In today's digital age, Bitcoin, as an emerging form of currency, has attracted the attention of countless investors and technology enthusiasts. Its decentralized nature has been widely publicized. However, as people gain a deeper understanding of Bitcoin, more and more people are beginning to question: Can Bitcoin Core really control Bitcoin? The answer does not seem to be simple, and may even involve the power of some mysterious organizations.

When Bitcoin's creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, launched the concept in 2009, he envisioned a decentralized currency system designed to allow users to trade freely without relying on any central authority. However, as Bitcoin has become more popular, debate over its control has intensified. Some believe that the Bitcoin core development team has absolute control over the Bitcoin network, while others believe that the real control may be in the hands of some mysterious organizations.

First, understanding Bitcoin's technical architecture is key to understanding its control. Bitcoin is based on blockchain technology, a distributed ledger where all transactions are recorded in a public database that anyone can view. However, this does not mean that no one can influence the system. Bitcoin's core development team is responsible for maintaining and updating Bitcoin's software, and any software update may affect the operation of the entire network. For example, the hard fork event in 2017 that caused Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash to part ways was a power struggle between the core development team and miners.

In this power struggle, the position of miners is particularly important. Miners maintain the security of the network by solving complex mathematical problems and receive Bitcoin as a reward. However, the centralization trend of miners has also raised questions about the control of Bitcoin. According to data, about 65% of the world's Bitcoin computing power is concentrated in the hands of a few large mining pools, which means that these mining pools have far more influence on the network than ordinary users. This centralization may not only lead to the centralization of the network, but also allow certain organizations to influence the future of Bitcoin by controlling mining pools.

Not only that, some people have suggested that some mysterious organizations may be secretly manipulating the direction of Bitcoin. Although this sounds like a conspiracy theory, there have indeed been some puzzling events in the history of Bitcoin. For example, the surge in Bitcoin prices in 2011 was related to some unexplained trading behaviors, which may be manipulated by some organization. For another example, the collapse of the Mt. Gox exchange in 2014 led to the theft of a large number of Bitcoins. This incident has not been fully investigated to this day, and many people speculate that there may be deeper interests behind it.

Although the decentralized nature of Bitcoin can theoretically guarantee the freedom and security of users, in reality, the struggle for control makes this ideal complicated. Many investors often overlook this point when participating in Bitcoin transactions. They pursue short-term interests without considering the power games that may exist behind the scenes. In such an environment, how ordinary users can protect their assets and avoid being involved in these complex control struggles has become an urgent problem to be solved.

In order to better understand the control of Bitcoin, investors need to improve their financial literacy and technical knowledge. Understanding the operating mechanism, transaction process and market dynamics of Bitcoin can help them make more informed decisions in this uncertain field. In addition, users should also pay attention to discussions in the Bitcoin community to understand the movements of the core development team and changes in mining pools. By participating in community activities, investors can not only obtain first-hand information, but also share experiences with other users and enhance their own judgment.

In the world of Bitcoin, information is power. Many investors often make decisions without sufficient information, resulting in unnecessary losses. For example, some investors blindly follow the trend and buy Bitcoin when the price soars, but choose to sell at a loss when the price falls, and eventually have to bear huge financial losses. Therefore, cultivating information sensitivity and learning how to distinguish true and false information have become a must for Bitcoin investors today.

In addition to personal efforts, all sectors of society should also strengthen supervision and education on Bitcoin. As Bitcoin continues to gain popularity, more and more countries are beginning to pay attention to this field. Governments and financial institutions should strengthen supervision of the Bitcoin market and protect the legitimate rights and interests of investors. At the same time, financial education should also be included in school curriculums so that the younger generation can have financial awareness from an early age and understand the operating mechanisms of digital currencies such as Bitcoin.

The future of Bitcoin is still full of uncertainty, and the battle for control will continue in this virtual world. As investors, we should not only pay attention to the price fluctuations of Bitcoin, but also have a deep understanding of the technology and mechanisms behind it, and identify possible risks and opportunities. Perhaps, in this challenging era, only by continuous learning and adaptation can we remain invincible in the world of Bitcoin.

Behind Bitcoin, there may be some mysterious organizations, and each of us may become a participant in this power game. Faced with such a complex situation, we need to keep a clear mind, invest rationally, and avoid being swayed by emotions. In this era full of opportunities and challenges, only by staying vigilant can we ride the wave of Bitcoin and welcome our own future.

