[Question] Bitcoin More decentralized than Ethereum?

[DapanasFruit]

While am also a big fan of Ethereum and I fully admire the story of Vitalik Buterin with the fact that ETH is the second on the line after BTC, there is no question that in terms of decentralization, it is BTC that got it all the time. Satoshi Nakamoto understood well the whole process and seemed to me secure the whole network as it plays its role into the future. But of course,  with its PoW algorithm, there are those concern with the immense use of power to make things work in its mining aspect - something which PoS has remedied on.

[adaseb]

Bitcoin is definately more decentralized because ETH has more of its POS stakers which are held by the top whales pretty much. Like the above poster said that 64% of staked ETH is held by 5 different individuals. This shows you how unfair the distribution is. Its very expensive to stake ETH yourself due to the large amount of ETH needed.

WIth BTC anyone can mine, even with a laptop, there is no min requirement. You can see its mined in many countries around the world. It requires electricity which is a value commodity and its what makes mining expensive so it makes it secure.

[Wind_FURY]

But whether all miners get together and carry out a 51% attack or all validators get together for a 51% attack is basically the same, it is possible with both

Although on the surface it looks the same, it's actually not. Proof Of Stake is consensus where a Cabal of wealthy holders of the coin are in charge, a consensus inside the system. POW is consensus that's unrestrained by the system.

From what I understand, POS is no different from traditional consensus made up of Oligarchs. They HODL most of the system's wealth, then therefore control the system.

[pooya87]

Technically, it is. Bitcoin never had ICO and there were no premined sales. But there is a nuance. But what about the early miners and investors, now called whales, who mined, bought, or otherwise accumulated a lot of BTC? Unequal distribution among the owners of bitcoin still exists (ever since), which is not entirely correct from the point of view of decentralization.

You can't even begin to compare premine with early adopters because there is a difference between an unequal distribution and unfair distribution.

As a rule of thumb if you can find a single unit in a cryptocurrency that YOU couldn't mine, that cryptocurrency has an unfair distribution. But if you can find some coins that YOU chose not to mine that is an unequal distribution not unfair.

That is why premine is unfair, the creator of that shitcoin is the only one who is capable of printing those coins making it unfair and centralized.
One being early or having invested more than others doesn't make it unfair, it just makes it unequal because there was no restrictions or preference being enforced on anybody preventing them from mining any of the bitcoins in circulation starting from block #1 and the very first block reward.

They even roll back and forked the coin. Ethereum isn't even in their original chain, Ethereum Classic is.

With Bitcoin, too, not everything is so simple. What about Bitcoin Cash? It's also a forked coin. At this point, there are similarities between ETH and BTC, right?

Again you are making a wrong comparison.
The fork that ethereum had was to roll back blocks, which is to effectively remove one of the main principles of cryptocurrencies called immutability of their blockchain. So ETC still is immutable while ETH is not.
On the other hand things like bcash are copies of bitcoin that have nothing to do with bitcoin. They just copied the code and the chain (history) to create a new coin.

[aysg76]

You are making wrong comparison here and when a coin is running on PoS network how come we except decentralised concept from it? The validator with more financial power has more control over the network while in bitcoin it's not the case as miners run computation to find the target as nobody has control over network so can we compare them both?

One is fair distribution while the other is just giving more power to someone with more finances and bitcoin runs on complete decentralised concept while ETH has big whales who have control and Vitalik would never loose control of his network.

On the other hand things like bcash are copies of bitcoin that have nothing to do with bitcoin. They just copied the code and the chain (history) to create a new coin.

There are many coins which are just copies of it like many people confuse wBTC also with BTC which is just another shit token on ETH blockchain and have nothing to do with bitcoin at all but people without even checking just make assumptions they are same but it's not the case.

[KiaKia]

I thought this topic was from a very long time, until I checked the date and I was like, why even ask this question? Because it's not needed, we all know that Ethereum is no longer a proof of work crypto currency and now you comparing Ethereum with Bitcoin feels unfair, the only PoW coin that's still standing is Bitcoin, so case should be closed, Ethereum moved on from Pow a long time ago and it's not coming back from that, even before Ethereum switched to PoS I believe it's not Decentralized like Bitcoin but the finally switch even make things more clearer.

This is not a worthy comparison between the two.

[Texac]

While am also a big fan of Ethereum and I fully admire the story of Vitalik Buterin with the fact that ETH is the second on the line after BTC, there is no question that in terms of decentralization, it is BTC that got it all the time. Satoshi Nakamoto understood well the whole process and seemed to me secure the whole network as it plays its role into the future. But of course,  with its PoW algorithm, there are those concern with the immense use of power to make things work in its mining aspect - something which PoS has remedied on.

Pos does not fix anything, it simply makes ETH and other coins more centralized.  and the fact is that when mining bitcoin has energy consumption as well as emissions but will be nothing, insignificant compared to other industries in the world.  once you have invested in bitcoin, don't let the fake news released by the government influence you, they always say bitcoin pollutes the environment and bitcoin is a tool for criminals...all just because they hate bitcoin.

[Ucy]

Ethereum ceased to become a fully decentralized cryptocurrency the moment it switch from PoW (a true Consensus Mechanism) to immoral/meaningless PoS.

The issue is that Ethereum now requires Network participants to have huge amount of money in form of stakes to take part in full Network consensus... while Bitcoin only requires participants to run full nodes to take part in full Network consensus. What ethereum did is like asking your fellow citizens to download full copy of your country's constitution plus have huge amount of money in order to take part in full governance. Bitcoin requires just having a copy of the constitution to take part in full governance. Judging by this, which between the two do you think will be more decentralized?


It's Important to Note that:
In Proof of Work, Work = Mining. Miners or workers need to prove the work done to nodes before their work is accepted and reward given. Everyone takes part in this, making the network more decentralized.

In Proof of Stake, Stake = Money. Stakers need to prove they own huge amounts of money before they can take part in full network consensus. So you can't be part of full consensus if you don't have the required amount of stake. Very few people qualify for this making the network less decentralized.