Disclaimer: I am a country woman in a little tropical contry not very knowlegded about BTC.

I am a little worried because I get the impression that in the beginning the miners were bitcoin geeks at heart committed to, let's say, the ideals of BTC, which protected the original idea, and I get the impression that now they are entrepreneurs in search of megabusiness. or to control what is emerging as the currency of the future, without caring much about its original values, could I be wrong? I would like to know your opinion on the matter.

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Yo estoy un poquito preocupada porque me da la impresión de que en un inicio los mineros eran geeks bitcoiners de corazón comprometidos con digamos los ideales de BTC lo cuál protegía la idea original, y me da la impresión de que ahora son empresarios en busca de megabussiness o para controlar lo que se perfila como la moneda del futuro, sin importarles mucho sus valores originales, será que me equivoco? Me gustaría conocer su opinión sobre el asunto.

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Tomas Monero? Porque puedes encontrar los geeks en Monero.

Economic users > miners

Yeah miners perform an important function, but they cannot exert any power over the network

But they can be punished..😈

You are right, that is why many Bitcoiners who care about the original values use Monero instead. Its super easy with Cake wallet. Check it out, i am looking forward to buying some magic chocolate with Monero soon! :) Check it out, i am looking forward to buying some magic chocolate with Monero soon! :)

When Government with the largest military and most terrorism enacted globally supports an industry, it is no longer lead by geeks or idealists. This tool (Bitcoin) is mainstream and there will be punishment against those who try to steer the course away from Government approved directions.

To live freely is to subvert tyrrany. Most people prefer to live under tyranny.

thanks for the answers

They are definitely purely motivated by profit - and that's a good thing. It means they do exactly what we need them to do, which is to compete against each other to generate blocks to add to the blockchain by carrying out the maximum possible amount of "proof of work", or "hashing". In doing so, they ensure that the blockchain cannot be faked because the blocks they make take so much work to generate that they cannot be replicated by an attacker.

The problems would only come if miners start being motivated by other things - for example, if governments started to carry out mining, in order to censor transactions, rather than to make money. This is a relevant concern that people think and discuss about, but for various reasons - which you can find out about if interested - it doesn't seem likely to be a big problem.

Another thing to put your mind at rest, perhaps. In 2017 all the big companies in bitcoin, including the overwhelming majority of the miners, got together and agreed to make a change to bitcoin's protocol - by increasing the size of the blocks. There was a lot of controversy, as most developers and grassroots users disagreed with the idea. The companies published plans to make a hard fork that would implement their plan - but they had to abandon their project when it became clear that users and markets disagreed, and that the fork they created would have less value than the original bitcoin. If miners had power then this would not have happened.

Finally, if miners do ever begin to act against bitcoin's interests, it is actually quite easy to change the hashing algorithm used by bitcoin. This would immediately destroy all mining businesses, as the equipment they had invested $billions in would be worthless. It's not something you'd choose to do, as it would cause some disruption, but miners ultimately know that they cannot ever threaten users because if it becomes necessary, users will destroy them.

I hope that helps!