Ripple CEO Is Criticized for Misrepresenting Bitcoin and Ethereum

by
Jeff Fawkes
My articles My books
Follow on:

Mati Greenspan says that Brad Garlinghouse has some information hidden from the public during his recent hot interview on CNN. Speaking about Bitcoin and Ethereum, Ripple CEO says that Bitcoin and Ethereum miners are centralized in China. Mati, as well as a bunch of other network participants, don’t like Brad’s attitude to wording and numbers.

Garlinghouse claimed that China is in control of over 80% of Ethereum and Bitcoin mining. Brad said that there are four ‘miners’ in China who operate 60+% of the total Chinese mining industry.

Ripple CEO compared Ethereum to Bitcoin in terms of decentralization, claiming that both suffer from clear Chinese ownership. But the exact number of such Ethereum miners is unknown. Probably, it’s a lesser number than what Garlinghouse gave regarding Ethereum, but Bitcoin is indeed very dependent on the Bitmain’s decisions.

The issue is that Ethereum’s blockchain is mined with 5% of ASIC chips (partially made by Bitmain, the Chinese manufacturer) and 95% of GPU’s. Thus, despite Bitcoin’s ASIC production may have fallen into dependance from Chinese factories and blueprints, Ethereum fans can relax. Their coin is safe in the decentralization of the mining. Ethereum’s much bigger issue could be the slow speed of development, according to a hefty of researchers.

Garlinghouse Under Fire, But He’s Not a Robot or a Lawyer

Mati Greenspan seems to notice only now that Brad has somewhat well-heeled face and appearance:

“Yes. Well, shame on him then. Didn’t take @bgarlinghouse for a bold-faced lier.”

Greenspan says that it’s bad Brad misusing the word ‘miner’ for the word ‘pool’, thus confusing the viewers. However, those conglomerates of greedy miners are closed clubs of interest, they are in no way a ‘decentralized communities’.

A decentralized community would have its deals done via voting, open discussion, improvements, and collective financing. Most of the pools don’t work like that, so there is nothing bad in calling them ‘miners’. They are not communities in classic crypto-anarchist style. They are centralized entities with one or three men in charge.

Centralized entities rule the network’s large business. Including, but not limited to, sending out the shared reward payments, increasing the efficiency of cooling systems, mining chips and power units, finding the cheapest electricity abroad, and so on.

There is probably no misuse is saying that pools are generally ‘miners’ since they are ‘mining pools’ and created to mine. Maybe, Brad should have added that he means those four ‘miners’ are companies!

Tuur Demeester Says Ripple CEO Didn’t Study Bitcoin History in School

Tuur Demeester of Adamant Capital saw the interview and claims that it’s bad Ripple CEO didn’t study math well. Otherwise, he would know that Chinese miners already tried to overtake the network. Back in 2017, with the infamous B2X hardfork they did not succeed. And didn’t even manage to get control over the Bitcoin Core main repository:

This is why studying Bitcoin's history is so important. Chinese miners _tried and failed_ to control the Bitcoin blockchain in 2017 (B2X hard fork), but in reality never changed one iota of the code. Also, a mining pool =/= a miner, and only ~60% of total hashrate is in China. https://t.co/PT2obxUGSS

— Tuur Demeester (@TuurDemeester) February 17, 2020

Nicolas van Saberhagen, the famous Monero protocol developer, came to join the chat. He answers that miners who tried and failed once can come back later and make another attempt. Even from the pure math side, 60+% of the hash rate is far away from decentralization. Which means Bitcoin needs more companies working outside China to balance the minting process.

Even if China controls under 50% of Bitcoin’s network, how can they control all the firms that control mining? They could decrease Bitcoin’s security twice fold by just turning off the equipment. Yet there was a better option back in the days: Bitmain had a bug that allowed their miners to be turned off remotely. Back in 2017, Bitcoin Core developer Peter Todd said:

“Bitmain has put themselves in a position where they can kill the majority of Bitcoin hashing power instantly”

The company stated that their miners transmitting MAC address, IP address and the device’s serial number to random online servers every 11 minutes is ‘misunderstanding‘. In reality, this was the way to turn them all off with Sauron’s ring magic. This means that Ripple CEO is not as far away from the truth as someone wants to think.

Word Choice Is Important When Dealing with Computer Nerds?

Those powerful pools are private firms representing the interests of mining clients: the closed, elitist clubs with money and technological advance giving them more power than the government has in certain areas. They are mining off all the coins they could because the coin is key to power. Coins needed for the future, hamsters store seeds and hardware wallets in a safe place. Wise men wait till the Mooning comes thanks to the efforts by the decentralized community.

Again, this is very strange that people do not notice how prominent Bitcoin maximalists shill shitcoins, help scammers, corporate rats, and political traitors. Instead, skeptics prefer attacking the CEO of a successful B2B blockchain firm for not being an encyclopedia. Yet there is something that glitzy Bitcoin and Ethereum maximalists and other communities cannot (or don’t want to) do as good as Ripple CEO. It’s spreading charisma while talking to the world’s best journalists.

Author: Jeff Fawkes

Jeff Fawkes is a seasoned investment professional and a crypto analyst covering the blockchain space. He has a dual degree in Business Administration and Creative Writing and is passionate when it comes to how technology impacts our society.

Thank you!

You have successfully joined our subscriber list.