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Comment by sanswork | Hacker News Reader

>Distributed currencies like bitcoin deny that control to a centralized authority.

What is the minimum number of people you think it would take to decide on a change to some rule of bitcoin and have enough combined power to force the change through?

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Isn't it 51%? Im not really sure. But I don't really see changes occurring through that route, but rather by forking off derivative currencies with modifications. Democratic selection decides which currencies gain value. To me, modifying the rules in mid-game seems the wrong point of entry.

Yup which at the moment would take 4 people(The heads of the 4 biggest pools). 4 people with no real reason for it being them except that they run successful pools. Hows that for centralization?

Glad you read the first 7 words of my reply to satisfy your cleverly devised bait. I encourage you to read the rest.

Your original statement was that Bitcoin removes that centralized control. Saying you wouldn't do it doesn't stop it from being possible.

Ah, I see the ambiguity in my wording. I meant that distributed currencies as a general concept (invoking bitcoin as an example of a single digital currency) removes centralization. You're right that any one such currency may retain the potential for centralized control, but what interests me is the opportunity for digital currencies to evolve through the emergence of improved implementations. In that manner we can escape centralized control. I'm more interested in blockchains than Bitcoins.

This isn't true. A protocol change would require every Bitcoin user to change their software. 51% regards miner based attacks on the network such as double spends.

Miners still have to obey the rules of the Bitcoin nodes. If a miner tried to generate more coins, even if 100% of miners tried, it would fail as the several thousand active Bitcoin nodes would simply reject the blocks.

it is true. Google softforks for more info.

I guess I wasn't very clear, good point!

Softforks cannot add more coins into the network, they can, at most, restrict earlier valid transactions.

It's always been known that someone with over 51% of the power can rewrite the blockchain, but only within the rules of the Bitcoin nodes.

For example, a softfork could never spend coins from your wallet without your key, it could never make more coins or delete a users balance.

This is a good post on the difference: http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/30817/what-is-a-s...

51% certainly gives someone a lot of power, but it's power with limits, and the limits are the rules coded into every Bitcoin node.

I never claimed those abilities just that a small group of people had feature control over the currency.

No, these 4 peoples have no power to "force" (your words) the change of some rule, against the will of the users. Because the moment they would try to force something the users disagree with, the users would simply change the pool they mine on, thereby removing any power the pools had.

Pools are in fact very democratic systems for this reason. Users can change pool at any moment's notice.

It's not 51%. A protocol change requires the vast majority of the Bitcoin nodes to agree to new software. 51% only matters for miners and if they can double spend, but has nothing to do with protocol changes.

Interesting, thanks for the clarification.

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