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The cost users are paying is the cost of decentralization. One single entity will always be cheaper than blockchain decentralization, but the cost can be spread

The cost users are paying is the cost of decentralization. One single entity will always be cheaper than blockchain decentralization, but the cost can be spread across millions or billions of users. Now if the cost is worth it remains to be seen.

matheusmoreira 5y ago
Bitcoin is not decentralized. You need specialized hardware to mine bitcoin and the entry costs are enormous. One CPU one vote is history. As a result there are relatively few miners. Just look at how much bitcoin suffered when countries started banning mining activities. A truly decentralized coin would simply shrug off attempts at regulation because there are so many independent nodes no single country could possibly ban them all. What happened instead is one country banning BTC put a stop to a huge chunk of the network.
- theturtletalks 5y ago
  I mean decentralization in the "proving ownership" way. Right now, a bank can be the central authority on how much money you have in your account. With Bitcoin, people collectively determine how much each person has through the blockchain. A bank doing it will always be cheaper, but then the bank has too much control. How much are people willing to pay to make sure one entity does not have too much control or power?
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    > With Bitcoin, people collectively determine how much each person has through the blockchain. That's how it was supposed work. The current reality is small highly centralized group of miners maintain the blockchain.
    - theturtletalks 5y ago
      Do you think more miners will join if Bitcoin gains more adoption? Their is a cost to even find out if decentralization (through blockchain) is even worth it.
      - matheusmoreira 5y ago
        How? They can't. My PC, laptop and phone can't mine bitcoin. The way to achieve true decentralization is ASIC resistant mining algorithms and some form of diminishing returns to force miners to operate at small to medium scales. We need lots and lots of small miners running on commodity hardware that people already own, not a few large scale operations running on expensive custom silicon.
        theturtletalks 5y ago
        You make some great points. My points were for crypto in general, so do you think a crypto will come that is truly decentralized and can be mined more easily?
        matheusmoreira 5y ago
        I think Monero is closest to the original cryptocurrency dream. Not perfect but closest. It has ASIC resistant algorithms to make mining with normal CPUs feasible.

matheusmoreira 5y ago

Bitcoin is not decentralized. You need specialized hardware to mine bitcoin and the entry costs are enormous. One CPU one vote is history. As a result there are relatively few miners. Just look at how much bitcoin suffered when countries started banning mining activities. A truly decentralized coin would simply shrug off attempts at regulation because there are so many independent nodes no single country could possibly ban them all. What happened instead is one country banning BTC put a stop to a huge chunk of the network.

theturtletalks 5y ago
I mean decentralization in the "proving ownership" way. Right now, a bank can be the central authority on how much money you have in your account. With Bitcoin, people collectively determine how much each person has through the blockchain. A bank doing it will always be cheaper, but then the bank has too much control. How much are people willing to pay to make sure one entity does not have too much control or power?
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  > With Bitcoin, people collectively determine how much each person has through the blockchain. That's how it was supposed work. The current reality is small highly centralized group of miners maintain the blockchain.
  - theturtletalks 5y ago
    Do you think more miners will join if Bitcoin gains more adoption? Their is a cost to even find out if decentralization (through blockchain) is even worth it.
    - matheusmoreira 5y ago
      How? They can't. My PC, laptop and phone can't mine bitcoin. The way to achieve true decentralization is ASIC resistant mining algorithms and some form of diminishing returns to force miners to operate at small to medium scales. We need lots and lots of small miners running on commodity hardware that people already own, not a few large scale operations running on expensive custom silicon.
      - theturtletalks 5y ago
        You make some great points. My points were for crypto in general, so do you think a crypto will come that is truly decentralized and can be mined more easily?
        matheusmoreira 5y ago
        I think Monero is closest to the original cryptocurrency dream. Not perfect but closest. It has ASIC resistant algorithms to make mining with normal CPUs feasible.