Topic: Has Bitcoin Finally Lost Its Decentralization? - page 2. (Read 1008 times)

Quite contrary, if Satoshi (remember it could be a group of people represented by 1 guy) was to move his coins, it would create panic in share holders.

Satoshi could control the price of all Bitcoins by pumping and dumping or just sell it all which would result as he was planning it all from the beginning as an elaborate pyramid scheme.
If he still has access to this coins then there's another threat that someone will steal it from him or that family members will get access to it by inheritance and sell it all.

The best case scenario for Bitcoin is for this coins to never move and hopefully access to this coins is forever lost.

No, it hasn't lost but it's not as decentralized as it once was because now big corporations own the majority of coins and mining became a commercial business. Today you can't mine Bitcoins at home while it was possible in 2016. Today only big corporations like BitFury can have a profitable mining business because they own thousands of miners and have access to a very cheap electricity. It leads to loss of decentralization but I like that Satoshi disappeared with 1 million Bitcoins in his wallet. 1 Million is a fair share and this share alone makes Bitcoin significantly decentralized because it's in good hands but if Satoshi doesn't ever appear, then this shair means nothing.
I hope there won't come time when Bitcoin will be fully centralized. Sadly, we are heading that path.

I believe OP has got a point and while I agree with the majority that bitcoin remains decentralised in reality, the increasing adoption by institutions, buying on centralised exchanges, use as an investment and not P2P, etc., at least make it more centralised than it was intended to be.


This is where I think he has a point but not only in that, but a truly decentralised use would be P2P, and today such use is minimal.

What you described has nothing to do with bitcoin's decentralization. Bitcoin is still the same network for more than 10 years and it still works the same way. If some people own thousands of bitcoins, that doesn't mean the network is compromised. On the contrary, it only shows people are interested in bitcoin so they are buying huge shares of the platform. Buying coins can't threaten the decentralization of the network. Only the miners can do that. If one miner controls the majority of the hash rate, that would be catastrophic. Luckily that will never happen.

One person can control a large part of Bitcoin and for this reason we cannot call it centralized. There is no denying that when an individual or organization controls a large chunk of Bitcoin, they can exert some influence over the market if they want, but that doesn't mean that they are able to centralize a decentralized platform. Bitcoin was and will be decentralized. Various individuals and organizations will continue to invest more and more around the potential of Bitcoin. Moreover, the governments of various countries are slowly getting interested in investing in Bitcoin. One of the reasons for this is that it is completely decentralized. If someone ever takes control then Bitcoin will become worthless. Bitcoin's greatest strength is its decentralized power.

Decentralization has nothing to do with the ownership of BTC. Decentralization is about having control over the protocol.
A bunch of corporations could own most of BTC in circulation and BTC could still be decentralized. BTC will become centralized when a big corporation controls most mining rigs and tries to change the blockchain protocol. This would lead to most miners, developers and users leaving the Bitcoin blockchain and the BTC price would collapse. What creates the value of Bitcoin is the community behind it. Destroying that community would lead to the destruction of Bitcoin.

This is probably what @mrquackquack meant when he spoke about the decentralization of bitcoin (although this is not entirely correct), when large holders of bitcoin can influence the price and manipulate the market.

If this becomes known to the BTC-community, and before that moment there is time to do harm.

How many active BTC-developers are there at the moment? Probably a few dozen at most?

There is another point regarding decentralization: the majority of the hashrate (computing power) is in the hands of only a few mining companies, which also doesn't benefit the discussions about decentralization.

Who buys or owns most of Bitcoin's won't have big influence on Bitcoin decentralization, Bitcoin's blockchain continues to be secured by thousands of independent miners around the world, and participation is open to anyone with an internet connection. The problem will occur when big company invest in mining and take over 51% of Bitcoin network. Bu I think the Bitcoin community will remain vigilant in advocating for decentralization, whether it’s by supporting smaller miners, using decentralized exchanges, or developing new technologies that keep the power distributed. While Bitcoin hasn’t fully “sold out,” the growing influence of large entities is something we should watch closely to ensure that it stays true to its decentralized roots.

I have always attributed Bitcoin decentralization to it's network, and other criteria comes second. As long as no individual is in charge, then it's still holds its quality of decentralization, and not necessarily centralization. But taking a look at how it's currency is been distributed among hodlers, which is enough to question the decentralization since certain users have more portion of it than others as a result of differences in purchasing power. But I don't really see any threat in this, as long as the individuals who buy Bitcoin massively are not a single entity (i.e they don't work for one another).

The most important factor that keeps Bitcoin decentralized has been how the network is structured, where everyone depends on another to make changes (i.e take a decision). No single person can just wake up and make some changes without the consent of thousands/millions of users that are connected to the same network. So, I still believe that Bitcoin is still decentralized, and will continue to be decentralized, as long as it is not managed by a single person.

By its very nature, Bitcoin is decentralized, but certain entities are trying very hard to change that. I am more concerned with the fact that some people own large amounts of Bitcoins, have power and are very prone to manipulation to make extra profit.

Bitcoin network remains decentralized, and it will stay like that with proof-of-work, but distribution of coins is changing after Blackrock entered the market and start buying coins.
This is not the only company who decided to invest in Bitcoin, but they have most power to manipulate markets because they are majority owners of most assets in the world.
Everyone can help Bitcoin decentralization by running their own nodes, using non-custodial wallets, and decentralized exchanges.

