And yes, I am invested in the idea of not being dependent on a large corporation to authenticate my identity online, or a large bank to access my money. No surprise many people reject these ideas, given how many people's livelihoods now depend on institutions that are shaped around the existence of centralized points of control.
Just remember, the only way crypto/Web3 fails, is if a lot more people are put in prison, like the way the Netherlands put Alexey Pertsev in prison for publishing open source Tornado Cash code. Is that the world you want to live in?
This control they have has nothing to do with centralization or decentralization. They get it through the data-economy we live in - monopolistic companies syphoning petabytes of information about us to build impenetrable moats of data that smaller businesses can't compete with. Currency isn't even on their radar. It's irrelevant. When that cash or coin needs to be transferred into real tangible value, they'll be taking their share, regardless if the system that transaction is running on is an Pentium 3 AMEX COBOL server, or via the mining rig that came out last week consuming the energy from burning a small rainforest.
This has everything to do with centralization.. the exclusive access these companies have to vast troves of private data is a consequence of billions of people relying on a handful of companies to provide internet services to them.
If you say that decentralization is the solution, I'd retort "what are you even planning on decentralizing?", because most of their logistics isn't on "the internet", it's on the dark web
Owner deliberately created a bus factor issue and decided to violate sanctions against North Korea.
These sorts of disputes happen all the time. They don’t generally resolve with “contractor signs with counterparty’s name on new contracts in perpetuity.”