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As we know, one of the concepts of Bitcoin is to be "decentralized". When individual miners, even with ASIC miners, become unprofitable, will the system become more centralized to those several superb professional miners?
Would that finally affect the willingness of users to accept Bitcoin and lead to its collapse?
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Even if mining becomes more centralized, it would seem unlikely that miners would turn into banks: Their only advantage at shaping payments is that they may delay transactions by not including them in the block, so there doesn't seem a direct incentive to progress to banking.
On the other hand, payment processors and bank-like entities would have an incentive to foster mining efforts, as their business concept directly profits from a secure network.
So, banks should be interesting in paying for mining, but not vice versa.
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If the bitcoin developers get the incentives right (if they aren't already) then no, there will be plenty of small miners remaining. Also: anyone would be free to start their own mining company and start competing right away. There are no restrictions like currently on starting a bank.
And those new companies have one advantage in that they can use the latest most efficient hardware and the cheapest data center technology etc.
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related: http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/13419/will-asic-miners-hold-the-network-hostage-and-demand-a-fee-for-their-services
– Murch – 2013-11-08T12:51:47.2902
related: http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/312/do-mining-pools-centralize-the-bitcoin-network-and-make-it-less-secure
– Murch – 2013-11-08T12:54:55.680It seems like you're asking two questions. 1) Will miners eventually resemble banks? and 2) Will miners become more centralized? – Nick ODell – 2015-02-02T18:43:59.130