Topic: Bitcoin cannot be decentralized if the Internet is centralized - page 3. (Read 1104 times)

Well, everything depends on the person's point of view. I believe that the public Internet brings a certain level of centralization to Bitcoin, as ISPs have a final say over what we can access. Of course, using TOR, VPN and other privacy solutions helps at some extent with connecting to the Bitcoin blockchain in a decentralized manner. But we all know nothing is perfect. Even Bitcoin's PoW consensus is centralized as Chinese miners dominate a large portion of it. The best way to achieve full-scale decentralization with Bitcoin is to use Satellites or personal networks. It'll be quite difficult to maintain the integrity of the Blockchain by relying on mesh networks, but I'm sure someone will come up with a solution for this.

Bitcoin will continue to carry on regardless of the current conditions of the Internet. But the Internet's dominance from worldwide governments and powerful corporations gives some concerns about how Bitcoin will be able to maintain its decentralization for the foreseeable future. I hope that I'm wrong and Bitcoin would turn out to maintain itself decentralized for a very long time. We could combine different techniques/methods in order to achieve censorship-resistance like never before. Just my opinion

Seems impossible to me The internet was not controlled by these large company, in my opinion, yes have a lot of access to almost everything on the internet and even our data.
But they cannot totally control what we are doing on the internet just my opinion and also bitcoin is already established in this kind of system we cannot change it.

Bitcoin is the first decentralized peer-to-peer payment network that is powered by its users with no central authority or middlemen. It will never become centralized. Can you imagine that a single person/group of people/company will own all Bitcoins? No. The system was created to prevent it.

Yes, I agree with this man. Although they play a major part in providing data that doesn't mean they are the authority itself of the INTERNET. It is just that it would be very hard to drop long cable just to connect to facebook's, amazon's or whatever it is. What they control is that the stuff we can manipulate and see on their platform but not the INTERNET itself, and ISPs are just trying to control the flow (might be speed) we received in different household who subscribe in such ISPs services.

So may be there is nothing need to be worried about? Bitcoin is decentralized as it is, and internet is decentralized.

I do not see any relation about the internet and bitcoin. And as the members here say, by buying ISPs or FTP cables, routers and switches you can create your own home network (while I was studying at the university taking information and technology) no one was afraid of Internet.

As your argument says so, Bitcoin is also centralized partially in nodes located in China. Apply the same logic/analogy to internet. These partial centralization is only among ISPs, that conform to a gateway to reach other parts of the world. Without them, it would be hard to lay your own cables and build infrastructure that would interconnect all the Bitcoin nodes. And even we are partially 'centralized' because of ISPs purpose to run our network, they still provide us freedom to what we do and connect to on the internet since it is our right, and doesn't really affect the decentralization of the network.

If Tor was so broken, cybercrime wouldn't exist. If privacy was impossible, Satoshi wouldn't be able to hide his identity for all these years. I think there's plenty enough proof that strong privacy is possible in modern age, that you can hide what you are doing from the government and ISPs if you are skilled enough. This means that they wouldn't know that you are using Bitcoin and wouldn't be able to stop it.

As for mesh networks, they are local, so they can't be used for Bitcoin, we need a single network that covers the whole work, otherwise each local network will have its own version of blockchain.

Exactly. That's my point. If the Internet is controlled by the hands of a few (ISPs, Governments, etc), then it's considered centralized. Since Bitcoin depends on the Internet, it's not fully decentralized as we've thought it would be. Even Tor has been compromised by the FBI some time ago. The only way to achieve decentralization with Bitcoin would be to run the same via a mesh network. Satellite connections would work too, but they aren't very reliable (as far as I'm aware).

As long as the public Internet is controlled by big corporations, they could have a final say over which devices are allowed to run a node and support the Bitcoin blockchain. Imagine if worldwide governments started cracking down on Bitcoin and the entire Blockchain industry. They could easily hit the "kill switch" by forcing ISPs to ban connections to the BTC network. Something like this is being done in Russia with the aim to prevent people from accessing the public Internet. Thanks to the open source nature of Bitcoin, someone can easily come up with a solution to maintain the Blockchain ecosystem without interference (radio waves, perhaps?).




I'm aware there are tools that would provide a level of privacy to Bitcoin users at some extent. However, these same tools can be easily intercepted by the government. It's no secret that VPN & proxy providers are centralized, while the Tor network it's said to be compromised by the FBI (look on Google for more info). The best way to use Bitcoin in a completely decentralized manner would be to run our own personal networks that are "off the grid". Something like a mesh network or even a PAN (Personal Area Network) could further decentralize Bitcoin. Of course, most people still connect to the public Internet to use Bitcoin. But in the event governments decide to collaborate with ISPs to prevent devices from connecting to the BTC network, other decentralized means could be used to maintain the blockchain over time.

