Ethereum Anti-ASIC fork, is it the right time for bitcoin too?

[AGD]

@AGD, @Doomad
Guys, enough is enough. Although it is not a self-moderated shitty thread, as the op I do have some voice here, not a loud one but it deserves to be heard

1- You have made your point about ASICs being kinda progress an act of free market (I suppose), thank you. But this claims are strongly refuted above-thread. There is no progress, bitcoin is not about efficiency in solving a processing task. On the contrary bitcoin loves deficiency and deliberately makes the problem more difficult when someone finds out a way to solve it by a more efficient device. So, bitcoin is not an ordinary computing application and does not encourage progress.

2- Your points about competition, greed, ... is correct but not relevant enough. Bitcoin is about managing such instincts by means of a protocol and when the protocol fails to accomplish its job it should be improved instead of justification and making excuses about how hard it would be because of human nature.

3-Your claims regarding ASICs being the king is absolutely void and nothing worthier than Bitmain commercial advertisements and worse I would categorize it as FUD. We have Ethash on the scene that has mined billions of dollars in last couple of years and despite huge investments, Bitmain couldn't manage to beat it by its luxury ASIC and now we have ProgPoW that is a hardened version of Ethash ways more resistant and practically ASIC/bullet proof.

So, please put an end to such arguments and inform us about any other point you possibly got.

If you want to change the Bitcoin Core code, you can do it anytime you want. Did you already make any solid proposals, that found their way into Bitcoin Core? Or maybe you want to simply fork Bitcoin and include your idea of ASIC resistance and find enough people to support it? Go ahead!

Edit: But please ... don't call it Bitcoin.

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[aliashraf]

@AGD, @Doomad
Guys, enough is enough. Although it is not a self-moderated shitty thread, as the op I do have some voice here, not a loud one but it deserves to be heard

1- You have made your point about ASICs being kinda progress an act of free market (I suppose), thank you. But this claims are strongly refuted above-thread. There is no progress, bitcoin is not about efficiency in solving a processing task. On the contrary bitcoin loves deficiency and deliberately makes the problem more difficult when someone finds out a way to solve it by a more efficient device. So, bitcoin is not an ordinary computing application and does not encourage progress.

2- Your points about competition, greed, ... is correct but not relevant enough. Bitcoin is about managing such instincts by means of a protocol and when the protocol fails to accomplish its job it should be improved instead of justification and making excuses about how hard it would be because of human nature.

3-Your claims regarding ASICs being the king is absolutely void and nothing worthier than Bitmain commercial advertisements and worse I would categorize it as FUD. We have Ethash on the scene that has mined billions of dollars in last couple of years and despite huge investments, Bitmain couldn't manage to beat it by its luxury ASIC and now we have ProgPoW that is a hardened version of Ethash ways more resistant and practically ASIC/bullet proof.

So, please put an end to such arguments and inform us about any other point you possibly got.

If you want to change the Bitcoin Core code, you can do it anytime you want. Did you already make any solid proposals, that found their way into Bitcoin Core? Or maybe you want to simply fork Bitcoin and include your idea of ASIC resistance and find enough people to support it? Go ahead!

I think it is time for bitcoin to improve and adopt. It has been 10 years, and not everything is manageable by soft-forks or other hack tricks. But I'm not interested in rebellion as a premature option. We need to have this option on the table but we need to discuss and negotiate before committing anything stupid.

Recently I went through a discussion with Greg Maxwell and I became convinced even more that the guy is such a valuable asset for bitcoin, I've same feelings for Andrew, Peter, Luke, Matt, ... they are invaluable and we need to convince them to join. It is why we write and discuss here, we need to reach to a consensus and help these guys not to hesitate and being more open to change. What we say here matters, imo.

If it didn't work and Core team didn't behave properly, I would consider more responsibilities to take, no hesitations, I just guess we have a bit more time to decide about it.

[Wind_FURY]

@AGD, @Doomad
Guys, enough is enough. Although it is not a self-moderated shitty thread, as the op I do have some voice here, not a loud one but it deserves to be heard

1- You have made your point about ASICs being kinda progress an act of free market (I suppose), thank you. But this claims are strongly refuted above-thread. There is no progress, bitcoin is not about efficiency in solving a processing task. On the contrary bitcoin loves deficiency and deliberately makes the problem more difficult when someone finds out a way to solve it by a more efficient device. So, bitcoin is not an ordinary computing application and does not encourage progress.

