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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

#271

Post by worrycue »

fsflover wrote: post #219
TeMPOraL wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They can but generally they don’t allow inflation to exceed 3% - ideally keeping it with 1-3% - as the destruction of the currency is not worth it long term.

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

#272

Post by krageon »

qeternity wrote: post #242
krageon wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not rich, so my opinion isn't relevant. That's the problem, not any specific detail (which your question is focusing on).

Self fulfilling prophecy there.

Where is the self-fulfilling prophecy? Nowhere do I talk about my actions, I only talk about reality.

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

#273

Post by IAmGraydon »

evilos wrote: post #182
bradwood wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You nailed it. Bitcoin is not some kind of panacea that will make everyone rich. It's just money that cannot be fucked with by central bankers, governments, dictators or anyone else for that matter. That's it.

Can't it still be fucked with via regulation? eg China banning it outright etc.

Yep. That’s the thing that crypto supporters just seem to ignore: it requires an infrastructure that is owned and controlled by a higher power. Namely, the internet. In the end, the government has the power to easily shut this entire thing down. It only exists because they let it.

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

#274

Post by krageon »

qeternity wrote: post #241
blatchcorn wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not who you are asking but I want to chime in: the problem is not missing regulation, the problem is the rich decide on regulation and this regulation helps keep them rich. Specific examples: UK capital gains tax is lower than income taxes. This means if you are born in to a wealthy family and given a £1MM index fund, you will pay less yearly tax on your capital gains while chilling at home all day than someone…

> the problem is not missing regulation, the problem is the rich decide on regulation and this regulation helps keep them rich. Ok - so the rich have decided on regulations which are not the ones that are best for everyone. So…missing regulations? By definition, if we have the wrong regulations, then we’re missing the correct ones. Capital gains taxes are lower for a specific reason: the capital that was initially in…

The original capital is not taxed, capital gains is.

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

#275

Post by arcatek »

tinus_hn wrote: post #265
CompuHacker wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If those 50 people start playing by different rules, the sum of the value of the two resulting currencies will probably be less than that of BTC as it stands now.

No, if they start to play with different rules their mined blocks will be refused by everyone on the network and be worthless. That’s not what the issue is with concentrated mining power.

If they start to play with different rules, one of the hard fork remaining branches (or both) will be refused by everyone on the network and be worthless.

There's no telling whether it'd be the "hijacked" branch or the original one - assuming they control 50%+ of the mining power, there's a decent argument that the remaining miners would follow their lead if only to stay on the largest branch.

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

#277

Post by darkcha0s »

csomar wrote: post #253
nuerow wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For Tesla, one single shareholder holds 17% of the whole company. If said investor abused his leverage to manipulate the stock value to dump his holding on unwitting buyers prior to making it tank, he would be facing a prison sentence. In BTC that would be just another uneventful day.

So what you are basically saying is that the stock market is not really a free market; and has arbitrary restrictions to make everything looks stable and legit. Okay.

I can't murder my neighbour, so you're saying we are not actually living in a free society

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

#278

Post by JumpCrisscross »

olalonde wrote: post #267
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 50+ miners is also well enough to prevent any 51% attack That number sounds trivial for even a very wealthy private individual to get them each in a vulnerable position. For example, how many are in China or the U.S.’s reach? Because that means literally two people, Xi and POTUS, could round them up and effect a change. (Not saying they would. But a damning vulnerability for a libertarian ideal.)

> Not saying they would. Incentives are actually an important part of the equation. Why would a wealthy individual or government spend billions of dollars to do a 51% attack? There's basically no incentive to do so. The best they could achieve is to censor transactions for a while until the Bitcoin community decides to fork to a slightly different PoW algorithm.

> Why would a wealthy individual or government spend billions of dollars to do a 51% attack? There's basically no incentive to do so.

China has banned cryptocurrencies [1]. So there is precedent. (Until recently, I believed nobody had an incentive to mess with cryptocurrencies. They're too niche and too attractive as a revenue source.)

> best they could achieve is to censor transactions for a while until the Bitcoin community decides to fork to a slightly different PoW algorithm

In the scenario that close to 50% of Bitcoin miners and a similar fraction of Bitcoins become possibly (though not irrefutably) state controlled, you're claiming it would be trivial to just fork them away? Who makes that decision? If those people can just uncoin wallets of their choosing, why bother with a cryptocurrency in the first place?

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/24/business/china-cryptocurr...

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

#279

Post by capableweb »

arcatek wrote: post #275
tinus_hn wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, if they start to play with different rules their mined blocks will be refused by everyone on the network and be worthless. That’s not what the issue is with concentrated mining power.

If they start to play with different rules, one of the hard fork remaining branches (or both) will be refused by everyone on the network and be worthless. There's no telling whether it'd be the "hijacked" branch or the original one - assuming they control 50%+ of the mining power, there's a decent argument that the remaining miners would follow their lead if only to stay on the largest branch.

Developers of the core protocol would notice, add a flag and then miners/clients/exchanges who want to remain with the same dev team can signal they want to follow the "dev" chain instead of the "miner" chain.

Usually forks have checkpoints as well so things can't change willy-nilly.

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

#280

Post by mateuszf »

FabHK wrote: post #237
fsflover wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure they can. There's a line in the code halving the codebase mining reward every 210,000 blocks. Just comment that line out (or replace halving with doubling). Done.

That would create a fork that nobody would use (because bitcoin holders are incentivised by the halving mechanism).
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