverage over anyone and anything located within their territory. They can pass new laws on a whim and execute those laws minutes later.
Luckily there doesn't seem to be any logic for the government to interfere.

We assume that Bitmain is just a rational profit-motivated actor, and we hope that's true. But we don't actually know.

Well, those are the things you'll never know for sure. At least with Bitmain you can clearly see their incentive (enormous profit), therefore they do have vested financial interest in keeping the network robust and healthy (as long as you don't change the PoW that is).

Now what's the incentive for the developers (some of them claimed only to be holding modest amounts of BTC)? Are they doing it for the fame, or just to make others wealthy? How likely few individuals with huge influence over $125 billion m/cap disruptive technology have been able to stay of the radar of three letter agencies?

Don't base your views on sympathy, have limited trust to everyone.