Bitcoin's Bear Market Habit: OGs Worry About Centralization When Price Pumps, Plebs Worry When It Dumps
A sentiment-tracking chart shared on X and discussed on the show this week makes a simple but pointed claim: the loudest complaints about Bitcoin's centralization do not come from a consistent group of people, they come from whoever is losing right now.
THE CHART
The chart, which the hosts cited on air without confirming the account's exact handle, tracked two lines against Bitcoin's price: how often self-described Bitcoin "OGs" mentioned centralization risk versus how often newer holders, or "plebs," did the same. The pattern held up cleanly across the last cycle. When price rallied, particularly around the run to six figures in mid-2025, the OG line spiked. When price dropped, the pleb line spiked instead, most visibly during the October 2025 sell-off and again now, at the tail end of the current bear market.
The read is not that either group is wrong to raise the concern. It is that the concern tracks the price, not the facts on the ground. One group has been through enough cycles to sit through a drawdown without panicking about the network's structure. The other group discovers a new existential threat every time their bags are underwater.
THE BIP-110 BACKDROP
The current spike in centralization talk has a concrete trigger. BIP-110, a proposed soft fork designed to restrict non-financial data from Bitcoin blocks, triggered a chain split at block 961,632 on August 8, 2026, with the minority chain producing two blocks in eight hours before stalling. Only 2.53% of blocks signaled support during the mandatory window, far below the 55% threshold the proposal itself set for activation, and roughly 99.85% of Bitcoin's hashpower stayed with the original chain.
The show's hosts pointed out the irony in what came next: supporters of the failed fork, whose original complaint was that Bitcoin had become too centralized, are reportedly now discussing a proof-of-work algorithm change in a small Discord server. Trying to fix centralization by moving the conversation into a Discord with a handful of participants is not exactly the counterargument its backers think it is.
THE ACTUAL TAKEAWAY
Governments banning and unbanning Bitcoin, miners relocating overnight, forks that fail after two blocks: none of it has stopped the network yet, and the hosts made the case on the show that it never will, because the incentives to hold and defend Bitcoin outweigh the incentives to kill it for every group involved, from individual holders to the states now competing for hash power. The centralization debate will keep resurfacing every time price moves sharply in either direction. What is worth tracking is not whether the debate happens again, it is whether the group raising it this time is arguing from the chain's actual security or just from their own portfolio.
This story comes from the Simply Bitcoin Live show. Watch the full episode.
