That's right. BTC is centralized at the repo level. Everyone runs the core repo and that's fully controlled by a few individuals. Miners are too scared to run anything else.
This right here. Bitcoin Core development is centralized, and anything contrary to what the High Priests of Bitcoin want, is said to be an “attack on Bitcoin”
Because it's nonsense and if you wanted to actually lay out the criteria for this, it would be obvious. You'd have to start with "Who defines what BTC is" and the answer would be "one guy with commit access to the bitcoin core repo" and all pretense of "decentralization" disappears in a puff of vapour.
If "one guy with commit access to the bitcoin core repo" pushed a change that wasn't in the interest of miners and heavily invested groups, why would they install it?
Foundry + AntPool alone make more than 51.7% of the hashrate. Next are F2Pool, ViaBTC and Binance with about 10% each.
So this "decentralization" requires what, the agreement of 2-5 parties.
Realistically, if the pools wanted, BTC core could be replaced because the software is mature and the big pools can trivially hire somebody to work on it if they had a need to.
The big exchanges probably also have some say.
But guess who doesn't? Anyone else. People running their "full node", or just random joes using the system don't really have a vote.
It's a very much top-down system with a few fat cats sitting on the top, and none of them were even elected, and quite a few are effectively anonymous.
Because if they're not using the same node software as the exchanges, they can't trade with other people trading the BTC instrument. The exchanges allocated the BTC ticker to "whatever the bitcoin core node software says it is" and that is defined by the one guy who has commit access to the bitcoin core repo.
Wrong, because even if the exchanges pick a chain that is completely ridiculous in terms of rules, say they permanently limit the tx throughput for the entire world to 3, or something absurd like this, and the exchanges and users who can see how absurd this is sensibly opt out of mining or transacting on that chain, the profit for defecting is great, because mining is a zero sum game.
As long as some suckers are trading actually liquid assets for the instruments on the sabotaged chain, it is economically rational for the miners to mindlessly rubberstamp the rules of the chain.
Former Bitcoin Cash developer Amaury decided he wanted a subsidy to himself. He forked, forming his own extremely minority coin, Bitcoin ABC (now eCash) which pays him 8% of everything mined. Despite being very conclusively rejected, and the chain having undergone attacks, eCash still retains some value, and Amaury still gets to pocket a percentage of everything that gets mined.
The underlying code for that is the same as for BTC. So at any time, if the cabal thought cratering BTC would be worthwhile if they got to pocket enough of what remained, they could do it with complete impunity. All it'd take is the agreement of a very few people and a viable exit plan.
That's an interesting thing I didn't realize until not very long ago. If setting fire to 99% of the ecosystem allows you to pocket a fraction of the 1% that remains, and that works out well enough to not have to work again -- that's a very favorable tradeoff for a lot of people.
Right, this and BTC both, although Amaury's proposal was less insultingly stupid than the proposal that split BTC (I require an 8% of the coinbase donation to continue optimising this chain vs I require this chain be completely dysfunctional and useless, and force the intermediaries back into it for it to be of any utility at all, when the entire original purpose of the ledger was to disintermediate them)
That is the silliest point of all, because the concept of fiat currency is inherently associated with its plurality (given that fiat currencies are born out of countries, and there are many countries), but cryptocurrency, as a concept, came to existence to destroy all fiat. And the only way to do that is via 1 single cryptocurrency: the very first, the only one. And this is better understood once you understand this: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BIP_0300 (which is not activated yet, and might never be; but once you understand its purpose, you will understand this HN thread)
How does being centralized make something a security? Or decentralized a non-security? I feel like I must be missing something obvious but to me it sounds like saying "it's colored blue, so it's a security."
It's newer, less well recognized in general, and as far as a government Bitcoin node is concerned it does not exist. Bitcoin's case on not being a security is possibly based on the low likelihood of future incompatible changes and its track record and age.
…though the Bitcoin Cash blockchain has valid txns going back to 2009 just like BTC. Everyone wants answers that are black and white, cut and dry. The world is a lot more grey.
> One is a threat to the actual dominance of the present global financial system, one very loudly pretends to be but is in fact hijacked by said global financial system in order to implement their policy goals with a populist cover story.
Quick, how do I:
1. Pay for groceries with crypto? Is the transaction cost higher or lower than with current systems?
2. Take out a loan to buy a car with crypto?
3. Get a mortgage for a house?
4. Get a huge loan to buy a container ship for my company?
Do you even <<know>> what the "global financial system" does, besides work with currencies (which is more or less the only angle covered by cryptocurrencies)?
1. Ever heard of Lightning? https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-lightning-network-is-...
And yes, some countries accept partially paying through Lightning. El Salvador obviously, but Costa Rica as well (check "Bitcoin Jungle"). In Africa, it's starting...
2. I sold a car for ~30k USD in Germany 2 weeks ago. I wish the guy would have been able to pay in crypto, because bank transfer didn't work out (because of money laundering law between unrelated banks due to the higher amount) and he ended up paying in ... cash (yes, the irony, so much about money laundering). And now, I had to open a new bank account which will be able at some point to accept the money. It's not just time consuming, but all this is not free obviously
Very odd. The last time I bought a vehicle I just wrote a check, the seller took a photo of my ID, and I was handed the vehicle title. I understand some sellers will accept a cashier's check. I always thought this was the normal way of buying high dollar items like this with 'cash'. Does Germany not have something like that? Surely going to a bank in Germany and withdrawing or depositing $30k in cash must raise some alarms.
> 1. Ever heard of Lightning? https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-lightning-network-is-... And yes, some countries accept partially paying through Lightning. El Salvador obviously, but Costa Rica as well (check "Bitcoin Jungle"). In Africa, it's starting...
