If Bitcoin was centralized, would the price of BTC go down or up?

[Agbamoni]

The question is, upon hearing this news, how would the Bitcoin market react?

The answer is, Bitcoin will become just another traditional system of making transactions. Absolutely no difference from the already existing form of money, only that this time it is digital money. You need to understand that Bitcoin was not adopted because it is a digital form of money. Remember, before Bitcoin existed, there was a digital currency that tried but failed. It failed because it did not solve the problem of centralisation. If Bitcoin were centralised, I could beat my chest to say the technology would have crashed then.

[Rustam Meraj]

Not just the majority of the people are not bothered about privacy in this era, but most of the people who come to crypto after its first pump and create a massive trend are into it because of the profit; as their primary objective, the features of Bitcoin come second to them, and they really don't care about privacy, while those who do still try as much as they can to use DEX, while a few are fearful of regulation, which is why they are using centralised exchanges, the same regulations that are supposed to be the reason they choose Bitcoin over fiat.

It is, in fact, monumental irony, users flock to these controlled solutions since they are afraid to break any rules yet in doing so it takes control of this issue back to same centralized platform that Bitcoin was created to assist in eliminating. Using strict KYC, and retaining coins in CEX you are basically using what can be termed as Fiat 2.0. Your money can be frozen or tracked just like bank account would. True financial sovereignty can only be enjoyed through self custody and with use of decentralized tools, but as long as market is filled with number go up or make it go up greed and are using decentralized tools, original vision of Bitcoin will continue to be ignored by masses.

[legiteum]

The answer is, Bitcoin will become just another traditional system of making transactions. Absolutely no difference from the already existing form of money, only that this time it is digital money. You need to understand that Bitcoin was not adopted because it is a digital form of money. Remember, before Bitcoin existed, there was a digital currency that tried but failed. It failed because it did not solve the problem of centralisation. If Bitcoin were centralised, I could beat my chest to say the technology would have crashed then.

Yes, and in this case "traditional" means, "connected to the mainstream of investor wallets, i.e. 100x bigger than it is now. That sounds... kinda good if you are sitting on a lot of BTC .

But you are right, Bitcoin needed to be technically decentralized when it started because digital currencies were illegal back then. Bitcoin would have not made it if the ownership of the system could be traced back to just a few easily identified entities.... back then.

But today--and mostly thanks to Bitcoin--digital currencies are effectively legal everywhere, and there are many major products out there (many doing 100x more volume than Bitcoin) that have a more centralized architecture, and they are not being attacked by any government in any serious way.

In short, Bitcoin actually... made itself obsolete (from a technical standpoint).

[...]
True financial sovereignty can only be enjoyed through self custody and with use of decentralized tools, but as long as market is filled with number go up or make it go up greed and are using decentralized tools, original vision of Bitcoin will continue to be ignored by masses.

[I assume the poster mean "centralized' here]

Bitcoin has demonstrated that the demand for a truly clandestine tool for hiding one's money from their government is an extremely small audience. If Bitcoin truly limited itself to those people, BTC would probably still be trading at $.05 per coin.

The masses want and/or need two things:

1. A fast (milliseconds fast), very cheap (viz. free), means of doing online value transfers.

2. An investment they can later sell for more.

Bitcoin cannot do #1 because of architectural limitations unless it made the changes I talked about in the OP.

Bitcoin does do #2, which is why it's the way it's mostly used today.

[Mate2237]

If Bitcoin was centralized as most altcoins it will lose what makes it , Bitcoin and scares. The Idea behind Bitcoin is giving control from a centrally controlling Authority or system and giving it back to the individual. So Bitcoin will not be thesame thing again.bit will lose its appeal that has made it to be one of the fastest rising systems of storing value and even making payments across the world today.


Op if the cost of generating Bitcoin is free then it doesn't make any sense again. Nothing is actually free especially not Bitcoin that is considered a big asset today so removing the cost of mining Bitcoin will just be out of place.