Question about decentralization

[razorseal]

Question popped up in my head today... Figured no better place to ask.

Crypto (well, mostly. I don't like company owned and/or closed source currencies like zcash, ripple etc) is decentralized and is mined just about everywhere. Looking at btc for example, there is no company/ceo owning it and it can be mined anywhere in the world (albeit with specialized equipment, but that's another discussion lol). Mostly is China I believe. About %80-85. Now if Chinese govt said (and they could) no more bitcoin mining. If we see anyone, it's immediate prison if you're even involved in it.

China drops from 85 majority to %5... The other countries can't pick up the slack.

What happens? Let's not talk about the price of btc dropping. I'm talking more about hashrate etc. Will the algorhythm get easier so others can mine more efficiently to keep up with demand of handling transactions? It's not like it'll get so easy that we can start mining with our computers right?

Just trying to get a handle on it, so I understand... I guess my question simply is. Is BTC mining scaling? I believe it does scale. but will it ever scale so far back (if it needs to) that if regular desktops need to mine, they can? What if 95% of all miners using ASIC just quit now?

Thanks guys! please feel free to fill my curiosity!

[NeuroticFish]

What's missing from your equation is the Difficulty.
The network adjusts the difficulty to ensure (more or less) constant rate of finding the new blocks, whether we have 10 CPUs mining, whether we have millions of ASICs mining.
The only problem is that the difficulty adjusts only from time to time and we can end up with quite a trouble if so many miners give up so abruptly.

[Yakamoto]

Question popped up in my head today... Figured no better place to ask.

Crypto (well, mostly. I don't like company owned and/or closed source currencies like zcash, ripple etc) is decentralized and is mined just about everywhere. Looking at btc for example, there is no company/ceo owning it and it can be mined anywhere in the world (albeit with specialized equipment, but that's another discussion lol). Mostly is China I believe. About %80-85. Now if Chinese govt said (and they could) no more bitcoin mining. If we see anyone, it's immediate prison if you're even involved in it.

China drops from 85 majority to %5... The other countries can't pick up the slack.

What happens? Let's not talk about the price of btc dropping. I'm talking more about hashrate etc. Will the algorhythm get easier so others can mine more efficiently to keep up with demand of handling transactions? It's not like it'll get so easy that we can start mining with our computers right?

Just trying to get a handle on it, so I understand... I guess my question simply is. Is BTC mining scaling? I believe it does scale. but will it ever scale so far back (if it needs to) that if regular desktops need to mine, they can? What if 95% of all miners using ASIC just quit now?

Thanks guys! please feel free to fill my curiosity!

As mentioned by NeuroticFish, the network can actually scale the difficulty of the mining algorithm back so that the network maintains a relatively consistent and (roughly) pre-determined rate of finding and mining new blocks. It would be possible, if all ASICs in the world died at once, to mine blocks with personal computers again. Is that likely? Not at all, but it's a fail-safe incase something does happen with the large mining pools and all of their hardware goes to hell at once.

Of course, I'm pretty sure that the network only adjusts the difficulty after a block is found. So if all of the hashing power went caput at once, it might be really, really difficult to keep the network moving until that one block with the pentahash-based string is found. That could hold up the network for days, worst case. But I don't know if the network can actively reduce the difficulty, and if it can, then what I just mentioned isn't an issue.

[franky1]

firstly. seems your reading very biased information from lets say 3-4 years ago, and here is why
1. 'china own mining' is a dead rhetoric thats been around along time. if you actually go and check the numbers the hashrate for china is actually low.
pools such as bitmain(the main one people misinform about) have an OFFICE in china. but the actual factories housing the asics are world wide.
other pools like slushpool are deemed as asian too although they are international and managed by someone whos actually in thailand. same with f2pool which is internationally mined physically, but office managed in the asian region

2. 'keep up the damand for transactions'.. bitcoins mining process does NOT get easier or harder based on transaction count.
no matter how many transactions there are, whether it be 2 or 2million. the length of the initial block collation hash is the same 256bit hash length. which this 256bit hash is then sent to asics(miners) who then re-hash another 256bit hash based on a difficulty that has nothing to do with transaction count, but due to asic competitiveness (number of asic machines trying to hash)
ASIC machines contain no hard drives and do not store or view transactions. the mining algo has nothing to do with transaction demand and is just about calculating a hash of the same 256bit length