2- Your points about competition, greed, ... is correct but not relevant enough. Bitcoin is about managing such instincts by means of a protocol and when the protocol fails to accomplish its job it should be improved instead of justification and making excuses about how hard it would be because of human nature.

3-Your claims regarding ASICs being the king is absolutely void and nothing worthier than Bitmain commercial advertisements and worse I would categorize it as FUD. We have Ethash on the scene that has mined billions of dollars in last couple of years and despite huge investments, Bitmain couldn't manage to beat it by its luxury ASIC and now we have ProgPoW that is a hardened version of Ethash ways more resistant and practically ASIC/bullet proof.

So, please put an end to such arguments and inform us about any other point you possibly got.

If you want to change the Bitcoin Core code, you can do it anytime you want. Did you already make any solid proposals, that found their way into Bitcoin Core? Or maybe you want to simply fork Bitcoin and include your idea of ASIC resistance and find enough people to support it? Go ahead!

I think it is time for bitcoin to improve and adopt. It has been 10 years, and not everything is manageable by soft-forks or other hack tricks. But I'm not interested in rebellion as a premature option. We need to have this option on the table but we need to discuss and negotiate before committing anything stupid.

"You think", therefore it is an opinion, and therefore it might be wrong.

"It as been 10 years"? Some forms of money, in human history, took hundreds of years to be adopted as a store of value, medium of exchange, and as a unit of account. I believe there shouldn't be a "set no. of years" for Bitcoin's adoption.

Bitcoin is something new. The Core developers are making more of the right decisions than wrong by being very careful. If you want to "break" things, make an altcoin.

[aliashraf]

@AGD, @Doomad
Guys, enough is enough. Although it is not a self-moderated shitty thread, as the op I do have some voice here, not a loud one but it deserves to be heard

1- You have made your point about ASICs being kinda progress an act of free market (I suppose), thank you. But this claims are strongly refuted above-thread. There is no progress, bitcoin is not about efficiency in solving a processing task. On the contrary bitcoin loves deficiency and deliberately makes the problem more difficult when someone finds out a way to solve it by a more efficient device. So, bitcoin is not an ordinary computing application and does not encourage progress.

2- Your points about competition, greed, ... is correct but not relevant enough. Bitcoin is about managing such instincts by means of a protocol and when the protocol fails to accomplish its job it should be improved instead of justification and making excuses about how hard it would be because of human nature.

3-Your claims regarding ASICs being the king is absolutely void and nothing worthier than Bitmain commercial advertisements and worse I would categorize it as FUD. We have Ethash on the scene that has mined billions of dollars in last couple of years and despite huge investments, Bitmain couldn't manage to beat it by its luxury ASIC and now we have ProgPoW that is a hardened version of Ethash ways more resistant and practically ASIC/bullet proof.

So, please put an end to such arguments and inform us about any other point you possibly got.

If you want to change the Bitcoin Core code, you can do it anytime you want. Did you already make any solid proposals, that found their way into Bitcoin Core? Or maybe you want to simply fork Bitcoin and include your idea of ASIC resistance and find enough people to support it? Go ahead!

I think it is time for bitcoin to improve and adopt. It has been 10 years, and not everything is manageable by soft-forks or other hack tricks. But I'm not interested in rebellion as a premature option. We need to have this option on the table but we need to discuss and negotiate before committing anything stupid.

"It has been 10 years"? Some forms of money, in human history, took hundreds of years to be adopted as a store of value, medium of exchange, and as a unit of account. I believe there shouldn't be a "set no. of years" for Bitcoin's adoption.

Bitcoin is something new. The Core developers are making more of the right decisions than wrong by being very careful. If you want to "break" things, make an altcoin.

It is not money, yet. For the starter, you guys have given up with "bitcoin as money", already. I'm not a scammer and have no plans to do a shitty fork, I'm thinking more strategic and I want bitcoin to receive what it deserves: mass adoption.

For people like you, having your fiat system as back-up bitcoin is something fun an investment you have no incentive for a true "p2p electronic cash" but my people are in an urgent desperate need for such a system.

In early 2013 I become familiar with bitcoin and It didn't took me more than few hours to understand how promising it would be for my people and billions of people all around the world. Now, it is 2019 and bitcoin is anything other than money, centralized in pools and seized by asics.