The four most famous international exchanges:

Binance INTL	OKX INTL	Gate.io INTL	Huobi INTL
China Line　APP DL	China Line　APP DL	China Line　APP DL	China Line　APP DL

Note: The above exchange logo is the official website registration link, and the text is the APP download link.

Regarding Bitcoin Core software, many people have unilaterally believed that its development is centralized due to the dispute over capacity expansion, but Jameson
Lopp, a Bitcoin Core developer and chief development engineer at BitGo, wants to explain Bitcoin through this article.
Core operates and clarifies that there is no controller of Bitcoin.
I once calculated the country's money supply by making such an M1 index ranking, including physical currencies such as banknotes and coins and current accounts. I found that Bitcoin ranked very high among them, and its performance was even more active than the sovereign currencies of many countries.
In 2018, Bitcoin's M1 money supply ranking dropped from 19th to 49th. As of July 2018, a total of 6 million Bitcoins were unusable and permanently lost on the Bitcoin blockchain. The maximum supply of BTC will not exceed 15 million. As of now, it seems that 17 million BTC are in circulation, but in fact only 11 million can be used, sent, received and traded.
Regarding who has the ability to write code changes into Bitcoin
The question of Bitcoin Core is often raised. Over the years, all parties have regarded it as the "central control point" of the Bitcoin protocol. For the layman, the reason is certainly not obvious, so the purpose of this article is to explain Bitcoin Core.
How Core operates, and at a higher level, how the Bitcoin protocol evolves.
History of Bitcoin Core: Bitcoin
Core is the focal point of Bitcoin protocol development, it is not a command and control point. If it disappears for any reason, a new focal point will emerge, based on the technical communication platform (currently the GitHub repository) out of convenience rather than definition/project integrity. In fact, we have seen Bitcoin development shift to other platforms and even name changes:
1. In early 2009, the source code of the Bitcoin project was just a .rar file hosted on SourceForge. Early developers would actually communicate code patches with Satoshi Nakamoto via email;
2. On October 30, 2009, Sirius (Martti Malmi) created a Subversion repository for the Bitcoin project on SourceForge;
3. In 2011, the Bitcoin project moved from SourceForge to GitHub;
4. In 2014, the Bitcoin project was renamed Bitcoin Core.
Note: Focus is a concept in game theory that refers to the solutions people tend to use when there is a lack of communication.
While there are some GitHub "maintainer" accounts in this organization that are able to merge code into the master branch, this is more of a maintenance function than a position of power. If anyone could merge code into the master branch, then the Bitcoin codebase would quickly become a "too many cooks in the kitchen" scenario.
Core follows the principle of least privilege, which states that any power given to an individual can be easily subverted if abused.
From an adversarial perspective, GitHub cannot be trusted. Any number of GitHub employees could use their administrative privileges to inject code into the Bitcoin repository without the maintainer’s consent. But it is unlikely that a GitHub attacker could compromise Bitcoin.
PGP key for Bitcoin Core maintainers.
Rather than basing the integrity of the code outside of a GitHub account, Core has a continuous integration system that performs checks against trusted PGP keys that must sign every merge commit. While these keys are associated with known identities, it is still not safe to assume that it is always the case, and keys can be compromised without us knowing unless the original key owner notifies other maintainers. Therefore, commit keys do not provide perfect security either, they just make it more difficult for attackers to inject arbitrary code.
The integrity of the Bitcoin Core code cannot rely on just a few cryptographic keys, which is why there are so many other checks. There are many layers of security here to provide defense in depth:
1. Pull Request Security
1. Anyone can freely request code changes by opening a Pull Request against the master branch on Bitcoin/Bitcoin.
2. Developers review Pull Requests to ensure they are harmless. Anyone is free to review Pull Requests and provide feedback.
There is no supervision or threshold for Core contributions. If a Pull Request is indeed useful and there are no reasonable objections to it, the maintainer will merge it into the Core software.
3. The Core maintainers set this pre-push to ensure that they do not push unsigned commits into the repository.
4. Optionally add timestamps to merge commits securely via OpenTimestamps;
5. Travis CONTinuous
The Integration system runs this script periodically to check the integrity of the Git tree (history) and verify that all commits in the Master branch are signed with one of the trusted PGP keys;
6. Anyone who wants can run this script to verify the PGP signatures of all merge commits dating back to December 2015. This process should take about 25 minutes.
2. Release Security
1. The Gitian deterministic build system is run independently by multiple developers with the goal of creating the same binary. If someone manages to create a build that does not match the builds of other developers, it means that non-determinism has been introduced, so the final version will not happen. If there is non-determinism, the developer will find out what went wrong, fix it, and then build another candidate version. Once the deterministic build is successful, the developer will sign the generated binary, which guarantees that the binary and toolchain have not been tampered with and the same source is used. This approach removes single points of failure in the build and distribution process, and anyone with technical skills can run their own build system.
