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I generally agree with his conclusions, but I found his argument about centralization very weak. Bitcoin on mars seems like an impractical thought experiment co

I generally agree with his conclusions, but I found his argument about centralization very weak. Bitcoin on mars seems like an impractical thought experiment compared to the actual reality that 50 miners (maybe less) control enough of the network to seize control when they desire. [1] I wish he'd spent some time discussing the fact that bitcoin's 'value' is proportional to the electricity needed for hashing, and that property will favor aggregating control to a few actors at whatever geographic local has the cheapest electricity. The political and environmental shenanigans exploited by these actors is a deep dive, too, but out of scope for his thesis. [1] https://www.tomshardware.com/news/study-finds-bitcoin-more-centralized-than-expected https://www.tomshardware.com/news/study-finds-bitcoin-more-c...

danlugo92 5y ago
> 50 miners (maybe less) control enough of the network to seize control when they desire. This is FUD. The counterparty to miners are the nodes, and they are the ones in control of the network. There are about 47000 nodes and anyone can run one (this is why the block size is small) on like $200 worth of hardware.
- rspeele 5y ago
  What does control of the network mean? An entity controlling the majority of mining power can produce the longest chain. But nodes respect the longest valid chain (by their definition of validity), so they can reject a change supported by miners, by considering that chain invalid. That supports your idea that the 47,000 nodes, which anybody can run, control the network. But if there are competing definitions of validity, what really matters to me is the version of "validity" accepted by the counterparty I wish to send coins to. In today's world that is pretty much exchanges, since not very many businesses accept Bitcoin directly. If there is a fork of Bitcoin where miners are in contention with node operators, the winner is the side of the fork that Binance+Coinbase+FTX+Kraken decide to treat as "BTC" and the loser is the side they treat as "Bitcoin Kinda-Sorta".
  - danlugo92 5y ago
    The exchanges scenario you propose is an interesting one, and could happen. Hopefully lightning makes more exchanges pop up and diffuse this.

danlugo92 5y ago

> 50 miners (maybe less) control enough of the network to seize control when they desire. This is FUD. The counterparty to miners are the nodes, and they are the ones in control of the network. There are about 47000 nodes and anyone can run one (this is why the block size is small) on like $200 worth of hardware.

rspeele 5y ago
What does control of the network mean? An entity controlling the majority of mining power can produce the longest chain. But nodes respect the longest valid chain (by their definition of validity), so they can reject a change supported by miners, by considering that chain invalid. That supports your idea that the 47,000 nodes, which anybody can run, control the network. But if there are competing definitions of validity, what really matters to me is the version of "validity" accepted by the counterparty I wish to send coins to. In today's world that is pretty much exchanges, since not very many businesses accept Bitcoin directly. If there is a fork of Bitcoin where miners are in contention with node operators, the winner is the side of the fork that Binance+Coinbase+FTX+Kraken decide to treat as "BTC" and the loser is the side they treat as "Bitcoin Kinda-Sorta".
- danlugo92 5y ago
  The exchanges scenario you propose is an interesting one, and could happen. Hopefully lightning makes more exchanges pop up and diffuse this.