4 ms·
Effectively the major mining pools control bitcoin since they determine what is likely to get accepted. Note that the devs had to ask the minners to down grade.
by anologwintermut 14y ago
Effectively the major mining pools control bitcoin since they determine what is likely to get accepted. Note that the devs had to ask the minners to down grade.
The funny thing is if several large banks decided they wanted to open minning pools, i'd imagine they could do so and then control all kinds of things. I wonder if this will happen (or if it already has. How many miners operate over Tor? )
- snitko 14y agoMiners do not control the rules, they merely choose to accept or not accept them. That's a very important distinction that is a part of the checks and balances system in Bitcoin.
- mef 14y agoWhat would happen if all the miners got together and demanded a code change that benefited miners, like perhaps increase the mining reward? Assuming the devs disagreed with the change, would the BTC community have any way to prevent this alliance of miners from updating the code themselves, deploying it everywhere, and using their overwhelming mining power to maintain the longest block chain and thereby making the code change a reality?
- snitko 14y agoHow would miners demand? They can't say "do it or we'll stop mining", there will be plenty of competition out there willing to take their job. As for deploying the code themselves - it's not like you can deploy it and force people to use it, every individual user decides which client or version of a client to use voluntarily. They would have to convince people to switch to their fork.
- DavidSJ 14y agoHaving the longest block chain doesn't matter if the transactions in your block chain violate the validation rules of the people doing business.