Industry expert Ian Descôteaux from Pow.Re discusses evidence of pool consolidation, risks to Bitcoin, and potential solutions for decentralization. This podcast explores the growing centralization of Bitcoin mining pools, focusing on proxy pools and their potential impact on the network. Timestamps: 00:00 Start 02:48 Checksum's bio 03:34 Canada & South America hash rate 06:42 Mining pool centralization 09:14 Proxy pools 11:57 Proxy pool diagram 13:57 F2Pool use proxy? 15:14 F2Pool block template 16:09 Cobo yield & risk 19:31 Merkle tree evidence 25:28 UTXO accelerator 29:59 Selfish mining & 51% 33:35 Covenants 36:26 Antpool incentives 38:38 Block withholding attacks 40:17 How to fix? 43:32 Are new pools likely? 45:52 Final thoughts Published twice weekly, "The Mining Pod" interviews the best builders and operators in the Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining landscape. Subscribe to get notifications when we publish interviews on Tuesday and a news show on Friday!  👉 Check out Bitcoin Season 2 and The Gwart Show. 👉 Watch our newest documentary, The Big Empty! Follow our host on Twitter, @wsfoxley. - Thank you to our sponsor, CleanSpark, America’s Bitcoin miner! And thank you to Foreman Mining, Master Your Mining! "The Mining Pod" is produced by Sunnyside Honey LLC with Senior Producer, Damien Somerset.  Distributed by CoinDesk with Senior Producer Michele Musso and Executive Producer Jared Schwartz.