Topic: Bitcoin being decentralised an illusion? (Read 378 times)

correct, they can influence bitcoin only but they don't have enough power to shut it down as its decentralised,  i don't know why there's a bunch of people who still really claiming that bitcoin isn't decentralised wherein despite it's very obvious tho. In fact if government had an access in bitcoin for sure it's now fully down and there's no improvement in it. But see what always happen, bitcoin is totally free in the market there's a problem only when manipulation occur.

I think OP needs a little more research about Bitcoin and Bitcoin technology. Just keep in mind, Bitcoin will exist as a decentralized cryptocurrency ever technically. Decentralization and manipulation aren't the same things anyway. Pumping and dumping price is a part of the manipulation, doesn't related to decentralization. China bans Bitcoin mining, does it affect Bitcoin technology? No, it won't happen. Just price was dropped due to FUD. The centralized government wouldn't ban Bitcoin from using it. But they would mark it as illegal assets which would affect only the price for some time. Bitcoin technology and price history are fully different things.

How do we know that China didn't take that 120 exa-hash in mining power and is ready to hijack Bitcoin at any moment (51% attack)? They could be manipulating it right now, at least to some degree.

The best example that Bitcoin is well designed and decentralized was seen a few weeks ago. When the Chinese government shut down miners in the country virtually overnight, the mining output of around 200 exa-hash had collapsed to around 80 exa-hash. But the network adapted very quickly. There were no block generation outages or other problems. Only the price had fallen, but that has nothing to do with decentralization but with speculation. In the meantime, the exa-hash size has increased again, as the miners have moved out. For me this was a good proof how well decentralized and stable the whole system is, even if a big country bans mining activities.

To kill bitcoin you will need to kill all the live nodes with whatever back up data people have. How it's not decentralized?

It's an old theory yeah but I really don't think the government's that smart. If he was government, then he was acting independently or a few of them were doing it together as funded by governments. I mean there are layers upon layers of state funding and all parallel and oblivious to each other. So if it happened, it was technical but never intended.

There is SOME control of the system for sure, but it still beats every other system out there.

Being Decentralised is its cognitive ability to actualise the true reality of Peer to Peer not essentially the market value, it censors the identity of users. The market movement doesn't in any case make it a Centralised asset. If it is the case it could have been banned by many authorities. However, it still maintains the pseudonym of being the most Decentralised Crypto asset.

bitcoin has different categories. and each has its own decentralisation/centralisation risks

the data archive is decentralised.
   with probably over 100,000 archive locations of the blockchain all in different locations

the software development.
  category one: basic wallet/services - this is decentralised.
     with many projects everywhere, different purposes, different languages, different userbase.
  category two: protocol decisions -  this is centralised.
     only 1 repo with very censored/controlled access require requests and acknowledgement by certain people. with no regular review/resignment process. no back door to throw out/replace bad actors from the top

the coins, becoming centralised
  with just 1.2mill of 18mill coins belonging to separate addresses of under 1btc..
  meaning over 16mill coins are collected in large volume.
  over 12million coins are in addresses hoarded with over 100coin each

mining, hard to measure
many think hard to measure means its centralised to china. but although stratum pools say they are head quartered in china. the actual distribution is more random, with even chinese tagged pools having US/EU miners

the weakest point of centralisation is still in the single reference client that is not just a reference. but the decision parliament of the protocol. where those in true decision have more power than 'random contributors'

Lol you got it totally upside down. There are some cryptocurrencies that are more decentralized than others, but Bitcoin is still the most decentralized project by a HUGE margin.

The market panic caused by China's suppression of virtual currencies cannot be regarded as China's control of the Bitcoin network. Price fluctuations in the crypto market will rise or fall due to certain factors. The negative news in China has indeed affected the market. Chinese encryption enthusiasts will also panic. The government is free to choose whether to support or oppose it, but this does not mean that the government can control it.

Bitcoin is a true peer-to-peer electronic transaction and allows direct online payments from the initiator to the other party without the need to go through a third-party financial institution. It does not require the government and central agencies to control personal funds.
The Bitcoin system is already a high degree of decentralization. Its issuance and transactions are all decentralized. It runs a complete node and participates in network consensus through a unique Bitcoin network system.

Yes, you and others are getting "red pilled" and waking up to the reality. I started a similar thread. Central governments are closing in on Bitcoin and going to use it to monitor and track their own citizens. People need to be aware of what banning KYC, software development and mining will do to Bitcoin. This will have the effect of weakening the hash rate, tracking everyone and funneling people into government friendly, big tech's like PayPal and Square. Eventually, they will ban Bitcoin outright and force people to use CBDC, once everyone is used to the new system. Cash will also be banned. Everything you do will be tracked. This is our future, if people don't stand up for their rights.

