Why home mining is true decentralisation. (Bitesize Bitcoin)

To begin with, what is Bitcoin? 1 bit 47. A lot of people are familiar with lightning and liquid is effectively a layer 2. That 1, 2, 9. What is taproot? Sure, in taproot, that's the first new protocol upgrade since Zagwet.

Difficulty adjustments. How do mnemonic seed words work? UTXO management.

Welcome back to another day of plebminer month. Today, tech engineer tells us why home mining is true decentralisation. Thank you to everyone who's been reaching out, asking questions, streaming SATs and getting involved in plebminer month.

It has gone even better than I had expected and it's so cool to see so many people getting involved. Make sure to look out for all of the prize draws and check out all of the pods, articles and everything else at www.ungovernablemisfits.com.

Hello Max, and you ungovernable Misfits. This is tech engineer, stop and buy it to give a bite-sized Bitcoin and answer the question, why home mining is true decentralisation? Let's start by defining centralisation and decentralisation.

The Merriam-Upser dictionary defines centralisation as "to concentrate by placing power and authority in a centre or central organisation". Decentralisation, being the opposite of centralisation, would be to deconcentrate power or spread out from the centre.

Part of the brilliance of Satoshi Nakamoto's vision when he created Bitcoin was to decentralise the network. He knew that if the power to control the Bitcoin network were centralised, it could and most likely would be controlled by a small number of people or organisations.

Bitcoin represents a philosophy that has rarely been seen in human history, a monetary standard outside of the control of a single government, organisation or central authority. So how does Bitcoin achieve decentralisation?

Unlike client-server architectures that are typical of most information services, Bitcoin does not have a central server that all clients connect to. Instead, nodes and miners participate in a mesh network that anyone can join.

There is no central Bitcoin node or server for other nodes to check in or to get direction from. The Bitcoin nodes use consensus with other nodes to keep track of the blockchain. Miners perform mathematics at high speed to secure the blockchain from manipulation and verify transactions.

The more miners there are on the network, the more secure it is. Their conglomerate computing power builds an invisible force field of encryption and energy called proof of work. But what happens if a large sector of Bitcoin miners come under the control of a single entity?

If mining becomes too centralised, there are several potential risk vectors, all of which are mitigated or minimised with widespread miner decentralisation. 51% or 75% attacks, where miners band together to push false transactions into the blockchain.

It is easier to coerce 10 large mines to cooperate or shut down than it is to coerce 100 million small mines to cooperate or shut down. State or government compliance. Large centralised mines may become beholden to government policies or political pressure.

Vision censorship is feasible if the right amount of control were obtained. If Bitcoin mines are highly decentralised, the sheer volume of small-scale mines makes this unfeasible. Anti-fragility.

The higher the centralisation, the less robust the network. If Bitcoin is to become the base layer of the global monetary system, it needs to be able to withstand any potential threat coming in the foreseeable future.

This, such as widespread power outages, world war, global economic collapse, coordinated EMP or nuclear attacks, could cause denial of service conditions to the blockchain. The high geographical dispersion of home mining reduces the likelihood of these threats causing significant damage or downtime.

Non-democratised Bitcoin is for the people. Miners and nodes work together to protect the blockchain and vote on changes to core functionality. Individual control of miners and nodes ensures more people are in control of voting for Bitcoin's future.

So the short answer to the question, why home mining is true decentralisation? Home mining helps to spread the hashrate across geographical space, energy and political jurisdictions and democratises Bitcoin into the hands of the people.