As I said, I have respects for devs as well but I'm not confused or distracted about the cause, I need more, my people do and it is not something to be compromised or forgotten. Bitcoin as a system is in its infancy, systems evolve and adopt. 

[AGD]

...snip...



It is not money, yet. For the starter, you guys have given up with "bitcoin as money", already. I'm not a scammer and have no plans to do a shitty fork, I'm thinking more strategic and I want bitcoin to receive what it deserves: mass adoption.

For people like you, having your fiat system as back-up bitcoin is something fun an investment you have no incentive for a true "p2p electronic cash" but my people are in an urgent desperate need for such a system.

In early 2013 I become familiar with bitcoin and It didn't took me more than few hours to understand how promising it would be for my people and billions of people all around the world. Now, it is 2019 and bitcoin is anything other than money, centralized in pools and seized by asics.

As I said, I have respects for devs as well but I'm not confused or distracted about the cause, I need more, my people do and it is not something to be compromised or forgotten. Bitcoin as a system is in its infancy, systems evolve and adopt. 

For me Bitcoin is money, because I can pay with it, I can transfer it to any place in the world with a very low fee within minutes and it is secured by math. On top of this usefulness it is limited, which makes it a good store of value too. Also adoption rate is already raising more than people thought a few years ago, so I don't think we need a faster adoption rate.
Just have look what is happening when the BTC/USD price goes down below a positive ROI:
https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2019/01/15/unknown-bitcoin-miners-cryptocurrency/

The world’s most popular cryptocurrency is a now a little bit more decentralized, thanks to the waning influence of Bitmain and the return of the anonymous Bitcoin miner.

Blockchain research unit Diar has published new data revealing exactly who has been validating the Bitcoin network.

Analysts determined that mining pools either owned by or heavily tied to Bitmain (Antpool, BTC.com, and ViaBTC) are now validating far less Bitcoin blocks than this time last year.

In fact, it is “unknown” anonymous Bitcoin miners who are currently validating more blocks than any individual pool.

[aliashraf]

I don't think we need a faster adoption rate. ...

Good for you, but WE do! And we can't wait like forever! Nobody knows what happens in next couple of years. Crazy ultra right populists are overtaking politics all over your world in US and EU and they are really, really dumb ass, a depreciation and economic collapse is coming and we people in third f**ng world need a much more decentralized, scalable alternative to current monetary/banking system. There is no excuse to stick with failures in such a circumstance.

I'm following this trend in other cryptocurrencies too. Investors and whales have an illusion of dominance and decision making and they make devs to follow their illusion. Meanwhile the only legitimate force in the world with a rightful voice in governing bitcoin is people.

Analysts determined that mining pools either owned by or heavily tied to Bitmain (Antpool, BTC.com, and ViaBTC) are now validating far less Bitcoin blocks than this time last year.

In fact, it is “unknown” anonymous Bitcoin miners who are currently validating more blocks than any individual pool.

"Analysts" are simply wrong or they are deliberately spreading misinformation. It is a known Bitmain practice that spawns subsidies to hide its dominance which is inevitable considering ASICs and pools being in charge.

[mixoftix]

What? I believe that Moore's Law's "death" doesn't have anything to do with Proof of Work. I might have misunderstood, because if ASICs or GPUs have reached the most density, and efficiency for the most processing power it can make, how does it kill POW? Mining will not stop.

Mining never stops, but centralization happens.

the Moore's Law means: "the number of transistors on a chip doubles every year while the costs are halved."
now the death of Moore's Law means: "the number of transistors on a chip reaches the saturation point."

so at the saturation point, while people like miners only could have access to chips and regular processors, Quantum or Optic,... computer manufacturers (that do not follow the Moore's Law) could totally defeat them in a processing (and therefore mining) race and become the majority. even an ASIC manufacturer could utilize his new devices in a mining competition and after a complete ROI for his R&D costs, now send them to the market for sale. this means regular miners are always one step back. before ASICs involvement in mining process, a fairness existed over all miner entities. this fairness is important for the existence of hobby miners that constantly support their coins in good and bad days, not industrial miners that turn off their facilities with the first drop of price.

please see the future..

