You definitely make a very compelling and interesting argument. The ultimate market value is certainly a factor of many things, notably "first-mover" / OG value

You definitely make a very compelling and interesting argument. The ultimate market value is certainly a factor of many things, notably "first-mover" / OG value (chief of which Bitcoin versus all subsequent forks e.g. BCH), the sentiment (polarizing people, places, etc), etc. I would tell you that this kind of choice [being root in your 'own' system, having a 'root mechanism' in a collective network: pick any, both or none] fundamentally comes down to ethical values, a personal hierarchy thereof. The case of cryptocurrencies, if we ignore the speculative aspect, is interesting insofar as it demonstrates quite fundamentally opposed political views — here a certain idea of "benevolent interventionism" (however dictatorial / democratic in legitimity, the very existence of the mechanism), versus a certain ideal of "the hand of God" (re Adam Smith), a 100% non-distorted entity (I reckon, from that to Conway's game of life is but a matter of vocabulary: it's a fascinating object for nerds indeed). Again, if we ignore the speculative aspect — which distorts everything, makes all of the above possible on paper but absolutely not observed in real life so far. On topic, I think there's a certain tension forking towards the "free" domain — think Linux and open source and free software but actuated: now it's RISC-V (big mover in the integrated sector, GPUs..), OpenPower, think also companies like Tesla or Amazon making their own 'forks' of everything in-house, not because of NIH (these are too efficient to fall prey to such emotional traps) but rather because they do squeeze some degree of efficiency (like Google with their TPUs and what-have-you). How all programming languages in 20 years have gone open-source and mostly collegial in governance, and most major projects by way of consequence; etc. This [x86 RoT] is just one in a list of reasons that justify this much deeper trend, as I reckon; and there is indeed a certain idealism of "the hand of God" as in being root on your own system (God = me = root). I very much subscribe to this ideology myself, if only for the practical reason that a backdoor is a backdoor is a backdoor.