It's far from ideal though. I think it's actually worse than using banks from a centralization point of view, because you can typically choose between multiple

It's far from ideal though. I think it's actually worse than using banks from a centralization point of view, because you can typically choose between multiple banks. In this case you only have one single point of failure: Intel. If that breaks, what then? From a pure efficiency/centralization perspective, there are likely better cryptocurrencies out there. I think Ethereum's sharding network is interesting, too, and it seems to maintain a high-degree of decentralization, but I don't know how easy it will be to implement: https://youtu.be/9RtSod8EXn4?t=3h10m7s https://youtu.be/9RtSod8EXn4?t=3h10m7s