Just have look what is happening when the BTC/USD price goes down below a positive ROI:
https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2019/01/15/unknown-bitcoin-miners-cryptocurrency/

there is also another observation that shows while ASIC-friendly coin's hash rates get hurt by a decrease in prices (a downgrade from 60 to 30 TH/s - something around 50% of bitcoin processing power), ANTI-ASIC coin's hash rate like Monero remained untouched. this shows the absence of miners who equip themselves by higher performance devices (because of the bigger tolerance that they can provide), could jeopardize the whole network. your link was the most scary report that I have seen these days that shows how misbehaving of ETC ASIC miners could extend to BTC miners too. emerging of unknown miners with 23% of processing power is a threat.

[Wind_FURY]

@AGD, @Doomad
Guys, enough is enough. Although it is not a self-moderated shitty thread, as the op I do have some voice here, not a loud one but it deserves to be heard

1- You have made your point about ASICs being kinda progress an act of free market (I suppose), thank you. But this claims are strongly refuted above-thread. There is no progress, bitcoin is not about efficiency in solving a processing task. On the contrary bitcoin loves deficiency and deliberately makes the problem more difficult when someone finds out a way to solve it by a more efficient device. So, bitcoin is not an ordinary computing application and does not encourage progress.

2- Your points about competition, greed, ... is correct but not relevant enough. Bitcoin is about managing such instincts by means of a protocol and when the protocol fails to accomplish its job it should be improved instead of justification and making excuses about how hard it would be because of human nature.

3-Your claims regarding ASICs being the king is absolutely void and nothing worthier than Bitmain commercial advertisements and worse I would categorize it as FUD. We have Ethash on the scene that has mined billions of dollars in last couple of years and despite huge investments, Bitmain couldn't manage to beat it by its luxury ASIC and now we have ProgPoW that is a hardened version of Ethash ways more resistant and practically ASIC/bullet proof.

So, please put an end to such arguments and inform us about any other point you possibly got.

If you want to change the Bitcoin Core code, you can do it anytime you want. Did you already make any solid proposals, that found their way into Bitcoin Core? Or maybe you want to simply fork Bitcoin and include your idea of ASIC resistance and find enough people to support it? Go ahead!

I think it is time for bitcoin to improve and adopt. It has been 10 years, and not everything is manageable by soft-forks or other hack tricks. But I'm not interested in rebellion as a premature option. We need to have this option on the table but we need to discuss and negotiate before committing anything stupid.

"It has been 10 years"? Some forms of money, in human history, took hundreds of years to be adopted as a store of value, medium of exchange, and as a unit of account. I believe there shouldn't be a "set no. of years" for Bitcoin's adoption.

Bitcoin is something new. The Core developers are making more of the right decisions than wrong by being very careful. If you want to "break" things, make an altcoin.

It is not money, yet. For the starter, you guys have given up with "bitcoin as money", already. I'm not a scammer and have no plans to do a shitty fork, I'm thinking more strategic and I want bitcoin to receive what it deserves: mass adoption.

Then you, out of nowhere, want the Core developers and the whole community to listen to you because you believe you have the "solution"? It will not happen, sorry, not without consensus.

For people like you, having your fiat system as back-up bitcoin is something fun an investment

For people like me? What world are you from? Where would you be if Bitcoin fails?

You would be back to the fiat system too. You are STILL in the fiat system, how else would you be living?

you have no incentive for a true "p2p electronic cash" but my people are in an urgent desperate need for such a system.

Your people? What is that?

Bitcoin is very useful as a "P2P electronic cash" for gambling online, buying drugs online, money laundering, regulatory arbitrage, and other illegal stuff banks won't serve.

In early 2013 I become familiar with bitcoin and It didn't took me more than few hours to understand how promising it would be for my people and billions of people all around the world. Now, it is 2019 and bitcoin is anything other than money, centralized in pools and seized by asics.

As I said, I have respects for devs as well but I'm not confused or distracted about the cause, I need more, my people do and it is not something to be compromised or forgotten. Bitcoin as a system is in its infancy, systems evolve and adopt. 

But your solution is? Yes, risk amputating the network of nodes, and hash power. It will not get consensus. But if you truly want to experiment on ASIC-resistance, I suggest you talk to Bitcoin Gold developers.

[aliashraf]

Bitcoin is very useful as a "P2P electronic cash" for gambling online, buying drugs online, money laundering, regulatory arbitrage, and other illegal stuff banks won't serve.

