Does Bitcoin (or other ccs) also not have a 'central' control?

[gentleman2019]

Just a thought. Of course its decentralised by an order of magnitude compared to fiat or other alternatives, but what about the process/team that decided the 21 million coin limit for example? How are such rules changed by the way? Is it the same dev team that pushes changes to the Core release that decides these things?

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[seoincorporation]

Just a thought. Of course its decentralised by an order of magnitude compared to fiat or other alternatives, but what about the process/team that decided the 21 million coin limit for example? How are such rules changed by the way? Is it the same dev team that pushes changes to the Core release that decides these things?

The total of the coins was decided on the code of the coin, just like the number of zeros after the point. And that's something you can't change in the future because it was made that way.

We see some changes in the road, but those changes are to make it more secure or more efficient, not to change the basic rules. When people change the basic rules then we have a fork, and a good example of that is bitcoin cash. But at the end, those decisions are taken by a group and not by an individual.

[Yogee]

.... How are such rules changed by the way? Is it the same dev team that pushes changes to the Core release that decides these things?

From my limited understanding, Dev teams can propose upgrades usually through BIPs - Bitcoin Improvement Proposals but it takes more than the developers to change the supply and be adopted. For changes like that to be implemented, it will need a complete consensus among users that runs the software.

If there's no complete consensus, a fork will happen.

[pooya87]

it depends on the cryptocurrency that you have in mind. if the cryptocurrency is decentralized (like bitcoin is) any change requires achieving the majority's support which is defined as 95% of the network for bitcoin and without it, the change will be rejected and if it goes through with minority support (like the shitcoin copycats of bitcoin) it becomes an altcoin and is considered to be garbage.

but when the cryptocurrency is centralized, like most of the top 10 altcoins and more of others, the change doesn't require reaching consensus at all. the centralized authority that has full control over that altcoin simply makes the change and demands that users follow by upgrading their wallets. for example Ripple prints new coins anytime they want, lock/burn some supply if they wanted, reverse transactions, change the protocol,... same with ETH, BCH, USDT, BNB, BSV. and many more from outside of top 10.

[witcher_sense]

There is a set of underlying consensus rules that makes bitcoin valuable for community. Bitcoin is bitcoin because no one can change its fundamental idea - monetary policy governed by distributed agreement. Rule of limited total supply was set by Satoshi Nakamoto, creator of bitcoin and it cannot be changed, because vast majority of participants will never agree to decrease value of their savings. Bitcoin was designed that way and we already accepted the fact that if we want to participate in the bitcoin network, we are free to join. It's permissionless. But if we want to change its fundamentals, it is better to leave that idea, because bitcoin is meant to be immutable in order to exist. There are only two states: bitcoin is immune to central control or doesn't exist.

[bitbollo]

Just a thought. Of course its decentralised by an order of magnitude compared to fiat or other alternatives, but what about the process/team that decided the 21 million coin limit for example? How are such rules changed by the way? Is it the same dev team that pushes changes to the Core release that decides these things?

For a certain point of view miners decide to adopt a new change. they are acting as a central entity able to make a decision for the whole protocol.
Likewise adopting segwit https://charts.woobull.com/bitcoin-segwit-adoption/ has been evaluated and voted day by day while forging new blocks.
Not all change can be implemented in bitcoin rules since hard fork are always not permitted (create more then 21 millions of coins is one of the list)!

[Charles-Tim]

Everything about bitcoin is decentralized, there is nothing centralized about it at all. Any improvement that want to be made will be first be addressed by the bitcoin community, it is either agreed upon or not accepted by majority. This are the cause of the bitcoin hardforks like bitcoin cash.

Bitcoin supply is 21 million, bitcoin community know how that value is very important, any increase or decrease to it will disrupt bitcoin as a whole. But let us use the scalability issue as an example, this was seen as a problem and was brought up to the community, it was addressed but majority did not go for more blocks to be created which will lead to increase in transaction time, but due to one reason or the other, majority did not voted for that and lead to the hardfork known as bitcoin cash.

That is just one example. One thing I like about bitcoin is that it is completely open source and nothing can happen in a centralized way as it is completely decentralized.

[amishmanish]

I think anyone new to the cryptocurrency space can fall for drawing these analogies. Isn't bitcoin centralized too, in a way? Isn't bitcoin a pre-mine too, in a way? Isn't bitcoin code modifications governed by just one dev, in a way?

