What if Bitcoin Gets Centralized Through Massive Mergers

[Newchanka]

If you've not heard about the Steemit takeover you can check it. I just started wondering at the capacity of Bitcoin whales and ability of mega pool mergers centralizing the Bitcoin network. What if a government thinks about it? Isn't it possible? The Tron - Steemit debacle is a case study.https://www.cryptoinfowatch.com/the-lessons-of-trons-steemit-takeover/

[Jet Cash]

The Steem blockchain doesn't seem to be a part of the Steemit takeover, but I need to see what is going on with Tron. I haven't used Steemit for a while, and it may be time to review the changes.

It isn't really relevant to Bitcoin in my opinion. Bitcoin has a different business model.

[odolvlobo]

First, you need to explain how that might be possible. Bitcoin and Steemit are very different.

[pooya87]

you are actually outlining the huge flaw in PoS coins and also those coins that are heavily centralized already. Steem was already centralized and the "power" to control the coin was sold from the previous owners to the new owner! i don't think takeover was an appropriate term to use here, Justin Sun just tried to take more power when the sellers tried to reduce his power. he simply spent a couple of million to buy up 1/4 of the total supply of Steem and gain the majority voting power. which in a PoS coin means full control.

the current cost of gaining majority power in bitcoin (majority of hashrate) is above $1 billion. and that is only hashrate which is a small part of the bitcoin network. the bigger and more important part is the nodes that protect the network and enforce the consensus rules. and they can not be controlled or taken over.

[hatshepsut93]

Bitcoiners were criticizing alts for being centralized for a long time - many of big alts are managed by companies, have some sort of supreme leaders, small amount of developers that can force any decisions on the network, inherently centralized network designs, etc. Bitcoin developers and community understand the dangers of centralization, and they always take measures to prevent it. We already saw an attempt to centralize Bitcoin with the SegWit2x fork, and you can see how it completely failed. So, if there won't be any fundamental shift in values, any new attempts would fail too.

[avikz]

If you've not heard about the Steemit takeover you can check it. I just started wondering at the capacity of Bitcoin whales and ability of mega pool mergers centralizing the Bitcoin network. What if a government thinks about it? Isn't it possible? The Tron - Steemit debacle is a case study.https://www.cryptoinfowatch.com/the-lessons-of-trons-steemit-takeover/

Don't mix steemit with bitcoin as they are inherently different. So let's talk about bitcoin only!

It is possible for whales or governments to launch a 51% attack on bitcoin network. Governments can indeed invest trillions of dollars to set up a massive mining operations to capture 51% mining hash rate. Whales can merge mining pools to control 51% of the mining hash rate. Theoretically it is possible!

But the question is - why?

Bitcoin is flourishing because it is decentralized. People have their own freedom and they are happy that no one else is controlling their finances. Bitcoin is all about people. If this basic piller of bitcoin is compromised, it won't take much time to loose its value. There are literally thousands of alternatives in the market and intelligent people will quickly move to another suitable alternative. So whales or governments will not get any monetary benefits out of it. Think about reality!

[Zicadis]

Bitcoin can't just be bought up like Steemit did, it's a completely decentralized protocol.

The only thing that could happen is a massive corporation or government sinks a load of money into Bitcoin mining equipment to perform a majority attack.

That said, even if somebody tries to attack the network for a takeover, a chain split will just isolate those miners anyway. In short, Bitcoin is too big to become centralized now.

[mike_spr]

Bitcoin can't just be bought up like Steemit did, it's a completely decentralized protocol.

The only thing that could happen is a massive corporation or government sinks a load of money into Bitcoin mining equipment to perform a majority attack.

That said, even if somebody tries to attack the network for a takeover, a chain split will just isolate those miners anyway. In short, Bitcoin is too big to become centralized now.

Exactly, Steemit is a blockchain-based blogging and social media website, that's a completely different concept compared to Bitcoin.

[BrewMaster]

Bitcoin can't just be bought up like Steemit did, it's a completely decentralized protocol.

The only thing that could happen is a massive corporation or government sinks a load of money into Bitcoin mining equipment to perform a majority attack.

That said, even if somebody tries to attack the network for a takeover, a chain split will just isolate those miners anyway. In short, Bitcoin is too big to become centralized now.

but there is a big difference here. when someone controls majority of a coin like steem they can control everything from transactions to forks and code changes since they have full control but in bitcoin even if someone had a very large percentage of the hashrate they still can't control the network. all they could do is mine empty blocks to create a big backlog otherwise if they make any changes it will be rejected by the entire network.

[gentlemand]

Steem's users are doing something about it - https://old.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/fcydwq/something_beautiful_is_happening_on_the_steem/

That bug eyed creep will likely find encroaching on anyone else's shitcoin will provoke a sharp response.

As for Bitcoin do not underestimate the ferocity of its users. Even if it were possible, whoever tried it would be wiped out and they'd be stunningly stupid to try it in the first place as removing one of its main value propositions would destroy whatever power, profit and influence they were looking for.

[coolcoinz]

Steem's users are doing something about it - https://old.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/fcydwq/something_beautiful_is_happening_on_the_steem/

That bug eyed creep will likely find encroaching on anyone else's shitcoin will provoke a sharp response.

