With Bitcoin's PoW (Proof Of Work) algorithm, any group that controls 51% of the mining hashrate essentially can determine who is allowed to spend their coins. So they would be your triumvirate. No group that we are aware of to date has been able to achieve this, and if they did, and demonstrably thwarted an attempted spend of a coin, it would immediately destroy the value of the currency plunging the entire community into crisis.
This is one of the dangers of mining hashrate centralization though, and why so many altcoins have been created trying to overcome this inherent problem. Still, after more than a decade,Bitcoin's PoW algorithm is the best of a bunch of bad choices for genuine decentralized platforms. Nobody has yet come up with anything which is not ultimately subject to centralized control in some form by a determined group so nothing ultimately fixes this problem. That said, given the number of SHA256 miners out there, it is incredibly difficult and resource intensive to pull off a 51% attack against the network. You would need the electrical generating capacity of several countries to do it.
Bitcoin is definitely not green. But that waste is the only way to keep it safe.
With Bitcoin's PoW (Proof Of Work) algorithm, any group that controls 51% of the mining hashrate essentially can determine who is allowed to spend their coins. So they would be your triumvirate. No group that we are aware of to date has been able to achieve this, and if they did, and demonstrably thwarted an attempted spend of a coin, it would immediately destroy the value of the currency plunging the entire community into crisis.
This is one of the dangers of mining hashrate centralization though, and why so many altcoins have been created trying to overcome this inherent problem. Still, after more than a decade,Bitcoin's PoW algorithm is the best of a bunch of bad choices for genuine decentralized platforms. Nobody has yet come up with anything which is not ultimately subject to centralized control in some form by a determined group so nothing ultimately fixes this problem. That said, given the number of SHA256 miners out there, it is incredibly difficult and resource intensive to pull off a 51% attack against the network. You would need the electrical generating capacity of several countries to do it.
Bitcoin is definitely not green. But that waste is the only way to keep it safe.