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Comment by Geee | Hacker News Reader

There's a difference. You can't physically centralize energy production. Local energy price will increase when more energy is used. This ensures that no one can get in a position of control. In PoS, it's possible to get > 50% ownership, and it's game over.

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Aren't 65% of all bitcoin miners in China? Couldn't the CCP sabotage the network at any time? Say, a month before the launch of their digital currency?

https://cbeci.org/mining_map

This specific visualization is limited to 37% of the hash power on the network. It's possible that it is a representative sample, but I don't think we can assume that.

Even better, it is limited to pools that primarily operate in China. I really wish someone would turn off that link. It is really awkwardly bad and mis-quoted a lot.

With proof of work you have economy of scale working in your favor. You'll get different deals on asic, power, server farms, etc. the more you buy.

PoW by design leads to centralization and we can see it happening live with bitcoin mining. At least with proof of stake there's no economy of scale. Everyone can participate fairly easily.

> You can't physically centralize energy production.

But you can centralize ownership of energy production.

Is 70% of Bitcoin mining still in China?

Does it matter? As long as there is enough mining that isn't controlled by a single entity (mining in China isn't a single entity), then the network is secure.

That is true, but its easy to centralize private ASIC designs or in a more extreme case the underlying chip fabs. If TSMC wanted to control the Bitcoin network they'd have a fair shot given they have by far and away the best fabrication technology for high performance chips

You hit the nail on the head.

TSMC, Samsung and GlobalFoundries are the centralization points of all of mining because they produce the chips.

Good thing they like money and they are global corporations.

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