Some concerns about Bitcoin.

Hello,

Thanks for sharing. However, I have some questions.

Bitcoin is not actually decentralized. In some reports, China is accounted for 65% hash rate of Bitcoin [1]. How do you think about this ?
Tether is the main factor to drive the Bitcoin price[2]. And it can be printed from the thin air. Is Bitcoin price over value ? What affect to Bitcoin if Tether is keeping printed ? [1]https://cbeci.org/mining_map/methodology [2]https://www.wsj.com/articles/large-bitcoin-player-manipulated-price-sharply-higher-study-says-11572863400

I don't think of a concentration in the control of mining as affecting the decentralized nature of bitcoin. If one party or cooperating group gained control of the majority of the hash rate, they could disrupt new transactions and double-spend, but doing so would severely harm bitcoin, and that would reduce the value of the huge investment they made in mining hardware, so it does not make financial sense to do so. I'm not saying it won't happen, but in the past miners have reduced their hash power to avoid the appearance of having too much, which would spook the market and drive down the price of bitcoin. When I refer to decentralization I am referring to the fact that anyone can participate in bitcoin transactions and no one can change the rules of bitcoin. That cannot be changed even by someone that controls the majority of the hash rate. Any block submitted by a miner that attempts to violate the rules and issue themselves more bitcoin than the schedule allows is immediately rejected by the full nodes. The fact that anyone can participate and nobody can change the rules means that it is outside the control of government. Governments might try to ban it, but people will always be able to trade with bitcoin in the privacy of their own home as long as they have a connection to the internet. It is this fact, that it is outside the control of individuals, corporations, and governments that makes it decentralized; and that is its most important asset. Another way to view the fact that much of the hash rate is in China is that China may be using mining to accumulate bitcoin in order to hold as a reserve asset to supplement its holdings of gold. This may be part of its plan to unseat the dollar as the worlds reserve currency.
I don't worry too much about such market manipulation. I think all markets are manipulated to a degree. The Hunt brothers manipulated the silver market back in the '80s and the central banks have worked hard to manipulate the price of gold in order to discredit it every since Bretton Woods. Manipulating a small market is easier and cheaper than manipulating a large market. So as bitcoin grows, the resources required to manipulate the price increases with it. Today you can probably do a lot with $2 billion to manipulate a $200 billion market. Say it could be used to double the price as in 2017. That same amount is 10 times less effective as we get to a $2 trillion market and so it could only affect the price by 10%. It is 100 times less effective with a $20 trillion market and so it can only affect it by 1%. In addition, I also believe that once we get use to the idea of a provably scarce assets, of which bitcoin is the first and currently the only such asset, we will be much more sceptical about scams such as tether and other forms of fiat currency. One last point. Market manipulation does not really affect an investor that buys and hold as long as they buy at a reasonable price, and they can generally assure they get a reasonable price if they use the Fear and Greed index as a guide. You are probably not going to go too wrong if you buy when fear is high and greed is low.

Hey, thanks for the answers.

Another way to view the fact that much of the hash rate is in China is that China may be using mining to accumulate bitcoin in order to hold as a reserve asset to supplement its holdings of gold. This may be part of its plan to unseat the dollar as the worlds reserve currency

Do you have any claim for this ? I don't see China government will allow for trading crypto again.

If one party or cooperating group gained control of the majority of the hash rate, they could disrupt new transactions and double-spend, but doing so would severely harm bitcoin, and that would reduce the value of the huge investment they made in mining hardware, so it does not make financial sense to do so

They have many methods to do it . For example: China government can ban the IP addresses for bitcoin miner. So it will affect to bitcoin network and make the network is not strong enough and easy to attack.

At the moment, I don't see any incentive to do so. but who knows.

Tether looks like a central banks. And they can print how much money they want. They can manipulate the market and control the price of bitcoin. Moreover, it is accepted widely by crypto exchanges such as Binance or Bitrex.

I don't see them stop using Tether anytime soon. So I think it still keep manipulating the market.

IMHO, investing in bitcoin like a gamble. You can win a lot of money and you can lose all. 👍

For your first question, I have no evidence. I cannot know China's intention, nor can I know who is running all those mining units or why. But from a game theory perspective, it makes sense for them to do so. For China it would be a relatively small investment, but it could pay off very well for them. And they are making other moves consistent with trying to dethrone the dollar.

It is interesting that the best course of action for nation states is to invest in bitcoin and then benefit from the first mover advantage. As an American I would like to see the US do that, but they won't. They cannot invest in bitcoin without undermining the dollar, and the US is terrified of losing reserve status for the dollar. But for China the incentives are reversed. There is relatively little risk in investing in bitcoin, but there is a tremendous amount to gain.

On your second observation, it is important to recognize that very little information has to go to or from a mining node, and bitcoin nodes routinely use Tor. In practice it is very difficult to completely block access to a bitcoin node. When I visited China I had no trouble piercing the Great Firewall using just a VPS that cost me $5/month. Soon Elon's satellite network could be used. It is very hard to believe that even China will be successful at blocking bitcoin.

On your third, I don't seem people moving away from Tether any time soon either. Just like they are not moving away from government currencies either. When I made that comment I was thinking long term. Once a hard currency like bitcoin becomes widely used, fiat currencies will either disappear or will harden, or will only be held in small amounts for short durations of time.

One more thing on Tether. Market manipulation in generally small or short term. It is very hard, and very expensive, to try to maintain a large manipulation in the market for a long period of time. Thus, this manipulation just adds to short term volitility.

I don't really see bitcoin as gambling, I see it as investing. Investing in a future without all the bad things that occur because of the actions of central banks. The stock market seems more like gambling to me. It is possible for bitcoin to fail or be destroyed, but it is getting less and less unlikely as time progresses. It could fail if there is a serious bug in the code. It could be destroyed by a nation state taking over the mining pools through massive investment and then attempting to undermine peoples trust of bitcoin. Both of these things seem improbable. So that leaves bitcoin, a child of the internet, competing on the open market with fiat currencies, government dictated monopolies that lose 5% of their value per year. This is the first time fiat currencies will have to compete for customers, and I don't think it will end well for fiat.

But for China the incentives are reversed. There is relatively little risk in investing in bitcoin, but there is a tremendous amount to gain. I don't see any incentive to do so. At the moment, to keep the trade balance, China government is buying Treasury Bond and other asses of US government.

The China would buy bitcoin as reversed asset if Bitcoin is widely accepted in the US. I don't know how long the US citizen would trust Bitcoin and they would buy Bitcoin as an investment.

As a developer, I really want Bitcoin be widely accepted. However, I don't see it will happen anytime soon.

KenKundert / why-invest-in-bitcoin

Some concerns about Bitcoin. #1