In what way do users have control over miners or developers? If the assumption is that corruption can overcome a democratic state, I never understood why its so crazy to suggest it can overcome developers or a mining cartel.
[0] https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/bitcoin-independence-day...
Miners can, but it’s costly. By a majority mining empty blocks on the chain they wish users to switch away from they make that chain useless. However, they need to sacrifice profit on some other chain (by not mining on that) to do so.
As the article shows, BTC's user side of the equation is actually controlled by a small group of investors. Thus, users like you and me have absolutely zero control or influence over the value of BTC, and are vulnerable to the manipulation done by this small group of investors.
We already saw BTC's value tank to half in a matter of days. How do you explain that as being something that meets the users' best interests?
This is not about money invested but about social consensus over which version of software is the bitcoin.
Let's not forget that bitcoin's monetary policy is fixed. Everyone earns coins the same way as everyone else: by mining or buying. No printing of new money for example. Central banks are far bigger whales than bitcoin's given their ability to print new money on a whim.
No, not really. It is in the interests of those with lots of bitcoins to sell high and buy low. This means whales stand to profit by pumping BTC's value to leave everyone else holding the bag when it's value tanks. Rinse and repeat, and fat whales get fatter. But for this scheme to work, first you need unwitting users to fall for the promise of quick and easy fortunes at arm's reach. A tale as old as time.
__Developers:__
* Profit motive: Paid salaries / bounties / donations by users, business that build off the Blockchain, miners, and appreciation from their BTC holdings
* The consequence of all the core developers going rogue would be the price of BTC collapsing, salaries or donations no longer getting paid by either or all of the above groups
__Miners:__
* Profit motive: Appreciation of BTC holdings, income derrived from doing their job by validating transactions and appending them to the blockchain for the block reward and transaction fees
* Rogue miners can't exert much force on the system until they get close to 50% of the hashing power.
* A collective of miners (e.g. a mining pool) can negatively impact the ecosystem by buying developers, or messing with transactions. This would result in a large cost by way of their holdings losing value and no longer being able to derrive as much income from mining.
__Users:__
* Profit motive: Transacting and speculating with BTC gives it value. If a significant group of users dislike a developer's proposed changes or feels they are corrupt, they can make their voice heard which can force the miners and other developers to weigh in resolve the issue. If this does not happen, then the loss of confidence in Bitcoin can result in a fork (the troublemakers leaving the chain, or the majority / active users moving to a new coin and leaving the troublemakers behind).
No one party in the above can force any issue on the other two stakeholders, and doing so against all economic incentives will typically cause enough damage that none of the other actors would likely go along with such an act.
For example, the main active developers could get bought off and push out a client with 10GB transaction blocks. Assuming the miners also get bought off, the users can choose not to use such cyrpto and sell their coins while they can still get a decent value for them. The miners and developers would be king of their fiefdom, which means very little. This is only possible though if you treat the miners and developers each as a single entity. This is far from the case though.
Do you believe all states to be corrupt?
Developers: Profit from being a user, as well as from the power to drive additional demand by improving the ecosystem (make it easier to use, more powerful or more efficient), and lastly by way of bounty/salary/donation based on how well they are achieving #2.
Miners: Arbitrage between cost of electricity and price of crypto, transaction fees mined, block reward, and finally from being a user.
The funny money some exchanges offer to make moving fiat easier or faster between other exchanges is pretty irrelevant. As long as tether is not committing massive fraud by minting billions to buy crypto on a fraudulent basis, it doesn’t matter what token people use to move their fiat. Tether could explode tomorrow or in decades from now, but I don’t see them bringing down crypto longterm, just like I don’t see an Elon tweet having the potential for long term impact.
I would certainly never touch Tether, and anyone who does is taking a not insignificant risk of getting burnt if there is no-one willing to buy their tether when they want to sell (Tethers are not and have not been redeemable for dollars from Tether corp for a long time).
Users running software nodes validates the blocks, limiting what miners can do. Miners can be pushed to change the rules with methods like a 'User Activated Soft Fork'. The proof of work algorithm can even be changed, rendering all the ASIC hardware of the mining industry worthless.
Isn't the role of a central bank to enact monetary policy and to contribute to financial stability? I mean, actively working to stabilize the value of money and to ensure inflation meets the government's policy goals, which are motivated by the need to ensure the economy stays healthy, don't sound like something that creates controversy. I mean, do we really need a vote do check if we want Zimbabwean hyperinflation?
Given the alternative is the perpetual risk of seeing the value of your currency halve in less than a week, like BTC experienced a few months ago, how exactly is the service provided by a central bank bad or undesirable?
And there are countless historical examples (even recent) of peaceful or violent protests causing change to corrupt governments.