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> Bitcoin is just as centralized as banks are, for instance. That's a rather odd statement. Can you justify that?
by darawk 9y ago
> Bitcoin is just as centralized as banks are, for instance.
That's a rather odd statement. Can you justify that?
- hoosieree 9y agohttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-08/the-bitcoin-whales-1-000-people-who-own-40-percent-of-the-market https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-08/the-bitco... A handful of actors with a controlling stake isn't exactly the same thing as "centralized" but it's close.
- lambdadmitry 9y agoIt's also inherently "centralised throughout liquidity". Because it's both deflationary and risky, the amount of liquidity available at any given moment is small, so a willing actor with some money at hand can affect the market disproportionately. Look at the way Tether manipulated the price.
- darawk 9y agoNot really. They're pretty different things.
- tcgv 9y agoHe could be talking about the issue of "mining centralization": - https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/7dl4r3/miner_centralization_question/ https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/7dl4r3/miner_centraliz... - https://medium.com/@cloudycalvin/potential-threats-to-bitcoin-1-mining-centralization-1fc1090694e5 https://medium.com/@cloudycalvin/potential-threats-to-bitcoi...
- erikb 9y agoI've put it in the second example. People can manage their bitcoins by themselves, but instead they let exchanges manage it for them. So all the problems of centralization (exploitation of users, market manipulation, big time theft, etc) can be found in the bitcoin ecosystem as well. You see the same history repeating, just a lot quicker. Therefore I assume whatever you do with blockchains will become a centralized system as well. PS: If you think about it, as technology cash is even more decentralized as bitcoin. Yet banks happened.