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Comment by probe | Hacker News Reader

One of my favorite questions to ask about this topic is:

"Given what you know today (and how blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and decentralized networks work), would you still design the financial system and other systems (ex. identity, currencies, etc) the same way they are designed today?"

My answer is no, and that's why I'm still bullish on decentralized technology and systems winning in the long-term. In that case, investments in Bitcoin and Ethereum are merely call options for an entirely new financial world and a risk still worth betting on.

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To switch to another financial system, the alternative has to be significantly better (eg. 10x). Curious what advantages you'd point out?

Bitcoin isn't decentralized.

This is going to need a lot more text to justify.

There's only 3 mining pools, and the dev team has acted anything but democratic.

The reason for the fork to cash was because the dev team wanted to keep the network inefficent to benefit miner rewards at the expense of users, along with justifying the lightning network, with Blockstream having 9+ bitcoin core developers on their payroll.

> There's only 3 mining pools

There's well more than 3 mining pools.

https://blockchain.info/pools

6 mining pools with 67.3% of the network.

That's still more than 3 :-)

> the dev team has acted anything but democratic

And? You retain control because you can exit, this is the point of having cryptocurrency. It is a voluntary process. And for "democratic" development process... I'm amazed that this point is being brought up. Show me successful software project that is being "democratically" controlled.

The the dev team intensionally cripples their product's service efficiency when the user base adamantly calls them out for doing so, and meanwhile several of the core devs are being paid by a company which is developing it's own fix for the crippled transaction speeds of bitcoin.

This is exactly what I was talking about. Ultimately their technical vision is different from opinions of large group of outsiders, such as you. Allowing you to input your opinion into the dev process would effectively block it. Fortunately there is a solution. Bitcoin Core is their software. You, however, are free to use Bitcoin Cash (exactly that everyone wanted, am I right?). You are free to contribute to Bitcoin Cash. You are free to start your own cryptocurrency. Don't like it? Exit.

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