That doesn't make it less decentralised, it makes the demand to rise so the price will hike. It's impossible for anyone or few of them to buy every Bitcoin that's available and in theory if they make it happen the Bitcoin will cease to exist but if they stop Bitcoin there will be another one with same algorithm of Bitcoin let's say LTC that will become the next thing so the cryptos became inevitable so there is no point of accumulating with the intention of stopping it from adoption.

If I am not wrong, this matter has been discussed many times. You may use the search button to get old discussions and more ideas. Technically, Bitcoin will remain decentralised always. Since wallet doesn't have limits, anyone can buy any amount, and they can sell as well. There is no way to prevent them, and that's why Bitcoin decentralised. No one can control it, either trade, buy, or sell. When someone is selling, on the other hand, someone is buying too. It does lead to a drop in price, though it doesn't make Bitcoin centralised anyway. The function of Bitcoin is decentralised; this wouldn't be questionable. 

Bitcoin being decentralized means that the bitcoin network is decentralized since it is a Peer to Peer network.
The nodes on the network which validates the blocks containing bitcoin transactions are the ones responsible for decentralization.
This has nothing to do with an entity holding a large amount of bitcoin.

I feel like people are talking past each other here. People have different definitions of the same term and are answering it accordingly.

Is Bitcoin "decentralized"? It depends on what you mean by "decentralized".

The term can mean:

1. The data for the ledger is stored in a highly redundant way, making it essentially impossible to lose a transaction.

2. The systems holding the ledger can be governed by multiple separate legal entities, making it difficult for governments to exercise any control over the software.

3. The way most people use the product is self-custodial, such that they are actually effected by #1 and/or #2.

Hence:

1. Systems (whether they use the blockchain architecture or not) that store the ledger on an insufficiently geographically disperse datastore are "not decentralized". In this sense, Bitcoin is very much decentralized.

2. Currencies that are on networks controlled by a single legal entity, or a small and identifiable number of entities that could easily be captured by a government (viz. all PoS networks like Ether) are "not decentralized". In this sense, Bitcoin is mostly decentralized (although >50% of the hashrate is controlled by only a few companies).

3. "Not your keys, not your coins". Unless you physically hold your private keys on your actual person using your own private storage system (e.g. your iPhone) then you are not using a decentralized product by any definition. Most people today use Bitcoin and other cryptos through a broker or an app that either stores their keys for them, or simply marks their holdings in some central database. In this sense, Bitcoin is not, in the defacto way people use Bitcoin, "decentralized".

I think those saying "Bitcoin is not decentralized" are saying it in the sense of #3.

I think those saying, "only Bitcoin is decentralized and all other digital currencies are not" are saying it in the sense of #2.

I think those saying that most of the more popular digital currencies like Ether etc. are still "decentralized" are saying it in the sense of #1.

Personally, my own focus is average consumers and getting digital currencies to be a mainstream mass-appeal phenomenon. Hence my own viewpoint is that of #3 when you ask me this question. My answer to the survey above was, "who cares?" (yes, that was me ), and I answered that way because the customers I focus on definitely don't care, and the market is showing us that at least 90% of the market doesn't care.

I think a lot of the people who answered "no" are, like me, thinking in terms of #3.

People who answered yes are thinking in terms of #1 or #2.

That's why some central banks regulated some exchanged platform like in my country where they can earn profit from it since they can't control the bitcoin due to it being decentralized. I also wouldn't say that it lost its decentralization when it's been a decentralized cryptocurrency starting from its creation until to this day. Anyway, I think you mean having more than 50‰ hash rate to be able to attack but it won't be easy to achieve it.

It isn't even about an individual or institution claiming control over BTC, the network was designed to be decentralized and censorship resistant, it is not possible for it to be centralized because there is no single point of failure. The government cannot seize the network, unlike how they do with mixers and centralized services, there is nothing to be seized in the BTC network, nodes are scattered all around the world, so there can be no central authority over the BTC network.

it is obvious that starting from the establishment of Bitcoin bitcoin have never been a a centralized currency rather a bitcoin is a decentralized currency so when looking at it you will see that what makes bitcoin to be more firm is when companies invest in Bitcoin that helps to Skyrocket the price that is why we always seek for more investors come in into bitcoin investment so that there will be a massive bullrun, so I believe that bitcoin cannot be hijacked by any company or being hijacked by any government because it is a decentralized currency which cannot be controlled, only thing I'm seeing there is that many people invest in Bitcoin for future purpose not that there are trying to make a bitcoin a centralized currency

We are hearing this question since many years in my opinion it would not be centralised as we don’t know who is controling bitcoin right now. There is no company or individual who claimed to control bitcoin’s price. If bitcoin is or was centralised then the price may be fixed at some point but we see dips and pumps in bitcoin’s price and by time passing the bitcoin grows as members added to this community and people prefer bitcoin just for it’s decentralisation.

Because it is not governed by a centralised organisation or authority, Bitcoin is known as decentralised. Blockchain technology is used to handle and record Bitcoin transactions in a public, distributed ledger. Around the world, a large number of computers, or "nodes," are in charge of maintaining the blockchain. Since every node has a copy of the blockchain, it is nearly hard for someone to manipulate the system without obtaining the approval of every node. This structure prevents any one individual or group from controlling Bitcoin, and it also prevents central regulation of the system.