I get it. I really do. Crypto and DDLT in general are catnip on massive steroids for those of us who love tech, complex challenges to our intellects, and maybe money and prestige if we can get it. I mean, algorithmic proofs, behavioral economics, big data, analytical to topological math and prestige, money, lambos and girls/boys, to boot.
But what if there’s nothing good to come of it? What if instead of working for the good of the Gondor you’re helping build and fortify Mordor? (It seems a lot of crypto-heads are Tolkien fans, hence…)
If you’re a real honest techie, you already know that Blockchains (that really are blockchains rather than just the word) cannot scale. And never will be able to. The number of fixes to “blockchains” and DDLT variants attempting fixing this is now somewhere in the thousands. And at least half bear little resemblance to “Satoshi’s” version, let alone Merkle trees.
But the real problem is “where is this going”. What problem is it solving? The answer is pretty much none. And for whom is this creating a problem? The answer here is: Western Liberal Democracy. I mean, when you see hugely popular crap like this everywhere: https://www.inbitcoinwetrust.net/sorry-christine-lagarde-we-dont-need-your-digital-euro-we-already-have-bitcoin-5f37410b4c02,
... you have to step back and say, REALLY?
YOU WANT A TOTALITARIAN GOVERNMENT TO HAVE CONTROL?
And, of course, they do and thereby render meaningless all your debates about “trusted” this and that when speaking about PoW DLTs and Crypto. And here are some points to consider on that front, just so you have more to chew over:
At least 65% of BTC is mined in China…it’s the same or more for other PoW coins
https://asiatimes.com/2020/05/bitcoin-hash-rate-65-is-concentrated-in-china/https://cbeci.org/mining_maphttps://www.statista.com/statistics/1200477/bitcoin-mining-by-country/https://news.bitcoin.com/65-of-global-bitcoin-hashrate-concentrated-in-china/https://www.forbes.com/sites/youngjoseph/2019/12/12/new-report-shows-china-dominates-bitcoin-mining-is-this-a-sign-of-worry/?sh=7114ebdb42e1https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/mining/china/https://decrypt.co/27879/you-can-now-watch-bitcoin-being-mined-around-the-worldhttps://www.investopedia.com/news/bitcoin-wont-win-worldwide-adoption-because-china-controls-it-ripple-ceo/
This type of analysis below is what is often misused or just plain turned into misinformation. It talks about “nodes” which is a meaningless metric. Since PoW doesn’t care how many nodes there are….
https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2019/02/27/3-countries-50-perecent-bitcoin-network/
Chinese citizens and the law
Regarding the law in China, you have to read closely and understand. The short of it is (as I state in my writing) Chinese citizens are prohibited from buying/selling/having an account on an exchange, but are permitted still to “own” crypto:
https://www.mondaq.com/china/fin-tech/944330/regulation-of-cryptocurrency-in-china
Rig Manufacturers:
NOTE: AMD and Bitfury have a tiny fraction of the market. All ICs in the Chinese rigs are Chinese designed and manufactured.
Chinese - ASICminer Co.
Chinese - Baikal Miner
Chinese - BitMain Technologies Holding Co.
Chinese - Canaan Inc.
Chinese - Cynosure Technologies Co. Ltd.
Chinese - Halong Mining
Chinese - INNOSILICON Technology Ltd.
Chinese - Shenzhen MicroBT Electronics Technology Co. Ltd.
Chinese - EBANG
Dutch (sort of) - Bitfury Group Ltd.
American - Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
Market Share:
Rig ICs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitmain
By 2018 it had become the world's largest designer of application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) chips for bitcoin mining
https://investor.canaan-creative.com/corporate/company-profile
Canaan’s chief executive, Nangeng Zhang, founded the company in 2013. Together with his team, he invented and delivered one of the first cryptocurrency mining machines incorporating application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) technology. The company initially dedicated its research and development efforts to ASIC applications for Bitcoin mining and rapidly built up its know-how of ASIC design.
ETC.
Almost all Chinese mining operations are tied together on a Level0 network which speeds up chain replication but also gives the ability of Chinese miners to observe (at a minimum) regional transaction volumetrics.
bloXroute is a Blockchain Distribution Network (BDN) that utilizes a global network of servers optimized for network performance. In other words, bloXroute allows the network to communicate fast.
Nodes access this network through open source Gateways and anyone can access it through the bloXroute public-API.
