> the vast majority of the electricity being consumed for bitcoin mining is hydro in China
Side concern but isn’t this concentration a red flag? Likely many miners are in China or Russia due to the electricity prices. Can’t they collude to execute a 51% attack?
They could and can. The problem with both PoW and PoS is concentration of consensus/trust over time I think. There are models I've seen that break that up somewhat in PoW and potentially other forms by relying on something that is hard to concentrate (e.g. the market for consumer grade CPU's, social networks, etc). I would like something that anyone can run, but has some natural barrier that prevents it from being centralised.
They possibly can. Nearly all of them are in China, and nearly all of them are owned by a single company that manufactures the ASIC processors that do the mining.
This is why I'm not a bitcoin maximalist and I'm not a huge fan of it. I have a suspicion that eventually it will fail.
Side concern but isn’t this concentration a red flag? Likely many miners are in China or Russia due to the electricity prices. Can’t they collude to execute a 51% attack?