2. Once the Gitian build is complete and signed by the builder, a Bitcoin Core
The maintainers of will PGP sign a message containing the SHA256 hash of each build. If you decide to run a pre-built binary, you can check its hash after downloading it, and then use the hash to verify the authenticity of the signed release message.
3. All of the above is open source and can be audited by anyone with the skills.
4. Finally, even after completing all the above quality and completeness checks, submit to Bitcoin
The code that makes its way into Bitcoin Core and eventually into versions is also not deployed to the node network by any centralized organization. Instead, each node operator must make a conscious decision to update the code they run.
Core intentionally does not have an automatic update feature, so users can decide for themselves what version of the code they want to run.
Although the Bitcoin Core project implements all of the above technical security measures, they are not perfect and any of them could theoretically be compromised.
The final line of defense for the integrity of the Bitcoin Core code is the same as for any other open source project: developers must remain vigilant and review Bitcoin Core code.
The more eyes there are on the Core code, the less likely it is that malicious or buggy code will make its way into released clients.
Bitcoin Core has a lot of test code, there is a test for each PR (Pull
Request, which can be simply understood as the code contributor sending a code merge request to the administrator), and an extended test suite that runs on the Master every night. You can check the code coverage of the test yourself in the following ways:
1. Clone the Bitcoin Core GitHub repository;
2. Install the dependencies required to build from source;
3. Run these commands;
4. View the report at ./total_coverage/index.html; alternatively, you can view the coverage report hosted by Marco Falke here.
Having such high test coverage means there is a higher degree of certainty that the code works as expected. Testing is a big deal when it comes to consensus-critical software. And for particularly complex changes, developers sometimes perform painstaking mutation testing, that is, they deliberately break the code and see if the tests fail as expected. Greg
Maxwell (a former Bitcoin Core developer) gave some insight into this process when discussing the 0.15 release: “Testing is testing of software, but what is the testing of testing? To test testing, you have to break the software.”
BitMEX wrote an excellent article about the Bitcoin implementation ecosystem. There are currently over a dozen different Bitcoin compatible implementations, and even more "competing network" implementations. This is open source and free, and anyone who contributes to Bitcoin can
Anyone dissatisfied with the Core project is free to run their own software. They can start from scratch or choose to fork the Core software. At the time of writing, 96% of Bitcoin nodes are running Bitcoin Core.
Why is this the case? If the effort required to switch to another software implementation is minimal, then Bitcoin
How does Core have a near-monopoly on the node network? After all, a lot of other software provides RPC APIs that are compatible with or at least highly similar to Bitcoin Core.
96% of Bitcoin nodes run Bitcoin Core software, which I believe is Bitcoin
As a result of Core becoming the development focus, it has the support of orders of magnitude more development talent and development time, which means that Bitcoin Core
The code of the project is often the most performant and secure. Node operators do not want to run second-best software in terms of fund management. In addition, considering that this is consensus software and the Bitcoin protocol does not have a formal specification, it is safer to use the focus implementation (because if you run a different version of the software, your node may be a bug to most nodes in the network). In this sense, the code developed for the focus is the closest to the existing specification.
Not familiar with Bitcoin Core
Someone who is familiar with the development process, might be looking at the project from the outside and think of Core as a monolithic entity. This is far from the case! There is often disagreement among Core contributors, and even the most prolific contributors have written large amounts of code that has never been merged into the project. If you read the guidelines for contributing, you might notice that they are fairly loose, and the process is best described as "rough consensus." "Maintainers will consider whether patches conform to the general principles of the project; whether the minimum criteria for inclusion are met; and the general consensus of contributors will be judged."
That Bitcoin
Who are the maintainers of Core? They are contributors who have built up enough social capital in the project by providing high-quality contributions over a period of time. When the existing group of maintainers believes that a contributor has demonstrated sufficient ability, reliability, and motivation, they can grant submission access to the contributor's GitHub account. The role of the chief maintainer is the person who oversees all aspects of the project and is responsible for coordinating releases. Over the years, there have been three chief maintainers, namely:
