Post
Topic
Board Legal
Re: Bitcoin centralization and governmet control
by
a_6apcyk
on 19/09/2020, 00:06:58 UTC
Unfortunately I can not post images yet. Here you can see hashrate distribution among pools https://www.blockchain.com/charts/pools . As far as I know (not sure) most pools are Chinese. So China already control most hashrate. And as for me it is a little bit scary  Smiley Shocked
But there are also a lot of mining farms outside of China, and we don't know what is on the government's mind, they have been thinking of banning bitcoin mining already, and that's why those big miners farms in China has a plan B already. So I would agree with your concern, but so far there is no incentive either from the government or the Chinese miners itself to sabotage bitcoin so I think we are safe by now. So that is the safe guard we have right now, Bitmain and other mining pools gains nothing about bitcoin centralisation or even a 51% attack.

As for now I fully agree with you. But let's try to look a little farther. Bitcoin is going to become legal everywhere, because there is no another way for countries. They can not just close their eyes and say "We do not know what is Bitcoin. We do not accept it" like it was some time ago. To become legal it must be regulated by laws. The only way to regulate it is to regulate miners.
As for miners, they will have to concentrate in pools, because is no another way to find a block in acceptable time. The pools will work in some jurisdiction under it's laws. So they will have to do what they will be said by laws of this jurisdiction. Furthermore if for example USA decide that pool do something wrong, the pool owners will have to live the rest of their life at some forgotten island or in American prison. That's why in my opinion it will not be easy for big pool to change it's jurisdiction.
There is one other anxious scenario. Today mining equipment is build on top of current technological level and there is little manufacturers in the wold who can produce chips for ASICs. Let's imagine that bitcoin will be legally recognized money. So ASICs can be recognized as money development equipment, mining can be recognized as money production. And all of this can be strongly regulated by laws - production, sellings, and mining process.
In theory the whole process of bitcoin lifecycle can be controlled   Embarrassed