This is fascinating to watch. The Bitcoin block chain is an explicit distributed consensus algorithm. The Bitcoin community is an implicit consensus-based hum

This is fascinating to watch. The Bitcoin block chain is an explicit distributed consensus algorithm. The Bitcoin community is an implicit consensus-based human system. The two are inextricably linked because humans put hard-earned dollars into the algorithm. A lot of dollars... We're watching the two systems try to cooperate to evolve, and it looks pretty messy. When looking at it through this lens, I'm even more confident in my decision to not put money into Bitcoin. I can't think of any software systems that are successful without granting specific individuals near total authority so they don't have to rule everything by consensus. The most successful businesses follow the CEO model. Apple is Steve's vision and execution. The most successful open source software projects follow the benevolent dictator model. Linus runs Linux, Guido runs Python. Other protocols like HTTP have a pretty broad set of people that make up a standards board. But at the end of the day we have all given Google, Apple, Mozilla and Microsoft executive authority over the protocol through unanimously adopting their clients. With Bitcoin, the core development team is already starting from a weak position, since anyone else can start up nodes that speak the protocol differently. The miners are granted most of the power and authority by the algorithm, but anyone can participate in mining. Wallet software needs to cooperate. Businesses and end users that operate on Bitcoin have their own wants and needs. It's a miracle anyone bought into this system in the first place, and will be a miracle if they figure out how to cooperate to evolve.