3. unlike PoS coins which cost literally nothing to 'mine' because there is no expense put in and lost (no large electric/hardware) pos coins are not going to be valued highly. but because there is alot of value in bitcoin. people put alot of investment into mining it. and as such this retains some bottomline value. for bitcoin to return to desktop mining where one person gets X every 10 minutes the value of bitcoin has to drop first to make it not worth using expensive hardware and electric, and then it has to remain at a low value to keep people from being interested in mining it. unless bitcoin becomes completely useless for real world utility, i cant see this happening

[hatshepsut93]

If I remember corectly, China has already told its miners to get out, although they might have quietly reverted this decision, because it seems like miners still reside in China.

Now what would happen if China got serious and banned mining and enforced it all in one day - the network would take a huge blow because the hashpower would drop, so doublespending would become much easier, and even if the remaining miners wouldn't try to abuse it, the price would still drop because of the shock. But then BTC, both its price and the network, would slowly rework as Chinese miners will relocate somewhere else and their equipment return to the network, or someone new come to fill the vacuum.

But this scenario isn't very realistic, because China isn't interested to just kill an industry that brings them some profit and opportunities, and if they would ban it, they'd probably give some time to miners, so the blow wouldn't be so severe.

[jseverson]

Just trying to get a handle on it, so I understand... I guess my question simply is. Is BTC mining scaling? I believe it does scale. but will it ever scale so far back (if it needs to) that if regular desktops need to mine, they can? What if 95% of all miners using ASIC just quit now?

People used to mine with their GPUs before ASICs were a thing, so yeah. People will inevitably pick up the slack though, because in that scenario, mining would be a very profitable opportunity.

I would also like to note that Chinese miners have started to diversify geographically. If you're worried about them losing business thanks to the CCP, I bet you they're far more worried lol.

[pooya87]

Mostly is China I believe. About %80-85.

lets first clarify whether you are talking about a hypothetical situation or the reality because in reality the hashrate that is coming from China is nowhere near that percentage. it is probably closer to 20% at this point if not lower.
what you may be referring to is the mining pools with high hashrate but they are "pools" not "farms". a pool is where miners from all around the world can connect to (like a server) and share their work. those servers aren't all in China!
think of bitcointalk for example of a pool. it was registered by someone in US, but that doesn't mean all the 2.6 million users of bitcointalk are from US. like miners connecting to a pool, the users are connecting to bitcointalk from all around the world.

[CryptoBry]

Mostly is China I believe. About %80-85.

lets first clarify whether you are talking about a hypothetical situation or the reality because in reality the hashrate that is coming from China is nowhere near that percentage. it is probably closer to 20% at this point if not lower. what you may be referring to is the mining pools with high hashrate but they are "pools" not "farms". a pool is where miners from all around the world can connect to (like a server) and share their work. those servers aren't all in China! think of bitcointalk for example of a pool. it was registered by someone in US, but that doesn't mean all the 2.6 million users of bitcointalk are from US. like miners connecting to a pool, the users are connecting to bitcointalk from all around the world.

Thanks a lot for clarifying this issue or concern. Actually, I have been asking and wondering the same question for so long and now I can sense what are the things really going on with bitcoin mining. So even if China will eventually implement a total ban on mining, we will not have a major problem and that things can still be fixed. I am sure that many miners in China right now are already doing something about this situation.

[Whaletale]

There is always people that want to venture in mining and if China declare war against it will not change the fact that other country will accept it.

Only if they know the GDP that will add to their GDP and it has always be about them or India and their out of this space of crypto will not shake the table but they will at end find themselves to be blamed.

[darklus123]

@cryptobry, who actually told you that China banning bitcoin can lead to a problem?

Again the mining power of China is not as much as we think if the above guy is right then 20% or less powerloss is not really a huge problem. That would only mean that there will be an open opportunity for the upcoming miners outside China.  And even if there will be a complete ban in China bitcoin can 100% surely surived because of its decentralized feature

[Ailmand]

@cryptobry, who actually told you that China banning bitcoin can lead to a problem?

