11–20 of 83 posts
Oligarchy means controlled by the few. Anyone with a Raspberry PI, decent network bandwidth, and a few terabytes hard drive can be a node and start validating and relaying transactions. Besides, Bitcoin is not proof of stake, so having a lot of bitcoin does not give someone more control of the network. So no, Bitcoin is not an oligarchy. All of these big addresses likely belong to exchanges like CoinBase, etc.
How do these users have political control like an oligarch would have?
How do these users have political control like an oligarch would have?
Any entity that controls more than 51% of network capability (i.e. owns and operates a lot of expensive hardware) can, in theory, begin making fradulent transactions called "double spends". Any common user of the network that is unfortunate enough to get caught up in this scheme would lose their money. And the long term value of the network would most likely plummet, but in 2013 it didn't for some odd reason :)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any entity that controls more than 51% of network capability (i.e. owns and operates a lot of expensive hardware) can, in theory, begin making fradulent transactions called "double spends". Any common user of the network that is unfortunate enough to get caught up in this scheme would lose their money. And the long term value of the network would most likely plummet, but in 2013 it didn't for some odd reason :)
When I think of political control and Bitcoin I think of people who have the power to build a consensus for a hard fork. It wouldn't really make sense for someone controlling 51% of the network to hack the network. Then all their bitcoins would be useless because everyone else would abandon the network.
[0]: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=321630.msg3445371#ms...
>Leonardo Ermann from the National Commission for Atomic Energy in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and colleagues from the University of Toulouse, France, have examined the structure of the Bitcoin-owner community by looking at the transactions of this cryptocurrency between 2009 and 2013. The study is 5 years old? Guessing back then it was libertarians and drug dealers. Also isnt this true of any early adoptor? The first s…
2009-2013 is a long time ago, so maybe the title should be “Was the Bitcoin network an oligarchy?”
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I think of political control and Bitcoin I think of people who have the power to build a consensus for a hard fork. It wouldn't really make sense for someone controlling 51% of the network to hack the network. Then all their bitcoins would be useless because everyone else would abandon the network.
They could do short, targeted 51% attacks without doing much harm to the value of Bitcoin. In 2013 Ghash.io a mining pool had an employee who carried out mining based doublespends against a gambling site [0]. Very few people abandoned the network because very few people were impacted by this attack. [0]: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=321630.msg3445371#ms...
How do these users have political control like an oligarch would have?
Any entity that controls more than 51% of network capability (i.e. owns and operates a lot of expensive hardware) can, in theory, begin making fradulent transactions called "double spends". Any common user of the network that is unfortunate enough to get caught up in this scheme would lose their money. And the long term value of the network would most likely plummet, but in 2013 it didn't for some odd reason :)