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Comment by wayoutthere | Hacker News Reader

This is exactly why decentralized currency is no better than regular currency. Bitcoin is centralized in the hands of a few shady, anonymous exchange owners funding the development.

At least in a capitalist democracy we get to elect the criminals who rob us blind.

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Actually the federal reserve is a partially private institution whose head is selected by the president. The common folk never make that decision.

We still get the pitch forks.

I believe the pitch forks are to not hold any bitcoin, and not accept Bitcoin.

Whereas, you do not have much of an option except to accept your national currency.

We (somewhat indirectly via the electoral college) select the president. It’s a representative democracy, with one extra layer of indirection.

I don't believe other than one or two occasional contributors any exchange has ever funded Bitcoin development.

You can always fork. People forget this when talking about blockchains, but it is one of the fundamental innovations of the model.

"...replicating a structure (through organizational or version forking) does not completely address the hierarchy of the structure itself. While it certainly gives others a voice and accounts for fragmentation in the community, power is not flattened among all participants. Quite clearly, senatorial governance is not a direct democracy but a representative one where certain actors (Lead Developers, mining pool operators, software companies) are raised into positions of power by grouping individuals (programmers, miners, users) through their obligatory passage points. This is not necessarily a negative revelation for algorithmic decentralization via (proof-of-work) blockchains but it is important not to assume all stakeholders of their protocols are made equal. The cost of collective action is hierarchy" (481)

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