Quote from: bbeagle on April 18, 2014, 12:09:44 PM

Quote from: Light on April 18, 2014, 06:21:00 AM

Trying to convince people to have the option of 'freezing' coins goes against the whole fundamental concept of decentralisation and Bitcoin. If it could be frozen power would then reside with the developers. Not to mention, even if they did agree, I doubt the miners and nodes would accept and implement the change and without them good luck.

This, I see as a major flaw in bitcoin's model.... hear me out...

It looks like bitcoin mining is becoming increasingly difficult to the point that only a few rich with huge server farms can mine the coins. When there comes a point when there are like 10 major server farms that mine 90% of the bitcoins, which looks to be where it's going...

You'll then have 10 very rich people basically in charge of bitcoin. I'm sure these now powerful and influential people will have meetings and discuss various ways to control bitcoin. The rest of us will be pawns in their game. It would be very easy for this group to come to a consensus and control bitcoin to their whims.

I can't see how we wouldn't end up with a few large server farms mining most of the coins, controlling most of bitcoin. Can anyone steer me to not believe this?

I think the situation may not be as dire as you think.

1. Even if there is a small group of large miners, those miners still have to sell the coins
to cover their mining costs, so how are they really "controlling" anything?

2. One of the key metrics of the mining business is cost per GHs. Perhaps
large mining operations can achieve a lower $/GHs, but I haven't seen
any evidence to suggest they can achieve an exponentially lower rate.
Therefore, smaller miners can still achieve results over time.

That's why we have all these pools, as well as mining contracts.

I don't know that much about how decentralized things really are,
but the ecosystem seems healthy, at least on the surface. Maybe
someone with deeper knowledge on this point can jump in.