Re:Bitcoin Isn’t Tulips, It’s Open Source Money
by xorcist on Thursday November 23, 2017 @03:48PM
(#15767696)
Bitcoin is not centralized in any meaningful definition of the term.
It is one of a select few, if not the only one, cryptocurrencies that are multi stakeholder open source projects. Releases are regular, all the necessary maintenance takes place and there is healthy discussion on the mailing list. Despite what some people would like to tell you, it is not unheard of that a newcomer starts working on something or comes with a proposal that gathers interest.
(Which is also the reason you don't see scaling improvements in big bangs, just like Linux doesn't magically scale better in one release. Such improvements are slow and steady, and the latest release of Bitcoin scales better than the previous, which scales better than the one before that.)
A coin where a single stakeholder could, by paychecks or otherwise, change the rules of the network would not be remotely as interesting. It could still be _useful_, especially for payments, but that's not necessarily something that blockchains does best. Cue the usual discussion about store of value versus currency, everybody has heard that already and Bitcoin can be both or neither. That's not the interesting axis to measure, trustless consensus and permissionless innovation is.
It is one of a select few, if not the only one, cryptocurrencies that are multi stakeholder open source projects. Releases are regular, all the necessary maintenance takes place and there is healthy discussion on the mailing list. Despite what some people would like to tell you, it is not unheard of that a newcomer starts working on something or comes with a proposal that gathers interest.
(Which is also the reason you don't see scaling improvements in big bangs, just like Linux doesn't magically scale better in one release. Such improvements are slow and steady, and the latest release of Bitcoin scales better than the previous, which scales better than the one before that.)
A coin where a single stakeholder could, by paychecks or otherwise, change the rules of the network would not be remotely as interesting. It could still be _useful_, especially for payments, but that's not necessarily something that blockchains does best. Cue the usual discussion about store of value versus currency, everybody has heard that already and Bitcoin can be both or neither. That's not the interesting axis to measure, trustless consensus and permissionless innovation is.