Again the mining power of China is not as much as we think if the above guy is right then 20% or less powerloss is not really a huge problem. That would only mean that there will be an open opportunity for the upcoming miners outside China.  And even if there will be a complete ban in China bitcoin can 100% surely surived because of its decentralized feature

Well, I think if China impliments crypto mining ban, other countries will start their venture to mine cryptocurrency. Before majority of mining power came from China. I think banning mining in their country will open other opportunities to start building mining companies.

[razorseal]

Thanks guys, I appreciate the responses. I understand the 81% doesn't mean that 81% of the ASICs are in China. it's just that the pools are out of china that they connect to. I could be connected to a chinese pool as well from USA. I mentioned china because of this -

https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/mining/pools/

and https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/mining/china/

Pool Concentration in China
Before we get into the best mining pools to join, it’s important to note that most mining pools are in China. Many only have Chinese websites and support. Mining centralization in China is one of Bitcoin’s biggest issues at the moment.

There are about 20 major mining pools. Broken down by the percent of hash power controlled by a pool, and the location of that pool’s company, we estimate that Chinese pools control ~81% of the network hash rate:

I guess I'm looking at the survivability. if all of a sudden something happened where majority of these ASICS got shut down (within 2-3 days, 80% of ASICs are taken offline) for whatever reason. What is going to happen? will the 20% of the ASICs left from rest of the world, going to handle the hashrate?

I always like contributing to a project. I'm not a developer or anything so there is no way for me to contribute to btc besides talk about it. I guess I wonder if one day, something happened... could ones like me who can't afford an antminer S17 get an opportunity to start hashing to keep btc alive?

[Genemind]

China has a huge number of miners and they play a vital role in balancing the supply and demand of cryptocurrency but if China would ban mining, there would surely be a remedy or other options for miners to pursue their mining. They could build mining companies in other areas to keep mining industries continuously alive.

[jseverson]

I guess I'm looking at the survivability. if all of a sudden something happened where majority of these ASICS got shut down (within 2-3 days, 80% of ASICs are taken offline) for whatever reason. What is going to happen? will the 20% of the ASICs left from rest of the world, going to handle the hashrate?

What's going to happen is that finding blocks is going to slow down for a while, and then go back to normal once difficulty adjusts to the lower hashrate.

I guess I wonder if one day, something happened... could ones like me who can't afford an antminer S17 get an opportunity to start hashing to keep btc alive?

With a normal PC, with about 20% of the current ASICs still alive and kicking? I don't think so (well you can, but you'll lose money), but I'm no expert in the field. You might be able to find more knowledgeable people on the subject in the mining subforum.

[BlackFor3st]

It will be a very big problem especially if almost all the asic miners will quit or stop their operation with no further reason.
But I am wondering also if what will happen if this kind of scenario will happen in the future as we don't know what the miners owner are thinking.

As they can just do what every they like knowing that we have the freedom in every decision that we are going to make especially in crypto world. Though there is a very little possibilities that it will happen because the miners will surely continue as long as they will gain a profit from it but if the opposite will happen they will surely close their operation.

[pooya87]

I guess I'm looking at the survivability. if all of a sudden something happened where majority of these ASICS got shut down (within 2-3 days, 80% of ASICs are taken offline) for whatever reason. What is going to happen? will the 20% of the ASICs left from rest of the world, going to handle the hashrate?

What's going to happen is that finding blocks is going to slow down for a while, and then go back to normal once difficulty adjusts to the lower hashrate.

with only 20% of the hashrate it will take hours to find any block and as a result the difficulty adjustment target which is happening every 2 weeks or 2016 blocks will take a lot more time to be reached. in other words we may not see any difficulty adjustment for months.
keep in mind that because sudden loss of 80% of the hashrate is an impossible thing, this scenario is also considered an unlikely one and as a result if it happens, it will require special actions such as a fork at that time to solve the difficulty problem.

[darklus123]

Well, I think if China impliments crypto mining ban, other countries will start their venture to mine cryptocurrency. Before majority of mining power came from China. I think banning mining in their country will open other opportunities to start building mining companies.

That is exactly the point, China currently dominates the a good portion of hashrates which also means that only miners from China were able to gain benefits. I am exactly not sure tho on how can the other countries start their mining farms since as of the moment having the lowest electricity rate China really has a good stand with regards to mining.

Maybe slowly the mining ventures will start to spread out after the said banning