As most Bitcoin nodes rely on the public Internet, the risk of centralization will always be there. This is something unavoidable since there's no such thing as 100% decentralization. Sometime in the future, we might be able to interact with new kinds of network protocols that would simplify the task of interacting with the Bitcoin blockchain in a decentralized manner. All in all, I hope that Bitcoin remains decentralized for years to come.

First and foremost, you need to understand Satoshi's version of decentralization and financial freedom.  You should also understand that the internet is not really centralized as you may think.  Having the necessary tools, the internet is not centralized. With Bitcoin, the basic intention of Satoshi was to develop a digital money that will not require the verification of a central body in order for transactions to made. In order to avoid double spending, blockchain ledgers were created. This was meant to record transactions in encrypted cryptographic form and in order for this to be efficient, PoW consensus was necessary to ensure a stable blockchain network. 

Where I live using the Internet has no restrictions, that is, I can visit the pages I want and download any program and use it, it is true that the Internet may be centralized to some extent, however, it is a service used by millions of People for millions of purposes, therefore, it is not feasible to stop it and there are so many cryptocurrency projects and applications that pretending to control them is almost impossible.

The real challenge of decentralization is in the use of cryptocurrencies, because currently it still depends on many intermediaries, in fact the main Exchanges are centralized and there is no privacy.

LOL
So explain to me why do we need to stay hidden on the web if we are free? Shouldn't it be the opposite?  
If it was really the case we wouldn't need to hide our ass. Nope, definitely we are not free, you can't say what you want on the web without getting censored, there are rules, there are ISP rules, platforms rules, hosting rules, email providers rule and so on. you can't use the internet without being monitored (doing legal or illegal)

People thinking the internet is decentralized are truly living in their own bubble

I do not think so. Centralized on the Internet is certainly no bigger than Decentralized. That is, the government can only centralized by blocking web addresses, IP addresses, and search keywords on networks in a country. And if we use VPN, then what is blocked will be accessible. So don't worry about Centralized on the internet. Basically, Bitcoin has its own decentralized network.

Who said that you aren't free? People are doing all sorts of illegal stuff on the Internet without ever getting caught, that's all the proof you need to know that you can do anything you want if you know how to stay hidden. 

Bitcoin is completely decentralised and if you think internet is not decentralised then start using VPN. That will help you to overcome controlled internet. POW controlled doesnot mean that Chinese are controlling Bitcoin. Bitcoin needs it's community to survive without them the Chinese are left with nothing.

Bitcoin gave Mankind, or Humankind the ability to think outside of the box again, as we were all put into a slavery system or code to abide by and work in. The decentralized notion behind Bitcoin was a paradigm shift into realizing that there is far more outside of just what the governments and central banks wanted us to believe there was. We do not necessarily need the internet to be decentralized to decentralize Bitcoin, what we need is more forward thinking people and organizations both public and private to embrace the technology itself that is the greatest gift from Bitcoin, not it being only a speculative asset for people to make financial gains. We need to look at the picture as a whole here.

@bitmover
@hatshepsut93

How the internet is decentralized if we are not our own ISP provider, running our own hardware infrastructure, with open-source software, and so on. Perhaps I could add decentralized electricity is needed too lol. If it is, why aren't we free to do whatever we want on the web?

Perhaps in the ealy days, when just a few geek where playing with it, but as of now I wouldn't say the web is decentralized. We don't own all the cable undersea and have no control over it

It's an interesting line of thought, but I disagree. For one, it's not like it's impossible to do Bitcoin without the Internet. There are already some projects allowing the use of satellites, for example. Secondly, Bitcoin is mainly related to the financial sector. It truly offers a system that depends on demand and supply and nothing else. In this sense, it's a free market. And Bitcoin is decentralized in terms of this price formation first of all. You're right that mining is hardly concentrated in the hands of big players, for instance, and that the Internet is not decentralized while being a medium for Bitcoin transactions. So I believe we can still say that Bitcoin is decentralized, but that it's just not fully decentralized.

That's not a harsh reality at all--it's been understood from the start, and it really doesn't matter all that much if bitcoin isn't an absolutely perfectly decentralized thing.  It's one thing to be dependent on the internet for it to work and quite another for the whole system to be controlled by a single entity, which bitcoin isn't.

So not a huge deal IMO.  Probably more of a concern in my mind would be China's dominance in the mining sphere, but I don't think that's even all that big a deal.

interesting , so how to make internet going decentralized ? , besides it , lets say satoshi know it, i mean internet is centralized , and he/she creating decentralized coin on centralising place and he/she seems have no worries about it , bitcoin still going alive until now and seems decentralized like the beginning, although now most exchange have a rules about KYC to buy bitcoin on their exchange.

The government nor the big companies controlling the internet as you said such as google and Facebook wouldn't be shutting down the internet just to also shutdown the decentralization of BTC right?

The world are now depended to the inter connecting computers everywhere, the bank rely to internet and they can't afford to shut it a day just to deal with the decentralization of cryptocurrency, its best to just adopt as they can't do anything about it even if its centralized.