Someone once theorized that Satoshi Nakamoto was actually the government. This was all an elaborate scheme to get people to be tracked by a "pseudoanonymous" digital currency. I am cynical, but not that cynical.

However, I do believe the system is already being controlled. It does not take much capital to move cryptocurrency prices or markets. It is done all the time in the stock market.

Bitcoin crashed when:
1. Citadel pipeline was in the news for ransomware. The hackers were hacked by the government. I believe the government was the one doing the hacking in the first place. Suddenly, there was a constant stream of "ransomware" in the media to convince people that crypto was evil. This set up the infrastructure bill.
2. Elon Musk declares Tesla no longer taking Bitcoin. Elon is the government's/elite's puppet - they give him tax subsidies (Solar City, Tesla, SpaceX) and he cons people into thinking what the government wants (invest in Tesla, replace NASA). He is like a puppetmaster.
3. Elon Musk goes on SNL and denounces DOGEcoin / crypto.

China could have effectively destroyed Bitcoin with a 51% attack, just like Bitcoin SV is dying from. There was a study that only about $9B in mining infrastructure would kill Bitcoin. However, crypto would survive, because it is a medusa.

So do the other first world countries, including the US. With the KYC in the infrastructure bill and banning of anonymous wallets in Europe, we have a very dystopian looking 1984 ahead of us.

Not yet completely... it will be soon.

Firstly, being able to impose regulations, taxes doesn’t mean control, so the fact that governments are intervening from time to time in crypto affairs to get some profit for themselves doesn’t make them in charge.

Secondly, the interesting thing is that any form of control with Bitcoin is only possible when it’s not functioning as a 100% P2P. No kind of power can prevent people from sending Bitcoin from one electrum address to another. The problems appear when some kind of the third party is present, such as exchanges. Therefore, the governments can ban exchanging, withdrawal, trading, but the network itself, the main function of which is to make direct transactions possible stays decentralized.

I assume you cannot understand the meaning of "decentralized system". In my humble view, Bitcoin is decentralized because no one or no institution can control the Bitcoin price. But that doesn't mean no one or no institution can influence the price. A big country like USA or China, can influence the Bitcoin price if there is a big issue related to Bitcoin there. However, it is just an impact of what the country does, not meaning the controls the price.

After reading OP. Every time I convince myself that the FUD is an impressive thing it can convince anyone who has no knowledge of how, why and where bitcoin is going.
Bitcoin is decentralized, this is how its creation has been and in the world at every moment, bitcoin has new users, investors, developers willing to contribute to the power of decentralization. It is your money that you can handle at your convenience, without having to ask your government for permission.
As long as we follow the pillars by which bitcoin was created we are giving it its value and the strength to continue its mission.

I do agree with you. I’d make a wild guess that decentralization of bitcoin is about 75% as there a small group of Bitcoin administrators that coordinate the Bitcoin ecosystem. Examples of centralized services, include marketplaces and web-wallets. Because users cannot maintain local wallets due to the mainly functionality reasons they have to depend on a web wallet hosted on a remote server and accessible through a website

Whatever the government's decision will not affect the price of Btc.
They will not be able to control Btc. What makes Btc go down or up is only the sellers and buyers. The more demand Btc will be rarer and the price will keep going up. In the end I believe the world will trust decentralists more, Btc or others.

I somewhat agree to you. Bitcoin may not be decentralised as we know of it. But it still gives us idea about decentralization and there are lot of coins that might achieve full decentralization so atleast we are going in the right direction and bitcoin has shown as that direction

What decentralized mean to you? Do you think if anything decentralized then you can do anything?  Well Here's little bit mistaken from you. Like what actually we heard this decentralization word. Maximum people will say from bitcoin yes i also hear this decentralization word from bitcoin. And now about bitcoin. If you thought government can track it so this decentralization is just an illusion its actually not. Then let me clarify if it was then bitcoin will become a secondary currency to the world from since 2010. Because government also know about bitcoin technology and it is decentralized thats why they are aware to accept it. But now government approved it all with its decentralization. Because public want it.

Governments can influence the price of Bitcoin, but they can't control it. They can push the price up or down with their actions, but they can't set Bitcoin's price at some target and maintain it, which they do with their fiat currencies to a large extent. Also a lot of their actions can work only once. After China banned Bitcoin mining for real, they can no longer influence price in that way again. Bitcoin being decentralized doesn't mean that it's immune to all influences.

Similarly, governments can ban mining or try to impose some regulations on miners, but they don't control all the miners in the world. They don't even have 51% of miners under their direct control ready to launch an attack. And don't forget about nodes, which are run by thousands of private individuals across the world and can't be realistically regulated because it's just a regular PC.