Lots of "they" in there and very little substantive evidence of who "they" actually are and what actions were connected to other "theys" involved. I'm not saying there isn't a group that is in tighter control of the codebase, but given the code they produce is independent of the actual data (the blockchain) I'm ok with that as long as others audit their work and then talk about it publicly (which they do): https://twitter.com/BitMEXResearch/status/135185541410371584.... Keep in mind that some developers who disagreed with other developers ends up creating a fork.

Bitcoin's "fiat" value is pretty much a speculative/opinionated/consensus of belief thing, by nature. This is really no different than the fed saying these 100,000 things are worth this much in dollars. It's an opinion based in observation, but still an opinion, albeit a collective one.

The value of the Bitcoin network itself to provide a wide range of authentication and payment integrations is quite high and a technology potential for changing markets. That is only valuable if it is found long term to be a secure store of integer values.