What if governments make Bitcoin centralized?

[Abiky]

Have you ever thought about Bitcoin becoming centralized someday? The ever-growing mainstream adoption of Bitcoin worldwide will only lead us closer to such scenario. To our surprise, El Salvador became the first country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender. The more popular the cryptocurrency becomes, the more countries will be tempted to follow El Salvador's footsteps. Imagine governments making their own mining facilities, or even buying pre-established mining companies in order to gain a piece of the pie. If they manage to control more than 51% of Bitcoin's hashrate, the cryptocurrency will effectively become centralized. That, and the fact that they already control centralized exchanges is a very alarming situation for the future of Bitcoin.

Of course, the only way governments worldwide will be able to control 51% of Bitcoin's hashrate is if they unanimously agree on using Bitcoin is a "One World Currency". This may all sound crazy, but we cannot ignore it from happening in the future.

What are your thoughts? Will Bitcoin be able to remain decentralized for the foreseeable future? Or not? What do you think will happen if governments fully embrace Bitcoin as the replacement of Fiat? Your input will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

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[dkbit98]

This will never happen to Bitcoin and governments won't waste time mining and taking control over Bitcoin that is 90% mined already,
they can just create their own centralized digital junk currencies with infinite supply and with shutdown button for anyone who is not obedient.
Look what is happening in the world now and you will see that is the way they are going.

[ChiBitCTy]

I am not so sure that this ever become a real issue.  First off the United States isn't anywhere close to having bitcoin become any sort of currency for its citizens.  With the dollar being the worlds standard, they'd honestly be crazy to jeopardize that in any way.  Secondly by the time that they would enter the market I don't believe they would even be able to purchase that much in order to make it centralized in any way.  Just my 2.

[tbct_mt2]

Of course, the only way governments worldwide will be able to control 51% of Bitcoin's hashrate is if they unanimously agree on using Bitcoin is a "One World Currency". This may all sound crazy, but we cannot ignore it from happening in the future.

They can if Chinese government, example takes over all the hashrate from miners in China. I don't think it will happen. They can not do such thing in dark ways and don't let the world know about that. They will slap on their faces by doing this.

However I don't feel surprise if governments in nations that are sanctioned like Iran, North Korea have run Bitcoin mining farms. They have nuclear power and the Internet. What they need is ASICs and here they go with Bitcoin mining.

What you ask is not impossible but I don't think it will happen in near future. Moreover, if it happens, we might see reaction from the community. Governments are always behind the community with creative idea.

[jackg]

I can imagine bitcoin becoming less decentralised if it gets large and stable enough for energy producers to mine it (but then I also think there are many more producers of renewable energy now than there were/are of coal/oil producers so we might not see that happening much).

I don't think a government would care too much to find a way to destroy crypto,  and sure someone like china, Russia or the US might want to take it down/control it just to prove they can but what happens when the algorithm changes and all the devs vote on it as well as a rewind (one government gets left with a bunch of equipment they can't use and the chain continues)? Also, stopping bitcoin from working stops bitcoin from working, it won't stop eth or other chains so what if all the btc is temporarily moved to another coin for a while as a token (even if it crashes "making it crash" and "completely blocking it" are two different things)?

[Welsh]

A government adopting Bitcoin, and then paying through the teeth to have enough resources to maintain over 51% share of the mining power is even more silly than using a currency which you can infinitely print. Though, this hasn't stopped them in the past to be fair.

Nah, in all seriousness the expense required to maintain that sort of share in the network would greatly outweigh the benefits. It would be a better idea to try, and convince the mining pools that they need to follow some sort of law which gives the government control of their pools, and even that is far fetched.

Basically, dkbit98 said it above. If they consider Bitcoin a threat to their existing model, they'll likely evolve that system into a sort of government backed cryptocurrency, which will have all the same limitations or minor variations to what fiat is today, except their marketing plan will be far greater than anyone else's. So, in simple terms they wouldn't centralise Bitcoin, because in all reality it's impossible to do. Instead, they would attempt to replace it with a similar system, but something they can control.

I mean, most people are already converting to digital finances which will make the transition easier.

