>It's essentially voting by adoption

Unlike democratic policy, the votes for bitcoin policy are not 1 citizens 1 vote. You can claim that citizens have effectively no control (although they clearly do have some control). If you're not a miner you have absolutely no control. Even if you are a miner, your control is some function of your hash power.

> If you're not a miner you have absolutely no control.

The economic majority of Bitcoin users ultimately decides what "Bitcoin" even means and can enforce that against miners with e.g. a User Activated Soft Fork: https://uasf.co

I disagree. As a user, I have no real say. What ever the miners and exchanges decide if what I must use. And for the vast majority of users just don't care about which fork should be considered the true path.

As a user, I have about as much control over US currency. I can be very vocal, protest, and raise awareness for what I think is correct, but ultimately almost all decisions happen with governing bodies. And in the case of Bitcoin, the governing bodies are the miners and exchanges, which have very different incentives than the users.

You may have diminished say in the governance process, but you can vote with your money.

If enough people leave a contentious network, the price falls. If you decide to use another chain, exchanges/wallets/miners become profit incentivized to support those chains.

I agree that you alone have no real say. The community does.

And this is the problem. Blockchain represents a revolution against existing financial power structures. I am personally far from convinced that this will go well, since we know from history that revolutions intent on removing power structures tend replace them. Even before we factor in geopolitics, I am not extremely keen on replacing my country's already too unchecked banking sector with some entirely unregulated, supranational line-up of blue-eyed ancaps and other speculators whose main qualification is owning enough GPUs in places where power is cheap enough to mine. I really don't see that working out well for me at all, regardless of the theory of democratizing access to financial services. Money is infrastructure, and those who own the roads set the tolls.

This is an advantage of proof-of-stake: in order to 'mine', you only have to own some of the coin. It's still not one vote per citizen, but it's much closer to it--and it's more stable, since people holding large amounts of the coin are motivated to ensure it's stability and security.

Is proof of stake a plutocracy by definition or is there some other democratizing factor?

Vitalik had a good take on this; developers are in control only until they screw up, which means they were never really in control. https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/03/23/legitimacy.html

Developers control the means of software distribution, which does give them some staying power even if they make bad decisions. The tipping point to removing software developers from control is when it becomes preferable to set up new distribution channels instead of accept their code as-is.

> a lot more decentralized than the US/Fed monetary system [..]

The distribution of USD cash across the world would appear be (almost uniquely?) decentralized... If the Fed were to decide that as of midnight tonight, negative interest rates apply on all USD cash balances, how exactly could that affect the suitcase full of USD you buried at the bottom of your garden? [Spoiler: it wouldn't...]

Physical cash is a tiny portion of the USD mass in circulation.

> Physical cash is a tiny portion of the USD mass in circulation

We appear to be using the term "in circulation" somewhat differently.

"Currency in circulation refers to the amount of cash–in the form of paper notes or coins–within a country that is physically used to conduct transactions between consumers and businesses"[0]

"As of February 10, 2021, there is approximately US$2.10 trillion in circulation, $2.05 trillion of which is in the Federal Reserve Notes (the remaining $50 billion is in the form of U.S. notes and coins)"[1]

...of course you're correct to note that this ~$2 trillion is only a proportion of total money supply (assuming we can agree on which measure to use for 'money supply') but it's still a substantial sum. It's also decentralized.

How does ~$2 trillion of decentralized money compare with the total supply of one's favourite (allegedly decentralized) cryptocurrency?

[0] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/currency-in-circulation...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_dollar