Bitcoin decentralization debate

[Trawda]

Hello bitcoin community

I am a fan of Bitcoin, so I have a friend who introduced him to Bitcoin and explained to him the great advantages that Bitcoin has, especially decentralization and privacy.

My friend is one of the people who believe in conspiracy theory, so he doubts that Bitcoin is decentralized and believes that there is a party or country behind it.

I tried to explain to him repeatedly that this is impossible and that Bitcoin is completely decentralized, that no one owns Bitcoin and no one controls it, and that any change that occurs on the network must To gain the consensus of the community, but he nevertheless insisted that he does not believe that Bitcoin is decentralized, only because he does not believe that there is decentralization in anything.

How can I convince my friend that Bitcoin is indeed decentralized?

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[ranochigo]

Bitcoin is decentralized to a certain extent. There is no doubt that mining pools and the bigger economic actors has a say and influence over how the direction of Bitcoin should go. You can see it across the many conflicts that we've had throughout the history of Bitcoin. However, the extent of their influence only goes so far. Each individual in Bitcoin has their own say over what they want Bitcoin to be; if they don't want a certain aspect of Bitcoin but the rest of the network wants it, they can use a fork of it that follows the older rules or an alternative path.

It is very much akin to a system of actors where game theory applies heavily in the decision making of Bitcoin. No single entity can control Bitcoin, and everyone has a say in what they want Bitcoin to be. However, it is centralized by the fact that you still have pools and hordes of miners that are aligned with their own goals. That is inevitable.

[Poker Player]

I wouldn't waste too much time with people who tend to believe in conspiracy theories. In the end, rational arguments do not convince them.

In this case, simply by him studying a bit about what bitcoin is and how it works, if he wasn't too narrow minded, he would understand. There is some centralization, as ranochigo comments, but compare that with how almost all shitcoins or the fiat system work, and you will see that bitcoin is much more decentralized than these.

[franky1]

i am a bitcoin maximalist. however i am a realist, meaning i do not fear speaking of the bad side to make people fully aware of risks and facts of bitcoin ( i dont do the fluffy utopian dream crap)

a. individuals do not have a vote.. due to a trick invented in 2017 called "backward compatibility" users do not become part of a vote of which direction bitcoin goes, they do not need to have to upgrade their node to trigger a new protocol change activation. that option has been taken away from the wider community.

b. miners/mining pools do not write the code/changes/proposals. its the devs not the miners. infact any and all asics do not even have a hard drive to store the blockchain or bitcoin protocol code. all a miner does is hash a block header hash. that it

c. mining pools manage miners and mining pools can if the devs allow it do a flag day event to allow miners a choice to vote in an activation. or not. however devs can activate or code a change that just activates at a certain date no matter what

d. the devs have control over the change of direction of bitcoin. and they have many tricks up their sleeve. they can mandate a new proposal to activate where by in conjunction with partnerships with ECONOMIC NODES (those run by most famous services) choose which path to follow making users and mining pools follow as sheep, else not have their funds seen transact with those services if they dont comply with the rules the services use.

over the last 8 years we have seen a centralisation of a group of 6 main decider devs called core maintainers. they have moderation control to decide whos code even gets popularised in discussion or ignored, and what gets given the privileged to be merged into the release candidates of the sole proposal making reference client

even previous lead maintainer devs have admitted when they retire that core have become like their namesake a central point of failure which should decentralise.


..
that being said. your funds on your key belong to whomever has access to that key. so as long as you own that key and not told anyone. no one can steal those funds. however the small risk of possibility is if some altcoin scammer sues cored evs and wins to open a back door to remove funds ownership without signature proof.. or some government sues the core devs to make a code alteration to ignore certain addresses or blacklist addresses from being allowed to transfer coins. where governments can do the same to the economic nodes too (famous well used services such as regulated exchanges) then thing can change, but most of the time these abusive changes occur from the core dev involvement first then the wider community second, third fourth place

the previous paragraph is objectionably a small risk to individuals. but whilst certain groups are shouting "blame asic owners if things go bad" the truth is to keep an eye on core devs code decisions in concert with economic nodes allegiances where they change things for the benefit of corporations more then individuals, and or just brutalise the rules for their personal internal reasons, and/or if any legal actions are held against them for governance/regulation reasons to brutalise the rules

there is no single individual/group that has all-access to the blockchain data or everyones keys to just delete the blockchain or sign their funds away from them. the data is safe from any individual, group, entity, corporation, government abuse.. however the future code changes are subject to decisions done by core devs. so they are the ones to keep an eye on, review and scrutinise. and not be blindly trusting of.. there are some code changes that can be added(and have been) to cause issues for users