I worked for a blockchain startup, and it had the exact same concept listed here:
> Due to the nature of the Lightning Network's dispute mechanism, which requires all users to watch the blockchain constantly for fraud, the concept of a "watchtower" has been developed, where trust can be outsourced to watchtower nodes to monitor for fraud.
However... we were constantly discussing this. Was the network truly decentralized in this case? Watchtowers basically concentrate power in a handful of nodes, you're back to oligarchy.
Which means... why bother with blockchain and cryptocurrency anymore? What's the point?
> 2. I sold a car for ~30k USD in Germany 2 weeks ago. I wish the guy would have been able to pay in crypto, because bank transfer didn't work out (because of money laundering law between unrelated banks due to the higher amount) and he ended up paying in ... cash (yes, the irony, so much about money laundering). And now, I had to open a new bank account which will be able at some point to accept the money. It's not just time consuming, but all this is not free obviously
He could have just... warned his bank?? Also, what's with the jab against cash, yes, it can always be used for money laundering, it's not like, God-forbid, cryptocurrencies being used for the same reason, see sock-puppet transactions, anonymity....
1. Use something other than BTC, like BCH. TX cost is a lot lower.
For the rest, there's no reason you couldn't do any of those things in a legitimate working peer to peer cryptocurrency in principle, regardless of the fact that at the moment people don't and the structures you engage with instead are staples of tradfi.
They do many things, but the ones I want to avoid the most are their mechanisms of control in the global economy. The fact they can lock your bank account and deny you access to global trade because you said something or did something they don't approve of is utterly unacceptable and this alone is enough for me to aim for their destruction.
> For the rest, there's no reason you couldn't do any of those things in a legitimate working peer to peer cryptocurrency in principle, regardless of the fact that at the moment people don't and the structures you engage with instead are staples of tradfi.
Ok... let's see how a mortgage would work.
A smart contract for the initial loan?
Regular payments into the smart contract as the monthly installments?
What happens in case of default?
> They do many things, but the ones I want to avoid the most are their mechanisms of control in the global economy. The fact they can lock your bank account and deny you access to global trade because you said something or did something they don't approve of is utterly unacceptable and this alone is enough for me to aim for their destruction.
Assuming you live in a world where everything happens mediated by decentralised ledgers and no central source of enforcement or power, an entity is dispatched to repo the house and auction it in order to pay out the initial smart contract financiers. It's a long way from here to there, I know, but there's no "impossible" about it. If you want to get really tricky, just incorporate a token for the house, the ownership of which is decided by a clause in the smart contract for an auction if the terms of the payments for the smart contract are not met, then the physical arbitration component boils down to "this person says they own the house, they have the deed, please leave" just like it would in present world.
> How exactly do cryptocurrencies prevent this?
Because you hold your keys and you get to decide what is broadcast on their behalf on the ledger, not a custodian. There is no central point to pressure or capture in order to execute the same attack as above in tradfi.
You can dispute it in the case of some hypothetical future architecture that requires physical real world enforcement of some state change on a decentralised ledger, sure, there you might have a point, who can say what the future holds?
That's not the same as denying access to global markets, as long as legitimate cryptocurrencies maintain liquidity with global markets, that attack can be ruled out if you self custody. It doesn't rely on any physical state, it relies on you using a centralised service of custodial account management where a third party can direct that entity to deny service to you, or that service can independently decide to deny service to you. There's no centralised service to attack in a proper peer to peer system, they can't stop you interacting with the market.
> You can dispute it in the case of some hypothetical future architecture that requires physical real world enforcement of some state change on a decentralised ledger, sure, there you might have a point, who can say what the future holds?
It's the present day, not some future. You need real world enforcement of real world states.
I just realized! Cryptocurrency bros are pure function bros. Everything is pure and has no side effects!
Except for the fact that the world is a <<result of side effects>>. All that's nice about computers has to do with them printing to screen/paper, sending across the network, etc...
Similar story with money. All we care about is that effects they have on real life.
> that attack can be ruled out if you self custody.
Which puts a huge target on your head for any kind of real world malicious actor.
> I just realized! Cryptocurrency bros are pure function bros. Everything is pure and has no side effects!
That's a fair criticism to the extent that any theoretical decentralised ledger process pipeline touches the real world, but the extent to which they do touch the real world, and the benefits available from each of them varies enormously.
> Which puts a huge target on your head for any kind of real world malicious actor.
If the choice is between that and having a bank and its chain of dependencies as a tyrannical real world dictator, I'd rather have to deal with that target than be trapped in that tyranny. That risk can be mitigated, it can be compensated for, structures can be erected to address it.
If you're slave to a tyrant, you're simply immediately subject to whatever their whims are. That is utterly unacceptable, even if it does theoretically reduce some risk for some people sometimes.
In a society that was not a cyberpunk dystopia, the price for instruments that allowed you to circumvent said tyranny would probably be much lower than it is. But this is not that world, I guess.
Do you mean lobbying for BTC? Because if you do, as I said, they sabotaged it into uselessness for its original purpose as a peer to peer transaction medium that disintermediates traditional centralised finance from the loop in other to maintain their position.
If you meant something else, I don't understand your question.
The argument is 'The only use case it is good for is fraud. Fraud dwarfs all the other use cases.'
Shares in a ponzi scheme aren't worthless, but the only use case for running one is fraud.
Crypto acolytes constantly point fingers at crypto 'usecases' that nobody actually uses, and constantly gloss over that the only popular usecases are robbing people and getting robbed[1].
[1] Plus a small cottage industry of making and selling guns and ski masks to the robbers. That would be the 'This rugpull was audited by <some crypto audit firm>' line item in those posts.
