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You’re forgetting the most crucial and definitely centralized aspect of Bitcoin: the developers. Their influence over the protocol’s modifications outweighs a l

• deevolution 6y ago
  Even development is not really centralized because anyone can create a fork. But that doesn't mean your fork will have any value - users have to decide that it's valuable. Bitcoin is an ecosystem.
• sparkie 6y ago
  It doesn't. There are enough "bitcoin maximalists" that developers attempting to modify the bitcoin protocol in ways which aren't widely accepted would be metaphorically hanging themselves. We've seen plenty of them have their reputations tarnished, including some of the most prominent early developers who took over the software maintenance after Satoshi. The developers who are still around and respected are those who work within the protocol rules which are already laid out. That is, the bitcoin protocol can be modified through soft-forks which add further constraints to the set of rules accepted by some bitcoin clients, in backward-compatible ways with existing clients. The developers who have attempted to go the way of hard-forking themselves away from the rules by attempting to relax them simply get cut off from the larger network and they operate in their own niche (eg, BCH). Bitcoin is its network, not its developers, miners, exchanges or anyone else who thinks they have leverage.