I don't think a government would care too much to find a way to destroy crypto,  and sure someone like china, Russia or the US might want to take it down/control it just to prove they can but what happens when the algorithm changes and all the devs vote on it as well as a rewind (one government gets left with a bunch of equipment they can't use and the chain continues)? Also, stopping bitcoin from working stops bitcoin from working, it won't stop eth or other chains so what if all the btc is temporarily moved to another coin for a while as a token?

Edward Bernays taught us you don't have to destroy anything, instead you convince the people that your solution is a better one, and with the government's marketing budget, they''ll be able to easily convince the general public.

He also suggested that lack of acknowledgement usually brings more harm than good, and you can see that several governments, in fact probably at this point most governments in the world have acknowledged Bitcoin, and set certain regulations such as taxes.

[Bttzed03]

BTC as One World Currency Why would they even think of that in the first place? Each country will always prioritize their own national interest and will continue to protect their own currency. Hard to think they will ever unite just to control Bitcoin when they cannot do it to fiat for decades/centuries. Of course, there is a slim chance but that would probably take an alien invasion.

[Natalim]

BTC as One World Currency Why would they even think of that in the first place? Each country will always prioritize their own national interest and will continue to protect their own currency. Hard to think they will ever unite just to control Bitcoin when they cannot do it to fiat for decades/centuries. Of course, there is a slim chance but that would probably take an alien invasion.

China had made this thing first and they create Digital Yuan after Bitcoin. They'll make themselves protect their own benefits and have nothing to share with others, and this will happen to the other countries someday. And maybe, all the countries will make their own digital currencies just for the sake of not to replace with crypto. Like, no matter what we do, no matter how powerful the country they are, this could never happen and Bitcoin will remain decentralized.

[Lucius]

Have you ever thought about Bitcoin becoming centralized someday?

Not the way you imagine, but pause for a moment and think, isn't Bitcoin somewhat centralized even today? I do not mean exclusively where most crypto miners are located (which is difficult to determine precisely), but the fact that several globally positioned crypto exchanges hold several million BTC in their possession. Governments can always reach for a measure to seize all that BTC, for some reason they can invent at any given time.

Of course, the only way governments worldwide will be able to control 51% of Bitcoin's hashrate is if they unanimously agree on using Bitcoin is a "One World Currency". This may all sound crazy, but we cannot ignore it from happening in the future.

As others have already said, it is a little too late for anyone to play with these things, because not only about 90% of the BTC is mined, but in less than 10 years that percentage will reach 99%. In addition, it is inconceivable to me that the US, China, UK, India, or Russia will one day declare a common currency - all these countries are very fierce in defending their national interests, and among those interests is the domestic currency.

The EU has a common currency, but some countries that have been members for a long time do not want to give up their currencies (Sweden, Denmark, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic), so even though we are very pro-Bitcoin here, it is more than it is foolish to expect that such a scenario would materialize even in the distant future. I tend to believe that in some 150 to 200 years, money as such will cease to exist - but again, I may be watching too much science fiction (Star Trek)

They can if Chinese government, example takes over all the hashrate from miners in China. I don't think it will happen. They can not do such thing in dark ways and don't let the world know about that. They will slap on their faces by doing this.

But didn’t China ban all crypto miners a few months ago, and most of them left the country? Maybe they just want us to be convinced of it, and at the same time, they are planning a 51% attack?

[icopress]

Nah, in all seriousness the expense required to maintain that sort of share in the network would greatly outweigh the benefits. It would be a better idea to try, and convince the mining pools that they need to follow some sort of law which gives the government control of their pools, and even that is far fetched. [...]

It depends on what goals the leadership of a particular country will pursue.

But what you say, I think, is applicable only to capitalist countries. If a country like China really wants to harm the Bitcoin machine, then it will not spare resources to do it. But this is extremely unlikely, since such actions do not promise China either financial or strategic prospects. In addition, the moment is missed ... since significant mining capacities have already been exported from China, not to mention the fact that miners will not destroy their source of income.

