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Comment by ChemicalWarfare | Hacker News Reader

"To really drive this example home, could you please quote me a price on building out a Tier 1 datacenter with gigabit fiber? Because last I checked most people don't have that kind of money in their sofa cushion."

"Big boys" do though. And that is my point exactly - if there's enough tx volume (driven by consumer adoption first and foremost) to warrant this expense - someone will do it. Also, in reality bitcoin isn't all that decentralized. Sure, individual nodes on the p2p network are all over the place however the vast majority of them are members of mining pools, with 3 biggest Chinese pools accounting for 30+ % of the total hashrate.

So if one of the major card networks steps in and takes over that chunk, as a consumer I'd be looking at a more reliable system to deal with.

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You'll have to excuse me for this, but what you've just written has been said so many times in the past 18 months it's basically a cliche.

If you're willing to put the entire system into the cloud and hand over the backbone of Bitcoin to big banks and megacorps, you end up with a system no different from fiat currency over time. It ends up being a State controlled fiat money, because all of the infrastructure providers are Corporations - creatures of the State.

Inflation? No problem, we'll just have the usual suspects update the code. Freezing accounts? Narcoturrerism? No problem, we'll update the code. Etc. Having a P2P electronic cash system means accepting that the system is going to be different than government scrip.

The blockchain was never meant to be PayPal. It was meant to bootstrap a cryptoeconomic system outside the bounds of politics and the law. It's completely irresponsible to give that vision up for the ability globally broadcast low value, meaningless consumer payments - especially since you can achieve that by building higher layers of abstraction.

Well sure, there's a "libertarian" angle and there's a "pragmatic" angle here. I don't want to be beating a dead horse but with the way things are shaping up for bitcoin things are getting pretty centralized and as a result easy to control.

As for being "outside the bounds of politics and the law" when it really comes down to it you can only go so far especially if there's something as sensitive and highly visible as "money" is involved. Even in the reasonably "soft" western countries there are subpoenas, cease and desist orders etc. All of that can be set in motion by the government who has the final say. In China - they just disconnect the whole country from the internet :)

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