Hello there Mr. Craig Faketoshi Wright  

For you money is what feds has full authorization over it and banks are authorized to oversee it and decide about its transactions to be considered legal or not. But I'm curious, what do you find in bitcoin attractive?

Let me guess, you have bought few bitcoins and now you want it skyrocketing to sell your deposit and buy a yacht or something, don't you?

But like it or not, bitcoin is not yours, it is not meant to be such a stupid 'investment' opportunity for adventurists and gamblers. So, better not to speak about a technology that you have no clue about its basic axioms. Specially don't bullshit improvement proposals like a hired shill whose job is simply shutting down any anti-ASIC/anti-pool discussion. We are not a bunch of fools here, we see you dude, take care.  

Seriously,  don't "community" me, you are not representing bitcoin community such a thing does not ever exist to be represented by someone like you a bitcoiner who thinks banks are legal and p2p e-cash is illegal!.

If you mean bitcoin whales I don't care about them, if you mean Bitmain I hate it, if you mean Core devs I'll do my best to convince them but with all due respects, I'm not married to any of them.

[AGD]

I don't think we need a faster adoption rate. ...

Good for you, but WE do!
...

Who is 'WE'? You and ...?

[aliashraf]

I don't think we need a faster adoption rate. ...

Good for you, but WE do!
...

Who is 'WE'? You and ...?

Anybody who is not happy with banks and US feds and global monetary system:
including libertarians, socialists, intellectuals, suffered people of under-developed  countries, any american or EU citizen who has less then $100K worth of assets and deposits, citizens of Iran who are bullied by Trump/Netanyahu/Bin Salman alliance due to stupid US sanctions, ....

We are too many and we don't GAS for people who has illusions of dominating bitcoin worst of them being the ones who are  not cautious about the cause: resisting banks and feds by setting money free of central control.

[DooMAD]

Who is 'WE'? You and ...?

Anybody who is not happy with banks and US feds and global monetary system:
including libertarians, socialists, intellectuals, suffered people of under-developed  countries, any american or EU citizen who has less then $100K worth of assets and deposits, citizens of Iran who are bullied by Trump/Netanyahu/Bin Salman alliance due to stupid US sanctions, ....

Oh, so your anti-ASIC paranoia is somehow a humanitarian issue now?  Honestly didn't see that one coming, but okay.  Let's see where this goes.  Should be entertaining if nothing else. 

And how, exactly, is getting rid of ASICs going to increase adoption and help with scaling?  I'm sure it must make sense in your head, but you appear to have skipped ahead a few points in your explanation of... whatever it is you might be going on about?

[aliashraf]

Who is 'WE'? You and ...?

Anybody who is not happy with banks and US feds and global monetary system:
including libertarians, socialists, intellectuals, suffered people of under-developed  countries, any american or EU citizen who has less then $100K worth of assets and deposits, citizens of Iran who are bullied by Trump/Netanyahu/Bin Salman alliance due to stupid US sanctions, ....

And how, exactly, is getting rid of ASICs going to increase adoption and help with scaling?  

Oh Sorry, I constantly forget with what level of ignorance I'm dealing now, you are right I need to teach every single point here, ok then:

Besides the fact that centralization due to ASIC is one of the most important hurdles we need to take care of along with pools which both happened to be concentrated in China and under almost unlimited authority of  Xi JinPing, I have realized up to now that we need a complete package,  dealing with ASIC problem being a part of it.

I have done a lot of work on pooling pressure problem and some scaling issues not exactly related to this topic but once enough support is provided it won't be an impossible mission to have a better bitcoin in terms of decentralization and performance it is how people would really accept bitcoin as something provably safe and secure.

I am highly suspicious that with current state of the system we would ever experience true bitcoin and its potentials as one of the most important events in human history.

It is a shame, advocates for shitty ideas like PoS or Universal computer are now much more successful in agitating people and giving them some sort of a purpose. The conservatism and hesitations from keeping system in its promised state of decentralization, has turned us bitcoiners to kinda old fashioned people who are polluting the environment just for a maximum of 3-4 txns/sec throughput with no future of serious improvement.

It truly makes me sad. PoS is the most worthless idea in cryptocurrency and still it looks more promising than PoW. A smart contract that is written in a Turing complete machine/language supported by blockchain is an absolutely stupid idea with almost no future and is advertised as a genius disruptive achievement ... it is bad days for bitcoiners we need fresh air and we need to show what really bitcoin is instead of preserving an experimental/alpha version of the idea and avoiding to adopt and improve.

