> Unlike the Federal Reserve and Wall Street, institutions that are managed by humans, Bitcoin was supposed to rest on the infallible logic of math and computer

> Unlike the Federal Reserve and Wall Street, institutions that are managed by humans, Bitcoin was supposed to rest on the infallible logic of math and computer code. In this system, programmers like Mr. Hearn, who often volunteered their expertise and effort, were viewed as neutral technicians. This is the key. If the neutrality and technical/economic/ethical character of the lead developers is called into question, Bitcoin (just a flavored brand of blockchain) is done. An untrustworthy/biased dev team could adjust the cap, difficulty, etc. for their own gain or that of their sponsors. While this would probably cause the majority of nodes to fork the chain and reject a bad update, it would leave the protocol without strong leadership and call the brand into question. Will be interested to see how this plays out with the dev environment around bitcoin becoming so toxic and ideologically split.