Excellent observations across the board. I'd take slight exception to this: > Seriously, the very concept of a blockchain split undermines the description of

Excellent observations across the board. I'd take slight exception to this: > Seriously, the very concept of a blockchain split undermines the description of Bitcoin as a decentralized protocol, because it requires out-of-band resolution. Who are the out-of-band resolvers? The centralization. Well, in the original architecture as proposed, each individual user - or at least every fullnode operator - is also a miner. So there "should be" something like 5000-10,000 miners by now (based on current numbers of miners and fullnodes) none with much of a hashpower advantage over the others. In that environment, conflict resolution would - could only - move forward in a "one man, one cpu, one vote" fashion, with "majority rule" controlling the blockchain.