It is why bitcoin adoption is delayed, we are playing very bad!

[Wind_FURY]

Bitcoin is very useful as a "P2P electronic cash" for gambling online, buying drugs online, money laundering, regulatory arbitrage, and other illegal stuff banks won't serve.

Hello there Mr. Craig Faketoshi Wright  

Starting with the name-calling, are we?

For you money is what feds has full authorization over it and banks are authorized to oversee it and decide about its transactions to be considered legal or not. But I'm curious, what do you find in bitcoin attractive?

Let me guess, you have bought few bitcoins and now you want it skyrocketing to sell your deposit and buy a yacht or something, don't you?

Then you follow up with a "you are not a real Bitcoiner".

But like it or not, bitcoin is not yours, it is not meant to be such a stupid 'investment' opportunity for adventurists and gamblers. So, better not to speak about a technology that you have no clue about its basic axioms. Specially don't bullshit improvement proposals like a hired shill whose job is simply shutting down any anti-ASIC/anti-pool discussion. We are not a bunch of fools here, we see you dude, take care.  

It would be more foolish to take your anti-ASIC plan without debating it.

Seriously,  don't "community" me, you are not representing bitcoin community such a thing does not ever exist to be represented by someone like you a bitcoiner who thinks banks are legal and p2p e-cash is illegal!.

If you mean bitcoin whales I don't care about them, if you mean Bitmain I hate it, if you mean Core devs I'll do my best to convince them but with all due respects, I'm not married to any of them.

I dislike the situation with the mining cartel, and mining centralization as much as anyone. What I was debating about is, if a hard fork for a POW change would get consensus or not, because I believe we will never do in this matter under normal circumstances, with or without the support of the Core developers.

[AGD]

I don't think we need a faster adoption rate. ...

Good for you, but WE do!
...

Who is 'WE'? You and ...?

Anybody who is not happy with banks and US feds and global monetary system:
including libertarians, socialists, intellectuals, suffered people of under-developed  countries, any american or EU citizen who has less then $100K worth of assets and deposits, citizens of Iran who are bullied by Trump/Netanyahu/Bin Salman alliance due to stupid US sanctions, ....

We are too many and we don't GAS for people who has illusions of dominating bitcoin worst of them being the ones who are  not cautious about the cause: resisting banks and feds by setting money free of central control.

OK. So you are speaking for big crowd of people. Do 'THEY' actually know, they have an anonymous speaker on a random forum on the internet? Did you confirm, for example, that the 'citizens of Iran' (only those that have less than '$100K worth of assets and deposits, of course) agree with your anti ASIC campaign?
If you could mobilize only these Iranian people, you would have a strong support base for your ideas. Maybe you could create your own currency...but, please ... don't call it Bitcoin.

If you want to make changes to the code, use GIT or GITTFOH (couldn't resist   )

[Stedsm]

Besides the fact that centralization due to ASIC is one of the most important hurdles we need to take care of along with pools which both happened to be concentrated in China and under almost unlimited authority of  Xi JinPing, I have realized up to now that we need a complete package,  dealing with ASIC problem being a part of it.

I have done a lot of work on pooling pressure problem and some scaling issues not exactly related to this topic but once enough support is provided it won't be an impossible mission to have a better bitcoin in terms of decentralization and performance it is how people would really accept bitcoin as something provably safe and secure.

Sorry to interrupt, but I have something to speak:
The problem here is, nobody is interested in keeping their BTC as they are mostly viewing it as another money-making opportunity (here: get rich quick scheme) and so, it's not possible for anyone here to impose the actual mentality on them that what is Bitcoin all about. About this centralization thing, it isn't limited but a cycle that cannot be broken now (considering that everyone is looking for "regulations" to take effect as they believe that putting everything in the hands of "Central Authorities" will get their Bitcoins' value to sky high levels, which is somehow true as well).

How is it a centralization cycle?
Keep it to ASICs or even CPU/GPU mining or even take it back to those times when USBs were used to mine BTC, everything can be controlled by big firms when they've got the money and power both to buy the equipment (or if they already have them) and keep it in their hands - fully controlled. It's not just limited to the machines that are eating hell lots of electricity to generate these coins, but it also takes in the PoS (unless there's a mechanism installed to stop the misuse of the system, which can not happen as if you'll stop them from getting their complete share, they'll not let it rise in terms of value).

