both of those are kind of race conditions

while everyone was debating the 51% "problem", and scaling "problems" of the blockchain growth in GB, what everyone missed was that the protocol can only handle 7 transactions per second. fucking nobody talked about that, i had no idea, until after the transaction fees had been going crazy

and ive been doing bitcoin since 2013

fucking not a single debate about it

the blockchain size stopped being problem after they implemented pruning, where you only need 500mb of it

and the 51% thing seems incredibly overblown

after that i stopped advocating it to normies, because its gonna need to get the lightning network update and need to bake in the oven a couple of more years to sort out the issues

it's just software are the end of the day, it's not magic, and i used to think of it as magic

bitcoin was the first

many others have come

probably the definitive one isnt created yet

prehaps we gota see how they are adopted and how ppl abuse the systems

51% is only a problem if someone gets pretty crafty with malware.

or crafty with power

you'd need ownership of 51% of all machines processing transactions, more or less.

imgaine if a bunch of banks get together

do pull that bs off

with scale, you only get that power through malware

or maybe Microsoft

I wonder what percentage of the mining power resides in China with all the mining farms?

When governments set up restrictions on the national network, others create virtual and physical connections to override said restrictions.
I find it hard to believe that banks would be able to take control a a currency not created by them selfes.

The thing is that anyone looking to disrupt it would have to compete with multiple huge mining operations that have each already spent multiple millions

In addition to all the small timers

or just figure out how to remove the concept of mining

idk if you can

Other coins have been toying with proof of stake instead

back in 2013 the computing power of the bitcoin network was 256 times faster than the top 500 supercomputers combined
im still trying to find what it is now

I’m definitely interested to know what percentage of mining resides in China, because I know it’s huge and China is not exactly a freedom loving paradise

https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/mining/china/

its 71%

well, still think the 51% is still overblown?

yeah

I would be slightly worried about China seizing mining operations but I don’t think that’s likely at all

Back of the mind though

However I think most big mining operations are running ASIC miners, and there are other currencies specifically tailored to GPU mining. If a Chinese takeover did happen then everyone could switch to one of those instead.

Most Bitcoins are allready mined anyways

i'm far more worried about how nations are managing their own currencies

the 21st millionth bitcoin will never be mined

17,220,962 are allready mined

Of course, there is also the transaction fee

well, you dont have to pay a transaction fee and you can choose how much, depending on urgency