[sesterceshop]

You could tell them the network is spread out across the world with nodes in over 200+ countries, which makes it very difficult for a single entity to take control of the entire network.

You can also say that it's open source, so it's extremely hard for anyone to secretly encode malicious code into the protocol. These are just a few strong arguments as to why Bitcoin is decentralized.

Or maybe your friend already knows he's lost the argument, but just doesn't want to admit that to you? There are a lot of people like that

[Fivestar4everMVP]

Well, for such type of people, I do not give myself much stress trying to convince them, i will just allow him to wallow in his unbelieve, i believe he at least own a smart phone  and has some internet connection, allow him to do the research himself, if at the end of the day, he still wont believe that bitcoin is fully decentralized,, then that is his cup of tea, if his unbelieve is going to make him not to invest in bitcoin, that is his missed opportunity as well, we have many of his type on this forum today who are full or regret, simply because they came across bitcoin years ago when bitcoin was worth almost nothing, they had the resources to invest but didn't simply because they did not believe bitcoin will worth anything in the future, they came back years later to discover that bitcoin is now a currency with multi billions of dollars in market capitalization.

So just allow anyone who refuses to believe, at least, not like anyone is going to pay you if you find a way to convince him or any other person who have refused to believe.

[blckhawk]

I wouldn't waste too much time with people who tend to believe in conspiracy theories. In the end, rational arguments do not convince them.

I agree but that doesn't mean you have to ignore them, yes some of them are absurd on paper but when some of them are proven, we always end up regretting not believing about it. Remember the conspiracy that the US government is involved in funding rebellions in Central and South America? Turned out to be true and they're funded through drug trafficking, they even discredited the investigative reporter that uncovered the conspiracy and even staged his suicide. It's a bit of both though, either you're pretentious about your argument because you don't know how to properly argue your points and you end up berating the person who talks about those conspiracy thinking you're high and mighty or you're just blissfully ignorant.

[Despairo]

Whales who have a lot Bitcoin doesn't entirely mean they control 100% of Bitcoin price.

Mining companies which have a huge hash rate doesn't entirely mean they able to perform 51% attack or prioritizing their transactions to be included in the next block by paying cheaper fees.

Government which ban their citizen to not buy, sell or hold Bitcoin doesn't entirely mean they able to stop every citizen to not buy, sell or hold Bitcoin since they have an another option.

So, which part is look centralized and would stop Bitcoin? none.

[BenCodie]

Hello bitcoin community

I am a fan of Bitcoin, so I have a friend who introduced him to Bitcoin and explained to him the great advantages that Bitcoin has, especially decentralization and privacy.

My friend is one of the people who believe in conspiracy theory, so he doubts that Bitcoin is decentralized and believes that there is a party or country behind it.

I tried to explain to him repeatedly that this is impossible and that Bitcoin is completely decentralized, that no one owns Bitcoin and no one controls it, and that any change that occurs on the network must To gain the consensus of the community, but he nevertheless insisted that he does not believe that Bitcoin is decentralized, only because he does not believe that there is decentralization in anything.

How can I convince my friend that Bitcoin is indeed decentralized?

He is not wrong that a country or a group of citizens from a certain country/corporation is probably behind Bitcoin, with the motive to either control the people in the long term, or to bring freedom and alleviate us from the tyranny of central banking. Which one is actually quite hard to say right now.

Yes, Bitcoin is decentralized to an extent. There is still a power hierarchy within the ecosystem which gives more influence to those who either own more coins or have control over hashing power. It's not flawlessly decentralized though it is in the sense that the ledger can not be modified, and probably won't be able to be modified with the current power structure.