Well, how PoS?
Simple, just as they can buy the equipment, they can easily buy the pre-mined coins either in ICO by buying a big share or by buying in small parts through weaker hands (this is also considered centralization). This way, they can eat a very big share they'll get through the stakes and control the whole market, though people will stop looking into that "investment" anymore which also stops the further development of that coin as devs see that there's no more interest remaining and they continue with the current version seeing no need of upgrades. The way US and Russia are playing with public's sentiments and trying to get their hands fully on BTC (just like China did, as you mentioned) shows that each country is looking more into making bucks rather than the technical aspects of the technology underlying. This statement supports the quote from your comment I'm putting below:

It is a shame, advocates for shitty ideas like PoS or Universal computer are now much more successful in agitating people and giving them some sort of a purpose. The conservatism and hesitations from keeping system in its promised state of decentralization, has turned us bitcoiners to kinda old fashioned people who are polluting the environment just for a maximum of 3-4 txns/sec throughput with no future of serious improvement.

It truly makes me sad. PoS is the most worthless idea in cryptocurrency and still it looks more promising than PoW. A smart contract that is written in a Turing complete machine/language supported by blockchain is an absolutely stupid idea with almost no future and is advertised as a genius disruptive achievement ... it is bad days for bitcoiners we need fresh air and we need to show what really bitcoin is instead of preserving an experimental/alpha version of the idea and avoiding to adopt and improve.

It is why bitcoin adoption is delayed, we are playing very bad!

I am highly suspicious that with current state of the system we would ever experience true bitcoin and its potentials as one of the most important events in human history.

It's next to impossible for Bitcoins to ever be used as proposed (the main purpose of it was to be used as a "DIGITAL CURRENCY - A GLOBAL CURRENCY) and what we're doing currently - trading it as an asset playing in the markets with those ups and downs, speculating every now and then about "when the next pump will begin". There's nothing actually that could prevent Bitcoins (or any alt or tokens) from centralization as everyone here wants it, stopping the Governments is not possible for us, but for them to stop us is like eating a piece of cake so easy for them.

[mixoftix]

(considering that everyone is looking for "regulations" to take effect as they believe that putting everything in the hands of "Central Authorities" will get their Bitcoins' value to sky high levels, which is somehow true as well).

this regulation part is very important here and actually talking about an upgrade to an ANTI-ASIC algorithm is a kind of regulation_by_code.. which means being code_central wouldn't be a kind of centralization that everyone tries to stay far from it..

UPDATE: one good example of regulation_by_code that already exists in PoW is the procedure of difficulty setting among block creation..

they can easily buy the pre-mined coins either in ICO

with PoS please use the term pre-defined instead of pre-mined coins.

[Stedsm]

(considering that everyone is looking for "regulations" to take effect as they believe that putting everything in the hands of "Central Authorities" will get their Bitcoins' value to sky high levels, which is somehow true as well).

this regulation part is very important here and actually talking about an upgrade to an ANTI-ASIC algorithm is a kind of regulation_by_code.. which means being code_central wouldn't be a kind of centralization that everyone tries to stay far from it..

UPDATE: one good example of regulation_by_code that already exists in PoW is the procedure of difficulty setting among block creation..

People don't really know where they're heading towards.
Bitcoin was meant to free everyone up in keeping their financial history to themselves (at least to some extent), but after all this REGULATION and LEGALIZATION thing, everyone will hand over their rights, their freedom to use crypto to their Governments (just like surrendering even without any crime). Mind well, these regulations and legalizations may get us to have these cryptos' real use cases come into action for what they've been released; but whatever will be done, will be done under the effect of total centralization (trust me, these things will literally not be in your good, and you'll experience it once they come into effect). So, instead of just speculating about the so-called upcoming pump times, why not discuss about how more and more adoption can take place in crypto world as well as how super real use cases can be built to show these people that Bitcoin is not just limited to price fluctuations and trading alone, it has its own space to be explored. And with the involvement of these big funding institutions and Governments, I believe we're ourselves letting them snatch away our Independence that was given to us by Satoshi. We need a bullrun, not in terms of its value but the amount of adopters. Remember, what happened last year changed most people's views, and IMHO, Bitcoin changed from being a speculative asset alone to now a Brand itself.

they can easily buy the pre-mined coins either in ICO

with PoS please use the term pre-defined instead of pre-mined coins.

