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With that kind of control, they could just put a gun to anyone's head and ask them to start mining bitcoin and do it the way they want them to. It wouldn't have

by gavrif 6y ago

With that kind of control, they could just put a gun to anyone's head and ask them to start mining bitcoin and do it the way they want them to. It wouldn't have to depend on how many bitcoin miners are in China at the moment.

dontreact 6y ago
Fortunately, it is immensely more difficult for the Chinese state to exercise its monopoly on force outside of Chinese borders.
nostrademons 6y ago
It's a lot easier to point a gun to someone's head and say "Switch your equipment over to the network pipe that we give you" rather than point a gun to someone's head and say "Build a datacenter, secure an extremely large source of power, buy a few thousand Bitcoin mining boards, hook them all up in this extremely technical way, and then switch it over to the network pipe we give you." The gun in the head strategy works best when you're only asking your populace to do simple things. For complex, technical tasks, the usual response is "Oops, I can't concentrate while you've got a gun against my head", and then you can shoot them but that's not going to help your task get accomplished any quicker. (This is also why working conditions at say Google or Apple tend to be pretty good, and why Soviet scientists were treated relatively well even if the rest of the population wasn't.)
- nzmsv 6y ago
  Relatively well is, well, relative :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharashka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharashka
deleted 6y ago
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swader999 6y ago
I'd wager the way China would exert control on miners there would be to regulate their access to electricity.
- usrusr 6y ago
  And exert that control in subtle ways. "We know you, we watch you. You can do what you are doing because we permit it. When we come asking for a favor you won't think twice"
- jackTheMan 6y ago
  Even easier to put a backdoor on the newer miner boards.
tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
You can't just ask a random person to mine Bitcoin (well you can't, it just won't do much). It needs to be someone who has the mining hardware. So how many miners there are (specifically, how much mining hardware there is) matters.

by gavrif 6y ago

dontreact 6y ago

Fortunately, it is immensely more difficult for the Chinese state to exercise its monopoly on force outside of Chinese borders.

nostrademons 6y ago

It's a lot easier to point a gun to someone's head and say "Switch your equipment over to the network pipe that we give you" rather than point a gun to someone's head and say "Build a datacenter, secure an extremely large source of power, buy a few thousand Bitcoin mining boards, hook them all up in this extremely technical way, and then switch it over to the network pipe we give you." The gun in the head strategy works best when you're only asking your populace to do simple things. For complex, technical tasks, the usual response is "Oops, I can't concentrate while you've got a gun against my head", and then you can shoot them but that's not going to help your task get accomplished any quicker. (This is also why working conditions at say Google or Apple tend to be pretty good, and why Soviet scientists were treated relatively well even if the rest of the population wasn't.)

nzmsv 6y ago
Relatively well is, well, relative :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharashka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharashka

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

swader999 6y ago

I'd wager the way China would exert control on miners there would be to regulate their access to electricity.

usrusr 6y ago
And exert that control in subtle ways. "We know you, we watch you. You can do what you are doing because we permit it. When we come asking for a favor you won't think twice"
jackTheMan 6y ago
Even easier to put a backdoor on the newer miner boards.

tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago

You can't just ask a random person to mine Bitcoin (well you can't, it just won't do much). It needs to be someone who has the mining hardware. So how many miners there are (specifically, how much mining hardware there is) matters.