Though, to criticize bitcoin and to still use the fiat money system is quite contradictory. Fiat will always be worse than Bitcoin, even if there are ulterior motives behind Bitcoin that we are not aware of.

[Findingnemo]

How can I convince my friend that Bitcoin is indeed decentralized?

By saying that he should understand what is the concept of decentralized.

And FYI, even if someone owns 21 million bitcoins still it is decentralized because he can control how he can use it but can never take control over how the network runs because it is entirely different and it's not based on how much stake one has like other shitcoins.

I won't waste my time by convincing anyone if they are not ready to accept the facts over conspiracy theories.

[dzungmobile]

How can I convince my friend that Bitcoin is indeed decentralized?

Exit the talk with your friend.

Let's say different. How can your friend convince you to keep educating him about Bitcoin?

If you are not convinced by your friend that your time spent to talk with him is not worthy, why should you continue to make any effort to talk with him?

In fact, your friend does not need you to understand that Bitcoin is decentralized. If he are not deeply in conspiracy, he will easily find facts with search engines.

[Crypt0Gore]

What you believe is what matters, not what someone is saying, have you done your own homework on Bitcoin? If No it's better you should do your own research, I have done mine and that's why I am able to know that Bitcoin is truly decentralized, privacy? Not really because privacy belongs to privacy coins like Xmr, Bitcoin is not a privacy coin it's a decentralized coin, there is a different between privacy and decentralized.

Like I've said, you only need to enlighten yourself, by doing your own research on these things, there is no greater understanding than seeking for one, not relying on what others have to say, they might be right or wrong, but it's left for you to find your own answer.

[DooMAD]

any change that occurs on the network must To gain the consensus of the community

Because certain trolls on the forum have peculiar definitions of the words "consensus" and "community" (and also believe it means they have to personally approve of any changes before they can go ahead), it's probably best to pin down what this means in practice.  

If you help secure the chain by mining or running a non-mining node to validate and relay transactions, you have a limited amount of influence over consensus.  The code you are running will help determine what the rules of the network are.  Developers only have influence over consensus if people decide to run any new code which allows rules to change.  If any developers were to write code with rule changes which didn't meet the approval of those securing the blockchain, users can simply choose not to run that code.  If no one runs code, it doesn't do anything.  

When anyone claims that developers control consensus, they clearly don't understand this fact.  Or, they do understand it and claim users are merely "sheep" and "fanboys" who run the code without thinking, because they have no real arguments.  Please ignore such obvious trolling.  Some people just can't accept when their ideas were weak and no one shared their view of what Bitcoin ought to be.

Some believe consensus means that everyone has to agree.  This is false.  If a majority of network participants decide to move on, they can and will leave those who resist behind.  If a small minority were able to block or filibuster proposed changes, it would give individuals too much power and pose a threat to decentralisation.  If anyone tries to tell you that changes to the protocol can only occur if they personally agree with it, understand that their mindset is dangerous and poses a serious risk to network governance.  Dictators have no power here and we must always be vigilant to ensure this remains the case.

i am a bitcoin maximalist totalitarian. however i am a realist completely delusional, meaning i do not fear speaking of the bad side lies to make people fully aware of risks and facts of completely made-up nonsense about bitcoin

FTFY.

[joniboini]

only because he does not believe that there is decentralization in anything.

If you really want to spend time arguing with him, maybe you can focus on this point first. If his fundamental beliefs can't be changed then it's really useless even if you bring miners or nodes decentralization and so on. It's kinda useless if he just says "well, there's nothing decentralized in this universe" every time you talk to him. On top of that, maybe his understanding of Bitcoin is already different from yours, so there's no middle ground to debate on.

I do agree with others that doing something like this is just a waste of time. The result probably won't change that much regardless of what method or argument you bring to the table.

[Dunamisx]

My friend is one of the people who believe in conspiracy theory, so he doubts that Bitcoin is decentralized and believes that there is a party or country behind it.