Those making such analogies are generally dreamy-eyed about "projects" they themselves believ in or have pinned hopes to. What we have to remember is the context in which you judge bitcoin. Satoshi had full control to begin with but distributed it to the community. He indeed has a "premine" of a million BTC but there has been no evidence that those coins are ever going to move. (Except if Faketoshi is the real Satoshi, and in which case we are all fucked, anyways). Satoshi or the original community of Bitcoin users did not have the greedy precedents setup by later devs. They evolved naturally and established this decentralization willingly. This was not some virtue-signalling that devs resort to these days (Or their TG managers).

This is why drawing all such analogies is a wasteful exercise.

[Ucy]

I think the rule is hard-coded, and would probably require all/most  Network Participants to decide whether to change it or not.. It would be done through voting/consensus. And votes should be determined by the quality of reasons given by voters why they are voting for/against/neutral. I think a simple yes/no is not really a good way of achieving quality consensus.  
  But even at this, everyone will still have to stick to Bitcoin fundamental/important Principles while voting for change. It'll be good to reject votes that do stick to the principles and rules.


Bitcoin important Principles:

* Decentralization
* Transparency
* Immutablity
* Censorship Resistant
* Anonymity/privacy
* Permissionless/Trustless
* Deflationary
* Consensus-driven
* Security/safety
Etc

[Killrbit]

Just a thought. Of course its decentralised by an order of magnitude compared to fiat or other alternatives, but what about the process/team that decided the 21 million coin limit for example? How are such rules changed by the way? Is it the same dev team that pushes changes to the Core release that decides these things?

Bitcoin is decentralized which means that almost any rule/protocol/design could be changed by almost anyone, and this is working exactly as intended as is the nature of anything that is truly decentralized.

However once code has been changed it stops being  Bitcoin unless that change is supported by most of the community including miners, devs, holders and other stake holders. If however there is not enough support then it simply becomes a fork of Bitcoin and its future success or failure would then depend on how much community support it gets. ( think of the  B Cash fork, BSV  etc which did not get enough community support and was not able to hijack the BTC ticker despite the best attempts of many very influential stake holders roger ver for instance to do so).

As such anyone could go on to Github and submit a BIP proposal for implementing a change/ improvement in Bitcoin. But  more often than not these proposals are discussed meticulously for long periods of time before they are actually able to get enough support to be implemented.

Attempting to change 21 million coded cap would be very contentious to say the least.

[dothebeats]

The limit is already hardcoded on the protocol and would require extensive debates on whether to change it or not in the future. Certain things on the protocol, such as the supply limit cannot be changed--or at least that's the thought--and was introduced by Satoshi himself. Any dev inside or outside the core development team can make changes on it though the changes need to reach a consensus before it is implemented. If it's just small bug fixes and such, the core team is usually the ones doing the fix.

[AakZaki]

~snip~
When people change the basic rules then we have a fork, and a good example of that is bitcoin cash. But at the end, those decisions are taken by a group and not by an individual.

As far as I know and there has never been a change in BTC digit numbers, except when there was Liza, Lizun, Limbo, Lizambo on yobit they do denom the coin and this was also done with consensus of developer. We know that bitcoin is software built on an open protocol and through mutual agreement, any developer (or group of developers) can propose changes and improvements to Bitcoin technology through proposals and these proposals must be agreed by consensus.
For now, the only consensus I have experienced is forks, which are about increasing the network transaction processing limit on bitcoin technical work, namely increasing the block size limit so the network can process more transactions at once.

[fiulpro]

Just a thought. Of course its decentralised by an order of magnitude compared to fiat or other alternatives, but what about the process/team that decided the 21 million coin limit for example? How are such rules changed by the way? Is it the same dev team that pushes changes to the Core release that decides these things?

The total of the coins was decided on the code of the coin, just like the number of zeros after the point. And that's something you can't change in the future because it was made that way.

We see some changes in the road, but those changes are to make it more secure or more efficient, not to change the basic rules. When people change the basic rules then we have a fork, and a good example of that is bitcoin cash. But at the end, those decisions are taken by a group and not by an individual.

At the same time back when the code was written there were some minor mistakes in it. Apparently the bitcoins will be unusable after 2106 if the mistakes are not corrected.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5267497.msg54958221#msg54958221

Therefore we have to make sure to update it before that. I do think you are aware of the fact that the forks will only work when everyone decides to download it and update it.

Plus I do think there is a limit on Bitcoins for a reason and the long term holders are well aware of the price increase that would come with a fixed limit. I don't honestly think people will need unlimited supply , we can still make the satoshis workable and maybe even invent some more smaller units ?