Has Bitcoin Finally Lost Its Decentralization?

[MeGold666]

...but because we have different holders of Bitcoin ranging from individual, institutions and even exchange, it's going to be almost impossible for such thing to ever happen.

Current supply: 19,747,143 BTC

Of which 18,321,811 BTC corresponds to 92.78% of supply is held in 1.87% of wallets.

Source:
https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-addresses.html
http://addresses.loyce.club/

[legiteum]

Bitcoin has not lost it's centralization--it's the only truly "decentralized" digital currency in the sense that a central entity could not easily take control of it (although it's not completely impossible, just very hard and very unlikely to happen).

All other cryptocurrencies are "centralized" in the sense that they can be, relatively easily, controlled by a single entity e.g. a government that wished to order it to do something. (This is due to them being a PoS model, or simply a smaller network that could more easily be taken over with a 51% attack).

Bitcoin's market cap today is about $1.1T. The total market cap of digital currencies is a little over $2T.

In other words, almost half of today's market, as defined by individual investors voting with their money, is not decentralized.

And on top of that, most individual holders of Bitcoin hold it using a broker or an app--a centralized entity that holds their Bitcoin keys (or more often, simply a database entry connoting their holding), meaning that most consumers don't use Bitcoin in a centralized way.

So Bitcoin hasn't lost it's decentralization, the broader market for digital currencies has. Consumers have shown us that they do not care about decentralization--all they seem to want is a meme investment instrument, not a hedge against government intervention or all of the stuff Bitcoin was founded to do.

Satoshi invented a system that was very useful and interesting to... thousands of people across the world. Then millions more people started using that same invention for something he never intended: speculation.

(And can somebody explain why you should use the blockchain architecture for a system that is effectively controlled by a single entity? That sounds completely pointless to me).

[MeGold666]

Bitcoin has not lost it's centralization--it's the only truly "decentralized" digital currency in the sense that a central entity could not easily take control of it (although it's not completely impossible, just very hard and very unlikely to happen).
...lot of gibberish...

It's not the only truly decentralized project.

[serjent05]

Thats a question we all would like to know. Has Bitcoin been finally sold out to big businesses, corporations, investment groups and even countries?? In the last few years these things have resonated louder than ever. Investment groups buying thousands and even millions worth of Bitcoin at a time, countries even making the once comical like currency its very own currency for everyday life. So the question once again is asked... Has Bitcoin Finally Lost It's Decentralization? Let us know of your thoughts and comments on this and thanks again.

Don't be confused with centralized company integrating the Bitcoin network into their service and Bitcoin decentralized network.  They are two different things.  Not because Bitcoin is integrated to centralized system, Bitcoin is now centralized.   Bitcoin with its decentralized nature is rooted in its Blockchain technology.  Unless this technology is turned into centralized blockchain technology, then it can be said as centralized, other than that Bitcoin will always be a decentralized network.

[alastantiger]

Thats a question we all would like to know. Has Bitcoin been finally sold out to big businesses, corporations, investment groups and even countries?? In the last few years these things have resonated louder than ever. Investment groups buying thousands and even millions worth of Bitcoin at a time, countries even making the once comical like currency its very own currency for everyday life. So the question once again is asked... Has Bitcoin Finally Lost It's Decentralization? Let us know of your thoughts and comments on this and thanks again.

Bitcoin hasn't lost it's decentralization because you can use Bitcoin in the way it was made without any problems. You can buy Bitcoin too from anywhere and transfer it to your self constodial wallet and have full control of everything without it being frozen or you get restrictions from sending them out of your wallet as you would have had if you didn't have control of your wallet. Bitcoin is getting wide adoption hence all the things happening is making it look like it is getting centralized. Big money from big players are getting into the market because they're getting to know about Bitcoin and they are investing with force and introducing other things like ETF and it's bringing more investors into the market. They haven't centralized Bitcoin and they wouldn't be able to do that if they wanted to do so because Bitcoin is built differently and they are interested in making money not to control.

[MeGold666]

You may be confusing bitcoin with fundamentally flawed altcoins such as ethereum.

This is one of the reasons why the Proof of Stake (PoS) protocol is fundamentally flawed. If someone controls a large number of coins of a PoS coin they gain a lot of power in that chain. Good news is that Bitcoin is using Proof of Work (PoW) algorithm not the flawed PoS that some shitcoins use. Which means it doesn't matter how much coins any entity has, it gives them no power over Bitcoin. The only thing they can do with large amounts of bitcoin is to influence the market and that's pretty much it.