1. Satoshi Nakamoto 2009.1.3 – 2011.2.23
2. Gavin Andresen February 23, 2011 – April 7, 2014
3. Wladimir van der Laan 2014.4.7 to present
Act as Bitcoin
Core maintainers are often referred to as gatekeepers because maintainers do not actually have the power to make decisions that go against the consensus of contributors or users. However, the pressure on this role can be very heavy due to the additional attention from the entire ecosystem. For example, Gregory
Maxwell relinquished his maintainer role in 2017 for personal reasons, most likely due to the public pressure he experienced during the scaling debate.
Wladimir wrote an article about the pressures of being a Core maintainer and why Gavin’s commit access should be removed, which upset a lot of people.
When Garzik's maintainer privileges were removed, he and others were upset, even though Garzik had not contributed to the project in two years.
Giving his GitHub account maintenance rights to Core would not bring any benefits to the project, it would only create a security risk and violate the principle of least privilege that Wladimir mentioned in his post.
Others may look at some of what goes on in Core and think it's a technocratic organization or ivory tower that makes it hard for new entrants to join. But if you talk to contributors, you'll find that's not the case. While there have only been a dozen or so people with commit access over the past few years, there are hundreds of developers contributing to Bitcoin. I've made some small contributions myself, and while I certainly don't consider myself a "core developer," I am a Core software developer. No one can stop you from contributing to Bitcoin!
Although Bitcoin Core
There is some structure (it uses centralized communication channels for coordination), but the project itself is not controlled by any one participant (even someone who has upgraded the privileges of the GitHub repository). Even if a maintainer-organized coup were technically possible to hijack the GitHub repository, censor dissenting developers, and perhaps even scramble for “Bitcoin
Core” brand, but the result is Bitcoin
Core will no longer be the focus of development. Developers who disagree with the maintainers’ actions can simply fork the code and move their work to a different repository, where the Bitcoin Core maintainers will have no administrative privileges.
Even without a coup, if controversial changes are somehow merged into the Core software, some developers could fork it, remove the controversial changes, and release a new version to users.
Sechet was from Bitcoin
Core forked out, removed Segregated Witness, and created Bitcoin ABC. Conversely, if Core rejected a change proposed by some people, developers can also fork and add those features later. This has happened many times:
• Mike Hearn forked from Core and created Bitcoin XT
• AndrewSTOne forked from Core and created Bitcoin Unlimited
• JeffGarzik forked from Core and created BTC1
Forking the code is easy, but shifting the focus of Bitcoin development is difficult; you have to convince developers to devote their time to contributing to another project.
It is also difficult to convince many people who do not blindly follow Bitcoin.
For users of Core changes, this may be a self-reinforcing belief because if users do not participate in the consensus process by understanding their choices, they give up some power to developers. But in 2017, during UASF (User Activated Soft Fork), user power was exercised. An anonymous Bitcoin developer, Shaolinfry, proposed the BIP148 protocol, which would force miners to activate Segregated Witness. However, BIP148 was too controversial and was not adopted by Bitcoin.
Core adopted it, so Shaolinfry forked from Core and created Bitcoin
UASF. In my opinion, the best Core contributors are those who fully exercise sovereignty. We are all Satoshi Nakamoto.
It is almost impossible to fully understand Bitcoin as a system. The definition (control) of Bitcoin is like the definition of a language. Languages are natural, and consensus on the meaning of words evolves gradually, rather than being defined by dictionaries. Just as dictionaries describe a linguistic phenomenon rather than defining it, Bitcoin implementations describe the language of Bitcoin in code. No one is forced to agree with the meaning given in the dictionary, and no one is forced to agree with the code in a given Bitcoin implementation by running Bitcoin.
Languages are not governed by democracies, and neither is Bitcoin; while you may hear people talk about miners, nodes, developers, or users "voting," there is no mechanism by which any kind of majority vote can force a minority of dissenters to accept changes they disagree with. Bitcoin is without rulers, but it is not without rules. The rules are set and enforced by the individual network participants. While changes to the Bitcoin protocol itself are typically made through the submission of a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal, even though this is a recommended best practice, it is not enforced on everyone. It is simply a more formal way to guide changes through peer review and consensus building.
While this is difficult to explain and understand, it is an important aspect of Bitcoin's antifragility. If there is a single point of control, it will also be a single point of failure that can be exploited by powerful entities that are threatened by Bitcoin. Ultimately, each node operator governs autonomously by ensuring that no one can break the rules they agree on. This security model is the foundation of Bitcoin's bottom-up governance. No one controls Bitcoin. No one controls the focus of Bitcoin development.