Don't blame him much because he does not know anything and yet but willing to learn, such people cannot believe there is a way to achieve decentralization than the normal centralized way the government and other institutions controls us abd take custody of what belong to us

I tried to explain to him repeatedly that this is impossible and that Bitcoin is completely decentralized, that no one owns Bitcoin and no one controls it, and that any change that occurs on the network must To gain the consensus of the community

We don't know how much you also know about bitcoin to be able to teach someone to fully understand what you're passing across to him, i hope you understand that this aspect of teaching is not everyone that can do it perfectly to convince others the way we want except they just decided to take a look at what we are saying willingly from their mind.

How can I convince my friend that Bitcoin is indeed decentralized?

Don't convinced him, time will do so, let him see such of your result than your words, he will change his thoughts by himself with time, though it might have been too late then for him.

[Agbe]

Op first of all you have to re-edit your thread and make some corrections because base on what you are trying to say there are mistakes found in the op. Go and re-read the thread and see the errors. Then when talk of the decentralism of bitcoin, we are talking about the devolution of central or authority control which allows the owners of the wallets to control their funds and that is true but the only part whales or major bitcoin influential people control is the price, now on that they could determine by when the price can go up and down through their purchasing power. Op leave your conspiracy theorist friend and let your investment power compel him to believe you. That is let your prosperity influence him to join.

[ImThour]

> Bitcoin is decentralized and believes that there is a party or country behind it.

Bitcoins is decentralized, that's true. Nothing wrong with that. It's also anonymous, and also provides you functionalities to be your own bank. What else?

There is a party or group behind the development of Bitcoin? Who knows. I just know that Hal Finney was the one who developed Bitcoin using Satoshi Nakamoto as his pseudo name.

[Blitzboy]

You know, convincing a person about the decentralized nature of Bitcoin can be a challenging task indeed, especially if they're stubborn on a belief system thats inclined toward the idea of conspiracies. Conspiracy beliefs are, after all, so strong, so pervasive, arent they?

In fact, Bitcoin's decentralized, isnt it? Try telling him about the peer-to-peer transactions. You can explain, in simple words, how decentralization in Bitcoin works; maybe use some examples of other things in life that are decentralized but not necessarily linked to Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a network, run by the community, like a community garden, but not really a garden, you know?

The more technical aspects of Bitcoin like consensus algorithms and the proof of work might be too much for him. Maybe try some diagrams or pictures; people sometimes understand better with pictures. Show him, but dont really show him, the decentralized nature of Bitcoin. Its really decentralized, isnt it?

[Wind_FURY]

Hello bitcoin community

I am a fan of Bitcoin, so I have a friend who introduced him to Bitcoin and explained to him the great advantages that Bitcoin has, especially decentralization and privacy.

My friend is one of the people who believe in conspiracy theory, so he doubts that Bitcoin is decentralized and believes that there is a party or country behind it.

That "party" WAS Satoshi. He has left since Gavin Andresen announced that he was going to the C.I.A. headquarters in Langley.

Plus the network was always decentralized after that time when more and more full nodes started joining the network. Tell you friend to read this blog, https://medium.com/hackernoon/bitcoin-miners-beware-invalid-blocks-need-not-apply-51c293ee278b

I tried to explain to him repeatedly that this is impossible and that Bitcoin is completely decentralized, that no one owns Bitcoin and no one controls it, and that any change that occurs on the network must To gain the consensus of the community, but he nevertheless insisted that he does not believe that Bitcoin is decentralized, only because he does not believe that there is decentralization in anything.

How can I convince my friend that Bitcoin is indeed decentralized?

Paraphrase Satoshi - "If you don't believe me or don't get it, I don't have time to try to convince you, sorry".

It's his problem.

[mindrust]

How can I convince my friend that Bitcoin is indeed decentralized?

You don't have to convince anybody. Why do you want to convince him anyway? If one thing I learned in this life, that it is almost impossible to convince someone to do/believe something. The harder you try to convince your friend, the more he will think that you are retarded and he will hate you because of it. Is it worth to lose a friend over a financial debate? If you like your friend don't even talk about money when you are together. Talk about girls, vacations, music etc. Money is the #1 reason that makes people hate each other.