Bitcoin Q&A: "West vs. East" - The Consensus Balance of Power

Keywords/phrases: Mining in China. There are five constituencies of consensus and none have complete control over the system, all of them have to agree: developers, miners, exchanges, wallets/ users, and merchant services. Changes won't happen if the economic activity doesn't follow. Neither the majority Western users and developers nor the majority China miners can take over; it creates a balance of power. The centralisation of mining isn't healthy but it's the result of the massive increase in mining performance over 5 years, from CPU to ASIC, from 40 nanometre down to 16 nanometre. Because of Moore's Law, we're going to see a re-decentralisation of mining.