As for Bitcoin do not underestimate the ferocity of its users. Even if it were possible, whoever tried it would be wiped out and they'd be stunningly stupid to try it in the first place as removing one of its main value propositions would destroy whatever power, profit and influence they were looking for.

It's interesting how rich guys alwas want more power and turn into centralization and control and when that happens they get a strong response from the community. Jihan did a very similar thing back in the day when he rose to power and it did not end that good for him. Sun has already made a lot of money in this space but inetsad of trying to contribute he's reaching for more control and more centralization.

As for Bitcoin, you cannot buy it. Even if you buy some big exchanges, there will still be some that you won't be able to afford. Even owning all major exchanges won't give you control over Bitcoin. Bitcoin's price is not Bitcoin.

[Yaunfitda]

Nah, I doubt that it will happened, there are two many actors in bitcoin's decentralization, whales, average joe's and every day noob. Well small miners can be bought up by big and powerful miners out there, but that's as close as you can get from companies buying companies into a decentralize bitcoin.

As for Steemit, there are no comparisons, apples to oranges.

[Alanin]

i dont think it will ever happen. If with so many diverse holders right now.
also remember to account for all the lost bitcoins that are now i data nirvana.
if some system were ever to achieve that. then they had to pump the price way more than they could afford to.

[Ucy]

What kind of merger exactly? The centralized companies or the miners merging together? Well, that is one of the reasons we need lots of decentralized things on Bitcoin. By the way, there should be  ways to punish miners or companies when they move against Bitcoin. There power should always be checked esle they grow beyond a decentralized community/communities ability to control them

[Kemarit]

The argument of Bitcoin getting centralized is wrong in the very beginning.

According to the article:

Not to be outdone, Tron moved to exchanges such as Poloniex, Binance and Huobi and bought up some 84 million Steem tokens in a strategic move that gives the company majority vote among Block Producers (BP) of the Steemit network. This means that the top BPs would be chosen by Justin Sun of Tron. So the attempt to keep him off control of the Steemit blockchain through the soft fork has been defeated.

Who has such power to do that with Bitcoin, not even the whales unless they collude with each other but I doubt that. Whales can only things that much in the market, to manipulate it, but to have control control? Nah, I'm not seeing it happening in the future.

[squatter]

Bitcoin can't just be bought up like Steemit did, it's a completely decentralized protocol.

Nor can it be insta-mined like STEEM was. That's the root of this whole fork controversy -- Steemit Inc. printed at least 65 million STEEM for themselves. They were apparently transferred to Justin Sun when the Tron Foundation acquired Steemit. The community soft forked to freeze those funds, prompting Sun and at least two exchanges (Binance and Huobi) to launch an attempted takeover of the DPOS consensus.

CZ is trying to brush this under the rug, but Binance and Huobi (and obviously Poloniex) acted very questionably in all this.

Fortunately, this type of attack can never happen to Bitcoin. Custody over of bitcoins doesn't equate to voting rights in consensus changes.

[panganib999]

The argument of Bitcoin getting centralized is wrong in the very beginning.

According to the article:

Not to be outdone, Tron moved to exchanges such as Poloniex, Binance and Huobi and bought up some 84 million Steem tokens in a strategic move that gives the company majority vote among Block Producers (BP) of the Steemit network. This means that the top BPs would be chosen by Justin Sun of Tron. So the attempt to keep him off control of the Steemit blockchain through the soft fork has been defeated.

Who has such power to do that with Bitcoin, not even the whales unless they collude with each other but I doubt that. Whales can only things that much in the market, to manipulate it, but to have control control? Nah, I'm not seeing it happening in the future.

Definitely, whales won't exist if they are not making any money with bitcoin or in any other cryptocurrency. In fact, they are enemies here trying to manipulate the market with their own interest and tries to outsmart the other whales. Yes this might be a good idea but it will also be good if these whales are not just here because of the money but also for the next generation currency. I wonder what it would look like hmm.

[dothebeats]

What happened to Steemit will never happen to bitcoin. We follow different consensus rules, and even if one has the capacity to get the control in the hashrate, a fork can be created to fend the nefarious people off. What people are seeing on thr Tron-Steemit debacle is the susceptibility of PoS-based coins to get engulfed by a larger, 'richer' group with greedy intentions. Bitcoin will not encounter such--or it might see some challengers but those will never succeed.

[Krislaw]

That's not how centralisation works. There's a transfer of ownership of Steem because the identity of the CEO or whatever is known. But as for BTC, you can't say you want to buy the company because of the way it's being programmed and the founder is also an anonymous figure. The code cannot be edited.

[davis196]

If you've not heard about the Steemit takeover you can check it. I just started wondering at the capacity of Bitcoin whales and ability of mega pool mergers centralizing the Bitcoin network. What if a government thinks about it? Isn't it possible? The Tron - Steemit debacle is a case study.https://www.cryptoinfowatch.com/the-lessons-of-trons-steemit-takeover/

I don't know anything about a "Steemit takeover" and I don't care about altcoin blockchains like Tron,so I won't read your article.
Technically it's possible for the crypto whales to create some sort of secret cartel and dictate the crypto prices,but it would be very difficult to keep that cartel.Such cartels manage that manipulate  and control prices are illegal,according to any anti-trust legislation in any normal country.
Centralizing BTC mining by merging all the miners is theoretically possible but it's really expensive and difficult to be achieved.