[MIner1448]

I think its price will drop several times or maybe it will not be of interest to anyone at all, because the very concept of bitcoin and its history has always been based on its decentralization, I would say this is a formula for success, which should always be together with bitcoin.

[Leviathan.007]

They won't and they can't do such a thing to make bitcoin centralized, there will be much more and energy and power for it and that's what they don't have, the only thing they can do is to keep trying to ket control over their worthless fiat currencies and keep these currencies centralized otherwise they can just trying running away from bitcoin by banning bitcoin just like What they do in China because they are sure that they cannot make it centralized or take control over it which is still pointless.

[Heisenberg_Hunter]

Bitcoin on the whole is not just a currency but more than that. There lies economics, programming, mining, exchanges more and more so only if they are able to control all these, Bitcoin will become centralized. Nowadays, most of the famous centralized exchanges are demanding customers for KYC in order to trade to prevent any kind of mis-happenings like funding for drug trafficking, terrorism etc and in one form or the other these exchanges are indirectly controlled by various governments in the world.

Secondly, the Bitcoin source code is open source and controlling or centralizing the source code is near to impossible, so I'd rule out that one. Mining and Economics are already being controlled by various wealthy individuals and these wealthy individuals are already in control of the government as well (like Elon Musk is more powerful than a developing country itself). Through this we can infer that, just like Internet which is being controlled by wealthy popular companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple - The price action and Economics of Bitcoin will also be controlled by wealthy individuals but other than that the source code and the whole network will remain decentralized which is the fact to be considered.


El Salvador isn't a bigger country to say and they adopting a volatile currency for the transfer of goods wouldn't be more of a headline news to other countries. If a first world country is able to adopt (which will never likely happen as they will be coming up with their own centralized stablecoin instead), then centralization might be achieved at some point of time in future. Bitcoin becoming the Internet of Money is happening but it being the World currency will never happen anytime as 95% of the governments will end up in bringing their own stablecoin rather than adopting a volatile currency. Bitcoin will never rule out government currencies but will co-exist along with them in the Internet.

[Ucy]

Well, I have seen couple of reassuring messages on this forum that miners won't have that kind of power to affect the Bitcoin Network. That used to bother in the past hence my suggestion that decentralized mining should encouraged.

In regards to Centralized "Bitcoin", it can't be considered Bitcoin or true cryptocurrency any longer once it become centralized as it is meant to be decentralized by decentralized Global participants. It's as bad as being called a fiat currency once centralized by government. And there have been line drawn concerning the centralization of Bitcoin that no one can dare cross.

I do not believe a true Cryptocurrency can be used by government as One World Currency. It's going to be Fiat Currency because of the need to control it by Tyrannical World ruler

[stompix]

If they manage to control more than 51% of Bitcoin's hashrate, the cryptocurrency will effectively become centralized.

Nope, not really.
A 51% attack is what the name says, an attack and it's not a total control of the blockchain, one miner can choose to mine his chain in secret and when it's convenient for him to release his longer chain. But when this is over, it's over, the chain goes on and he must again mine in secret and release his longer chain back to the public over and over. But even if theoretically an attacker could do this continuously, he will not be able to control your coins, he will not be able to spend them.

Why would somebody do a thing like this which would obviously make the coin lose all value? There is no financial incentive for this, and the result would not be control, it would be destruction.

But I disagree with people saying that the movements will not waste money mining bitcoin..because...
Wait a f minute, just a month ago everyone was congratulating Bukele for starting his vulcanode and now mining is a waste of money? We have companies throwing millions in mining gear orders, the best revenue per TH is ages and suddenly mining is a waster of money? Common!!!

[hyudien]

What are your thoughts? Will Bitcoin be able to remain decentralized for the foreseeable future? Or not? What do you think will happen if governments fully embrace Bitcoin as the replacement of Fiat? Your input will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Very interesting, but as said before the government will care fully for the remaining percentage of mining which is currently almost 10%? obviously the government is just going to do its lot of alternatives to try to match Bitcoin even though it will never be the same.
There is always the possibility that the largest country will go on a massive expansion to adopt Bitcoin totally for 100% legal payments like El Salvador. Don't even use other alternative payments.