This is true and I would be really worried as Bitcoin holder if it switched to PoS.

...Bitcoin is built differently and they are interested in making money not to control.

Control = Money, Big players are able to pump and dump price - the more bitcoins they control the more they can control the price.
Their wet dream is of course Bitcoin becoming PoS.

[Hamza2424]

Hmm, so here you are talking about the Supply stakes of Bitcoin, TBH most of the institutional investors are seasonal investors, and institutes cant afford to hold a large portion of their assets in a volatile asset as for institutes with good returns stability is what matters. At the same time, investors like you and me with some money and investors from the upper class hold patience to invest in Bitcoin over the long term. In my view, if you really think Bitcoin's supply is being controlled by institutes, keep in mind that just an event of the particular timeline.

Sooner or later the supply will continue to flow under the hands of regular users. Bitcoin cant be centralized until something big from the regulatory side happens. TBH I'm relaxed as I know nothing like centralization can happen with Bitcoin anytime soon.

[MeGold666]

Sooner or later the supply will continue to flow under the hands of regular users.

Not gonna happen with the HODL narration, for the flow to go it would need to be used for everyday purchases.

As you can see in my little forum survey, most users rather HODL:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5507098.0

[BlackHatCoiner]

Big corporations buying billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin is a signal that it's successfully entering the system as a trojan horse.

Absolutely no. Bitcoin has not lost its decentralization. In fact, I consider it more decentralized than ever, because after all these years, we had forks popping up, mining being attacked by states every single year, and we even experienced cultural wars once in 2017, and against these odds, it's stronger than ever. It is proven to be immune to human corruption.

[Zaguru12]

Thats a question we all would like to know. Has Bitcoin been finally sold out to big businesses, corporations, investment groups and even countries?? In the last few years these things have resonated louder than ever. Investment groups buying thousands and even millions worth of Bitcoin at a time, countries even making the once comical like currency its very own currency for everyday life. So the question once again is asked... Has Bitcoin Finally Lost It's Decentralization? Let us know of your thoughts and comments on this and thanks again.

Bitcoin is decentralized and bitcoin will be decentralized except if there is censorship in the way miners treat it. First off if you’re worried about the number of users holding bitcoin base on the stats that we see around of how institutions like ETF approved institutions buy crypto i would say you shouldn’t be too worried as the entire bitcoin doesn’t even belongs to them, but rather for the investors under them, although this numbers are somewhat misleading to me sometimes. Away from institutions there is a around 52,395,382 address holding bitcoin according to LoyceV.Club, yes they can be one person having more than one address but still it shows how disperse the whole thing is.

Secondly decentralization doesn’t mean holders been plenty like that but also the way the blockchain works, there is no centralized body that would censor your transactions Like stopping you from buying or selling, that’s why there many nodes who work together to keep the network decentralized, no matter the amount of bitcoin an entity holds they can’t bypass this system protocols, that’s decentralization to me

[skarais]

Thats a question we all would like to know. Has Bitcoin been finally sold out to big businesses, corporations, investment groups and even countries?? In the last few years these things have resonated louder than ever. Investment groups buying thousands and even millions worth of Bitcoin at a time, countries even making the once comical like currency its very own currency for everyday life. So the question once again is asked... Has Bitcoin Finally Lost It's Decentralization? Let us know of your thoughts and comments on this and thanks again.

No, bitcoin will not lose its decentralization even though there are many institutions until the government owns it. The government can only control bitcoin users, but they cannot control bitcoin even though they have thousands of bitcoin in their wallets. They can make rules that will force you under their control, but again they can't control bitcoin.

[Agbe]

Op your explanation is not yet clear for me to know that bitcoin has lost it decentrality. And if bitcoin must lost it decentrality then they so call capitalist would have access to the bitcoin server and it blockchain and change many things difficult for the ordinary people to access or get bitcoin easily then I will know that bitcoin has loss it decentralisation. As it is now the only thing which I know that bitcoin is losing is the real p2p of using it to purchase things digitally and services but that has not been yet realised and once that has been realised then fiat will be weakened gradually.

