Topic: Bitcoin decentralization debate - page 4. (Read 575 times)

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

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

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.

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.

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?