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Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners

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Re: Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners

#211

Post by janandonly »

sam0x17 wrote: post #155

The death-knell in my opinion for true decentralization of the bitcoin network (ignoring mining for a moment) happened when the blockchain became too large for it to be practical for normal users to have the whole blockchain on their machine and operate a real node. I am sure there is some creative solution to this, perhaps an additional mining process by which old records are combined to save space (i.e. transaction…

The current BTC blockchain size is 422GB [1] so that easily fits on a single 1TB SSD. How is that "too large" ?

[1] https://bitcoin.clarkmoody.com/dashboard/

Re: Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners

#212

Post by thr0waw4yz »

abrkn wrote: post #184
chmod775 wrote: post #183

I've become very disillusioned with this currency. So far the only things of note that Bitcoin has achieved is having a considerable impact on global warming and making it near impossible for mere mortals to buy GPUs at reasonable prices. Even if any of the touted advantages were to finally materialize now, it wouldn't have been worth it.

GPUs are not used for Bitcoin mining

Without bitcoin, there wouldn't be cryptocurrencies mined with GPUs.

Re: Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners

#213

Post by throwaway248329 »

ildon wrote: post #137
anonporridge wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> magical pseudo-currency that solves all problems and unexplainably makes everyone richer and richer That's not what's exciting about bitcoin. What's exciting is that it is the first digital, global money that isn't protected by the proof of violence of the state. The US dollar is the world reserve currency because the United States is the best in the world at deploying destructive power, and the British and French…

> The only thing it requires is that you have hash power and internet connectivity. Your argument is a bit naive and this sentence I quoted is the one that shows the reason. Proof of Work is a energy intensive activity, not to mention the specialized tech it requires. Access to energy today is more than ever a sign of the power (including military power) of a nation, so much that energy itself could be regarded as th…

> Even if it was the only currency of the world, it would still be controlled by those with more power.

You don't have to be a miner to use Bitcoin and miners don't control Bitcoin. Miners can't force a protocol change, no matter how much hash power they have.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin_is_not_ruled_by_miners

Re: Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners

#214

Post by hnbad »

nuerow wrote: post #176
EdwardDiego wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> . The US dollar is the world reserve currency because the United States is the best in the world at deploying destructive power, Orrrrr.... because its value is backed by the world's largest economy?

> Orrrrr.... because its value is backed by the world's largest economy? There's also the fact that oil is quoted in US dollars, and about 65 countries, about a third of all the countries in the world, peg their currency to the US dollar[1]. [1] https://www.investopedia.com/articles/forex/040915/countries...

Sure but why do you think that is. What currency oil is quoted in has more to do with foreign policy than economics. Regardless of what reasons the US may have had to invade Iraq in 2001, Saddam Hussein was literally on record in 2000 for planning to switch away from quoting Iraqi oil in US dollars to the Euro[0].

There was a ton of talk about the 2001 invasions being about the US oil reserves for itself but that's based on a very simplistic understanding of US foreign policy. The US didn't annex the oil fields, it disrupted the national oil company's monopoly to allow privatization of the market and invite international (especially US and US-friendly) investors. It was really more of a hostile takeover backed by the world's largest military.

Again, I'm not claiming that this was the sole reason behind the invasion or the primary motivator, but the US has a history of privatizing nationalized industries of countries it successfully invades, overthrows or interferes in the elections of.

[0]: Not a conspiracy theory. Here's an article from Nov 2000: http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,9985...

Re: Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners

#215

Post by krageon »

jayd16 wrote: post #21
mike_d wrote: post #20

2,153 billionaires have more wealth than the 4.6 billion people who make up 60 percent of the planet’s population [1]. Calling 10,000 unaffiliated people "a small group" by comparison is kind of disingenuous. 1. https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10...

This is just desperate whataboutism. The inequality of life is certainly brutal but it doesn't make Bitcoin a populous utopia either. Besides that the numbers aren't equivalent. Holding stake and controlling its exchange are not the same thing, at least not for Bitcoin or democratic state controlled currencies.

Being rich means you get to influence the direction society takes. Laws are a part of that, which should tell you holding stake and controlling it's exchange are functionally the same thing.

Re: Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners

#216

Post by chmod775 »

abrkn wrote: post #184
chmod775 wrote: post #183

I've become very disillusioned with this currency. So far the only things of note that Bitcoin has achieved is having a considerable impact on global warming and making it near impossible for mere mortals to buy GPUs at reasonable prices. Even if any of the touted advantages were to finally materialize now, it wouldn't have been worth it.

GPUs are not used for Bitcoin mining

On Ebay I can find around a dozen people just in my local area trying to sell their mining rigs with stuff like 5 x 3070 cards: https://i.imgur.com/nI8GYsG.png

Graphics cards were definitely bought in stupid amounts for this purpose.

Maybe not for Bitcoin anymore, since there is specialized hardware now, but it doesn't really matter which proof-of-watts-per-hour cryptocurrency we're talking about. They're all shit and the planet would be better off without them.

Re: Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners

#217

Post by qeternity »

krageon wrote: post #209
qeternity wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, we know who those 50 are, and the wealth they own is in highly regulated markets. We know what they own, how much they own, when they buy/sell. We also dictate that they cannot trade on insider info and must generally play fair. Say all you want about the efficacy of the above measures, they are absolutely not perfect. But it's completely different to bitcoin where none of the above applies, and often the opposi…

> highly regulated Regulated by them, so in practice not all that regulated

Please elaborate. Which regulations do you think are missing?

Re: Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners

#218

Post by krageon »

janandonly wrote: post #211
sam0x17 wrote: post #155

The death-knell in my opinion for true decentralization of the bitcoin network (ignoring mining for a moment) happened when the blockchain became too large for it to be practical for normal users to have the whole blockchain on their machine and operate a real node. I am sure there is some creative solution to this, perhaps an additional mining process by which old records are combined to save space (i.e. transaction…

The current BTC blockchain size is 422GB [1] so that easily fits on a single 1TB SSD. How is that "too large" ? [1] https://bitcoin.clarkmoody.com/dashboard/

Who has ~250 euros (excluding the machine this SSD has to be in) to drop on a random hobby?

Re: Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners

#219

Post by fsflover »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #178
beambot wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does the USD currency compare? I'd wager that the top-10 banks and the various central reserve banks own or control the vast majority of USD.

If Bitcoin is comparable to USD, then there's nothing justifying its use over USD, with its associated ludicrous waste of energy and environmental impact.

The government can print USD for themselves, effectively stealing money from everyone through inflation. With bitcoin, even "small group controlling 90%" can't do that.

Re: Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners

#220

Post by danbruc »

peskysamurai wrote: post #207
SergeAx wrote: post #195

> top 10,000 individual Bitcoin investors control roughly one third of the cryptocurrency in circulation > top 1,000 individual investors accounted for about three million of the 8.5 million Bitcoins controlled by the top 10,000 investors I beleive same stats are available for stock markets. I wonder what numbers are there.

According to the article below, it seems like there’s a similar level of inequality in the stock market as well. https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2021/10/ownership-inequalit...

But are stocks the the appropriate thing to compare Bitcoin with? Why stocks and not money supply? And do you pick a national stock market or money supply or do you sum across the globe? But maybe it also does not really matter and all those things have similar distributions.
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