What is Centralisation risk?
The concentration of mining, custody, development or infrastructure into few enough hands to create a systemic weakness.
Bitcoin's guarantees rest on distributed enforcement. Concentration in mining pools, in custody of exchange-traded products, or in the small number of implementations most nodes run all narrow that base in different ways.
These are trade-offs worth reporting rather than either dismissing or catastrophising. Concentration that is reversible — miners can switch pools — is different from concentration that is not.
Related terms
Mining pool
A coordinator that combines many miners' hashrate and distributes rewards proportionally, smoothing income…
NetworkNode
A computer running Bitcoin software that independently validates every block and transaction against the…
MarketsSpot Bitcoin ETF
An exchange-traded fund holding bitcoin directly, giving regulated exposure without the holder ever touching…
Network51% attack
An attack in which someone controlling a majority of hashrate reorganises recent blocks to reverse their own…
This definition is part of the Bitcoin Logical glossary. For the fuller explanation, start with Learn, or see the live numbers on The Bitcoin Signal.