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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

#301

Post by christophilus »

H8crilA wrote: post #296
glenvdb wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've revealed plainly that you haven't got a clue what you're talking about. Miners can't change the protocol of the entire network. The only malevolent thing they could do is perform a 51% attack if they all colluded together. And even that wouldn't achieve much, so there's not much incentive to do it. All they can do is a double spend. They would've been better off spending that energy on mining blocks to be rewa…

Well, Ethereum miners decide on changing the protocol like all the time.

BTC != ETH. This is one of the arguments in BTC’s favor.

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

#302

Post by swiley »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #249
olalonde wrote: post #236

That's a pretty misleading headline. Miners and investors do not control Bitcoin regardless of their hash power or amount of BTC owned. 50+ miners is also well enough to prevent any 51% attack. Finally, the ownership estimate is flawed given that it relies on blockchain analysis. The existence and popularity of custodial wallets (e.g. exchanges) makes this sort of analysis extremely unreliable.

> 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.)

>POTUS

We still don't live in a dictatorship, the President alone can't do this.

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

#303

Post by discobean »

somethoughts wrote: post #125
Hermel wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The top 1000 investors hold 15% of the supply? That’s not “highly centralized” if you compare to the stock market. For Tesla, one single shareholder holds 17% of the whole company.

There seem to be a lot of similarities between crypto and growth stocks that are held by founders with > 15% ownership. Similar to early stage investors who have essentially zero cost basis, early BTC holders have zero cost basis when BTC was pennies each versus late stage current investors paying in at $60,000 for each BTC. For early BTC holders its easy to diamond hand. There are a lot of similarities for sure betw…

> For early BTC holders its easy to diamond hand That's not true, say your investment of a few dollars is now $1k. And the price is popping and just dropped 30% in one day? Would you sell for the profit? What if that investment got to 10k? 100k?

People sell at some point. I'd argue it's incredibly hard to diamond hand for early holders, that is why there are more stories of people selling their coin for cheap rather than diamond hands.

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

#304

Post by christophilus »

nuerow wrote: post #295
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.

> The government can print USD for themselves, effectively stealing money from everyone through inflation. Not quite. The only people bitten by inflation in the long run are those who stockpile cash and intend to perpetually live off capital gains without contributing anything to society. Meanwhile, the vast majority, which are either salaried employees or own businesses, see both their income and expenditures adjust…

AKA stealing from the elderly to fund today’s excesses.

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

#305

Post by glenvdb »

IAmGraydon wrote: post #273
evilos wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You think they're going to shutdown the Internet to kill Bitcoin?

Even if they did, once the Internet was back up and running what would stop the Bitcoin network from continuing where it left off?

There's thousands of people around the world running their own Bitcoin nodes, many also protected behind Tor [1]. In what realistic way could governments shut it down globally?

They could go for centralised custodial businesses like the exchanges, but that doesn't stop the Bitcoin network itself. Also there are decentralised exchanges like Bisq that can't be shutdown.

"Yes (you will not find a solution to political problems in cryptography.), but we can win a major battle in the arms race and gain a new territory of freedom for several years.

Governments are good at cutting off the heads of a centrally controlled networks like Napster, but pure P2P networks like Gnutella and Tor seem to be holding their own." — Satoshi Nakamoto

"A lot of people automatically dismiss e-currency as a lost cause because of all the companies that failed since the 1990’s. I hope it’s obvious it was only the centrally controlled nature of those systems that doomed them. I think this is the first time we’re trying a decentralized, non-trust-based system." — Satoshi Nakamoto

1. https://bitnodes.io/dashboard/

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

#306

Post by stonepresto »

krageon wrote: post #274
qeternity wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

https://www.irs.gov/individuals/net-investment-income-tax

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

#308

Post by throw0101a »

toofy wrote: post #262
csomar wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 don’t think any serious person has ever implied the stock market has no regulations/protections. I mean, are you surprised that some things are illegal? Of course not, no one is surprised by this. Could you imagine what a clusterfuck the market would be with no regulations?

> Could you imagine what a clusterfuck the market would be with no regulations?

Generally regulations are written after clusterfucks have occurred to reduce the risk of them happening again.

It's the same reason we have building codes: after a Great Fire or two happens in a given city, fire breaks are usually mandated.

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

#309

Post by christophilus »

krageon wrote: post #274
qeternity wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The original capital almost certainly was taxed. It was earned as income, or via sales, both of which were probably taxed.

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

#310

Post by Siira »

worrycue wrote: post #264
FabHK wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just 0.1% (about 50 miners) control close to 50% of mining capacity So, the much-vaunted "mathematical guarantee" that only 21m BTC will ever be mined depends on the benevolence of those 50 miners not to fiddle with the code base. Makes perfect sense to trust those honourable individuals more than the central bankers in control of fiat. /s

Being able to print more would actually be a benefit as it allows for inflation. Central banks typically aim for 1-3% inflation to get people spending money and allowing the economy to function instead of just hoarding it.

“Hoarding” money, also known as saving in esoteric circles.
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