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>> main selling points of cryptocurrencies: no authority can prevent a user from sending or receiving bitcoins, or ether, etc. Until you realize that >90% of B

by mamon 8y ago

>> main selling points of cryptocurrencies: no authority can prevent a user from sending or receiving bitcoins, or ether, etc. Until you realize that >90% of Bitcoin hashing power is controlled by a handful of Chinese guys, and those guys are probably controlled (or can be easily coerced into cooperation) by Chinese totalitarian government.

mrb 8y ago
«Until you realize that >90% of Bitcoin hashing power is controlled by a handful of Chinese guys» It's false. You are repeating a sadly misunderstood aspect of pooled mining. Articles writing such sensationalist claims are written by people who don't understand that a mining pool representing x% of the hash rate doesn't mean they "control" x% of the hash rate. Their end-users, who are distributed around the world, are the ones who control the hashrate, who own the mining hardware, and who choose which pool to use. That is, if a pool were to use the hashrate maliciously, users around the world would abandon it and point their miners at more trustworthy pools.
- mamon 8y ago
  >> users around the world would abandon it and point their miners at more trustworthy pools. This is not as easy as you try to paint it, because mining requires hardware, and you can't just move it around the world at will - most of it is physically located in China, and that's not gonna change.
  - mrb 8y ago
    Another misconception. Changing mining pool is done by changing a single parameter in the mining software. It is as easy as it sounds. There is no need to "move hardware". It is not true that "most" mining hardware is located in China. There is a good portion of it over there for sure, but because of the secrecy around most miners, we don't know how much exactly. It's certainly not ">90%". Every single article that makes similar claims mistakenly assumes that for example it the AntPool Chinese pool represents 20% of the hashrate, then it means this hardware is located in China. This is patently false. AntPool is one of the most popular pools for various reasons (reliability, availability, flexibility, branding), so they are used by many users worldwide. They even have stratum endpoints in the US for their North American users. Only a fraction of the AntPool hashrate comes from hardware physically located in China.
  - antidesitter 8y ago
    Do you have statistics for Bitcoin mining hardware by country?
stale2002 8y ago
And yet nobody has ever censored my bitcoin transactions. Banks, on the other hand, censor transactions all the time.

by mamon 8y ago

mrb 8y ago

«Until you realize that >90% of Bitcoin hashing power is controlled by a handful of Chinese guys» It's false. You are repeating a sadly misunderstood aspect of pooled mining. Articles writing such sensationalist claims are written by people who don't understand that a mining pool representing x% of the hash rate doesn't mean they "control" x% of the hash rate. Their end-users, who are distributed around the world, are the ones who control the hashrate, who own the mining hardware, and who choose which pool to use. That is, if a pool were to use the hashrate maliciously, users around the world would abandon it and point their miners at more trustworthy pools.

mamon 8y ago
>> users around the world would abandon it and point their miners at more trustworthy pools. This is not as easy as you try to paint it, because mining requires hardware, and you can't just move it around the world at will - most of it is physically located in China, and that's not gonna change.
- mrb 8y ago
  Another misconception. Changing mining pool is done by changing a single parameter in the mining software. It is as easy as it sounds. There is no need to "move hardware". It is not true that "most" mining hardware is located in China. There is a good portion of it over there for sure, but because of the secrecy around most miners, we don't know how much exactly. It's certainly not ">90%". Every single article that makes similar claims mistakenly assumes that for example it the AntPool Chinese pool represents 20% of the hashrate, then it means this hardware is located in China. This is patently false. AntPool is one of the most popular pools for various reasons (reliability, availability, flexibility, branding), so they are used by many users worldwide. They even have stratum endpoints in the US for their North American users. Only a fraction of the AntPool hashrate comes from hardware physically located in China.
- antidesitter 8y ago
  Do you have statistics for Bitcoin mining hardware by country?

stale2002 8y ago

And yet nobody has ever censored my bitcoin transactions. Banks, on the other hand, censor transactions all the time.