Let's see, that there is an opposition that is ready to launch an attack, El Salvador has it too and that will not be extinguished by the defense that the opposition does not like Bitcoin. This balance will make Bitcoin not fully centralized but will remain decentralized.

[Welsh]

It depends on what goals the leadership of a particular country will pursue.

But what you say, I think, is applicable only to capitalist countries. If a country like China really wants to harm the Bitcoin machine, then it will not spare resources to do it. But this is extremely unlikely, since such actions do not promise China either financial or strategic prospects. In addition, the moment is missed ... since significant mining capacities have already been exported from China, not to mention the fact that miners will not destroy their source of income.

China takes the alternative route by placing restrictions, and laws to prevent its use. That however, usually has a detrimental effect in the long term, once the people start getting tired of being censored. However, I think the point still stands, China wouldn't benefit attacking Bitcoin by taking the majority of network hash rate, since there's cheaper ways to try, and prevent people from using it.

It's one thing achieving the majority, but maintaining it for any period of time where it would contribute considerably to their goal would be rather unrealistic, and unsustainable. Hence why we haven't seen it, Bitcoin has many enemies, yet there hasn't been that many significant attacks. Bitcoin is getting stronger as time goes on due to increased adoption, the optimal time to attack was the first opportunity that they learned about it. Though, I guess back then it didn't have as much faith in it as it does today, though that's the counter balance really, it isn't going to be sustainable for anyone for a long period of time.

[KaliLinux]

I am not so sure that this ever become a real issue.  First off the United States isn't anywhere close to having bitcoin become any sort of currency for its citizens.  With the dollar being the worlds standard, they'd honestly be crazy to jeopardize that in any way.  Secondly by the time that they would enter the market I don't believe they would even be able to purchase that much in order to make it centralized in any way.  Just my 2.

I also agree with you here. With most world Governments still not giving that green light for cryptocurrencies to be traded freely in their countries, I don't think that they are likely possibility that something like this can happen, and with people like Hillary Clinton warning nation-states to pay attention to Cryptocurrency Crypto Has Potential for “Undermining the Role of the Dollar as the Reserve Currency” why would a country like the US even think of that as you said. I know people will continue to think if there is a likely possibility of some moves that some Government can do to control or bring down Bitcoin and other cryptos but I think this can be one of them.  

[giammangiato]

Have you ever thought about Bitcoin becoming centralized someday? The ever-growing mainstream adoption of Bitcoin worldwide will only lead us closer to such scenario. To our surprise, El Salvador became the first country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender. The more popular the cryptocurrency becomes, the more countries will be tempted to follow El Salvador's footsteps. Imagine governments making their own mining facilities, or even buying pre-established mining companies in order to gain a piece of the pie. If they manage to control more than 51% of Bitcoin's hashrate, the cryptocurrency will effectively become centralized. That, and the fact that they already control centralized exchanges is a very alarming situation for the future of Bitcoin.

Of course, the only way governments worldwide will be able to control 51% of Bitcoin's hashrate is if they unanimously agree on using Bitcoin is a "One World Currency". This may all sound crazy, but we cannot ignore it from happening in the future.

What are your thoughts? Will Bitcoin be able to remain decentralized for the foreseeable future? Or not? What do you think will happen if governments fully embrace Bitcoin as the replacement of Fiat? Your input will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Pure fantasy, it's not that easy to go and check bitcoin, maybe one way (MAYBE) if all the world agrees, I think such a thing is impossible. You cannot manage these flows, El Salvador has made good use of bitcoin, I have read that the president plans to create 20 schools to study cryptocurrencies.
Surely as some say they could create a new cryptocurrency or use existing ones and adopt them ... the world has changed and will continue to change, bitcoin for life

[mindrust]

I don't think bitcoin can become centralized. Even if the government manage to do what you just said, you can always use some other crypto. They cannot go after all of them. There will always be some independent/decentralized projects out there. My second choice would be monero probably. I think it would be a great replacement for bitcoin and it has an awesome feature which bitcoin lacks, anonymity.