11–20 of 486 posts
Pareto's observations back in 1896 about land ownership in Italy still hold true...
Yeah I think this is not really surprising. Why would bitcoin be any different than e.g. wealth more generally.
> the ecosystem is still dominated by a concentration of key players, making the ecosystem susceptible to systemic risk like a 51 percent attack, where a group of miners could take control of the majority of the network. Never mind that doing so would destroy the value of the cap/opex invested. But yea... bitcoin is dead, again.
> Never mind that doing so would destroy the value of the cap/opex invested. "Bitcoin is centralized, but that's OK because the central authorities can be trusted to do the right thing" isn't exactly a compelling argument. Especially when decentralization is supposed to be one of Bitcoin's major selling points.
The fact that those efforts have failed, despite them being the largest miner, is pretty strong evidence that Bitcoin is not under the control of any small group of people.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Never mind that doing so would destroy the value of the cap/opex invested. "Bitcoin is centralized, but that's OK because the central authorities can be trusted to do the right thing" isn't exactly a compelling argument. Especially when decentralization is supposed to be one of Bitcoin's major selling points.
The people you consider to be central authorities in Bitcoin can not and are not generally trusted to do the right thing. The biggest Bitcoin miner is Bitmain and they have repeatedly tried to subvert Bitcoin such as through the creation of Bitcoin Cash and attempting numerous times to pull off hard forks or oppose updates to Bitcoin. The fact that those efforts have failed, despite them being the largest miner, is p…
There also is no "central authority" since anyone can become a validator. Bitmain, while absolutely huge producer of hardware and a miner, is not the only manufacturer of the hardware.
Even better, there is a giant financial incentive to build the best miner [1].
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/15/square-ceo-jack-dorsey-says-...
Money is largely controlled by a small group of investors and central banks. [citation needed]
And there's a difference between "controlling" and "owning".
Free market doesn't provide mechanisms for money "control".
If you rightfully own it, it's yours and I don't care how much you have. I apply the same logic to Bitcoin - I don't care how many people own it and how much BTC each has: it's their own business. But they can't "control" "money" - they care barely control their own wallets I don't accept BTC in exchange for my labor. So, why should I care?
Calling 10,000 unaffiliated people "a small group" by comparison is kind of disingenuous.
1. https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10...