Ah, my bad. I was too emotional while writing it as everything said here have had been what I've felt during best and worst crypto days.

[DooMAD]

And how, exactly, is getting rid of ASICs going to increase adoption and help with scaling?  

Oh Sorry, I constantly forget with what level of ignorance I'm dealing now, you are right I need to teach every single point here,

<snip>

So in your subsequent screed, we establish that the discussion contained within this topic has absolutely nothing to do with scaling or adoption, but in that regard, you have even more sections of the code you'd ideally like to tamper with (as if the part in this thread wasn't controversial enough already).  I'm so glad we got that straightened out.

If you're going to change everything and the kitchen sink, why not launch an altcoin and prove beyond doubt that your ideas are actually workable?  Or, at the very least, let's see a Bitcoin testnet first.  If there's a working concept to draw direct comparisons with what we currently have, to actually see the purported improvements in action, people might be more receptive to the ideas.  Definitive proof is infinitely preferable to some well-intentioned suggestions of what you think would be better.

[aliashraf]

The problem here is, nobody is interested in keeping their BTC as they are mostly viewing it as another money-making opportunity (here: get rich quick scheme) and so, it's not possible for anyone here to impose the actual mentality on them that what is Bitcoin all about. About this centralization thing, it isn't limited but a cycle that cannot be broken now (considering that everyone is looking for "regulations" to take effect as they believe that putting everything in the hands of "Central Authorities" will get their Bitcoins' value to sky high levels, which is somehow true as well).

I see and it is sad, though I have reasons to be rather optimistic:

Firstly we need to understand that Bitcoin is not a joke to be narrated by clowns or opportunists. Craig wright has spent millions to change anything about bitcoin and look where he has ended, almost nowhere. Bitcoin has a solid conceptual design, forget about the code and implementation details, the underlying basic idea, producing money by work, securing and transferring it by work and doing it in a decentralized consensus based p2p network, it wouldn't be a feasible strategy for any party no matter how powerful/delusional to take over it.

Secondly we have Core devs, still officially committed to decentralization which is a good point to start from. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of these guys neither I think coding is kinda magic on the contrary I don't GAS about technical part it is about a far more important thing: HISTORY.

I mean, just  look at Gregory Maxwell, he is a living encyclopedia of bitcoin, he has been involved in almost every single important event in this ecosystem and although I don't like his super conservatism and passiveism against ASICs, pools, bootstrap/synchronization nightmare, on-chain scalability, ... (you say) and I'm absolutely against downward compatibility and too much soft forking which (is his holy grail btw), no doubts he has a lot to share because he is committed to decentralisation and privacy as far as we are discussing intentions and incentives and ethics. And it is almost the same for most of these guys. All we need is finding a non-hostile decent approach to this, a compromise. I see potentials because I see good faith.

How is it a centralization cycle?
Keep it to ASICs or even CPU/GPU mining or even take it back to those times when USBs were used to mine BTC, everything can be controlled by big firms when they've got the money and power both to buy the equipment ...

Well, it is not how I understand the problem.  We have this power law distribution of wealth , you are right but PoW is resistant against it if we could have it implemented flawless, unfortunately it is not the case right now.
We have two majors flaws in bitcoin that need immediate fix:

1- Small memory footprint of the naively direct way bitcoin uses sha2 in its proof of work and its consequence of being vulnerable to ASIC attacks which we are discussing here and should be improved indisputably.

2- Winner-takes-all incentive system that inevitably leads to mining variance and proximity premium flaws which are responsible for pooling pressure and the situation we have with pools. I have been working on this issue since a while:
An analysis of Mining Variance and Proximity Premium flaws in Bitcoin

Getting rid of pools: Proof of Collaborative Work

Of course there are other problems:  the disastrous situation with setting up/synchronizing full nodes from scratch, spv wallets, wallets not actively participating in security of the network, ... to name few, but I think the above two problems are BIG bad flaws that has escalated centralization threats to the dangerous levels we are experimenting nowadays.

Conclusively, my point could be summarized like this:
Despite power law distribution of wealth and its natural force toward centralization, an advanced implementation of bitcoin is not defeatable easily by means of simple factors like economy of scale. Centralization is mainly a consequence of flaws in detail design/implementation of core concepts and delayed improvements.