[CryptoHeadlineNews]

Thats a question we all would like to know. Has Bitcoin been finally sold out to big businesses, corporations, investment groups and even countries?? In the last few years these things have resonated louder than ever. Investment groups buying thousands and even millions worth of Bitcoin at a time, countries even making the once comical like currency its very own currency for everyday life. So the question once again is asked... Has Bitcoin Finally Lost It's Decentralization? Let us know of your thoughts and comments on this and thanks again.

The truth of the fact is that Bitcoin has not lost it's decentralized nature as a digital currency, but what happens is just that more private individuals and governments today has picked more interest in Bitcoin than ever, which gives them the ability to slightly affect it's price due to the large amount of Bitcoin they owned (i.e whares), whereby if they sell or buy just as Tesla did, it's slightly to affect it's price. But however, with the help of decentralized wallets and exchanges, it's still very possible for people to anonymously use Bitcoin, whereby they can still have full control over their funds. Hence, on that note, it shows Bitcoin has not completely lost it's decentralized nature.

[PrivacyG]

The only way it can be 'Centralized' is if Institutions and Banks get a hold of most of the Circulating Supply and then try to get more and more while keeping all the Balance in a close circuit.  This would take however a LOT of Money, a LOT of effort and, ultimately, I believe that we, the people who are using Bitcoin as it is meant to be, would move on through a Hard Fork.

It has not lost its Decentralization yet.  And I do not think it will, but I do believe it will end up being artificially Centralized through a strategy similar to the one I wrote above.  But even in that scenario, this still means that Bitcoiners who do not give up their Bitcoin to this 'close circuit' would continue to have Freedom of choice and can continue using Bitcoin just like now.

[MeGold666]

I think most will agree that Bitcoin is still decentralized but the growing centralization in the mining industry is a bit concerning.

Also if Bitcoin ever gets to the point where it's development is influenced by government laws and not according to the public demand, we can say it's centralized.

Another concern is the dependence on centralized shitcoin called Tether.

[Z-tight]

The BTC network is censorship resistant and that applies in every situation, big corporations and countries can buy BTC whenever they want to and in whatever amount they want, we cannot do anything when certain institutions buy BTC, they are free to.

However, owing BTC does not mean you own the network, a lot of us here own BTC, but we don't control anything about BTC. I know this institutions own a larger amount of BTC, but it doesn't still give them control over the network, at the most they can only manipulate the price of BTC.

[BlackHatCoiner]

The only way it can be 'Centralized' is if Institutions and Banks get a hold of most of the Circulating Supply and then try to get more and more while keeping all the Balance in a close circuit.

Wouldn't that make the rest of the coins extremely valuable? Reminds me of gold in the early 20th century (wasn't born yet, though!), when the overwhelming majority of it was confiscated by governments all across the world. Gold became even more scarce and valuable, even when technology advanced, and its supply inflated.

Unless the governments confiscated all the bitcoins, people will continue treating it as the king of currencies. But, it's not gonna happen, because people are fallible and have boating accidents.

[MeGold666]

But, it's not gonna happen, because people are fallible and have boating accidents.

You cannot have boating accident with Bitcoin, they are made out of unsinkable shinny material that's easy to locate by the government.

If you want to avoid boating accident don't buy this cheaply made boats from Monero company, they are known to sink even on a good weather 

[hyudien]

It depends on which side you want the answer from? control over the amount or the system? if now institutions have more bitcoins and they control the circulation in the market, when and where they will sell then bitcoin is now centralized in ownership. However, if we talk about the system where Bitcoin still uses PoW so that no one, government, institution or individual can tamper with it then Bitcoin remains decentralized until now. Now if you divert bitcoin like altcoin then please understand that altcoin uses the PoS system, whenever, wherever and as the developer pleases press the shutdown button.

[uneng]

Decentralization isn't lost, because Bitcoin remains a decentralized cryptocurrency which can be used in a decentralized way since there are at least two people willing to transact this way (through P2P). However, it's true it has become really hard to adopt Bitcoin in a decentralized way, because regulations have been advancing too far to smash investors' autonomy, while centralized parties have been acquiring large portions of Bitcoin to have huge influence over Bitcoin market.

This decentralized system isn't perfect, but it is the best we have available so far. It would be healthier for the market if Bitcoin became adopted by a larger number of people in smaller amounts, so the influence of the whales and big corporations would decrease dramatically. Compared to the early days of Bitcoin the situation isn't that bad too, considering Bitcoin price has been already much more volatile than it is right now.