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You have to love the irony of the centralization effects we are seeing with cryptocurrencies that pride themselves on being decentralized and beyond regulatory
by ckastner 6y ago
You have to love the irony of the centralization effects we are seeing with cryptocurrencies that pride themselves on being decentralized and beyond regulatory control of individual nations.
Coinbase's success not only reflects on the substantial amount of control that they exert. It also reflects on that of the U.S., which regulates Coinbase.
- seibelj 6y agoIt’s also ironic that the internet has been re-centralized by a handful of tech giants. But the fact that massive centralization exists, does not mean that individuals cannot choose to use decentralized tools. Crypto enthusiasts can be maximally decentralized, if they choose.
- ckastner 6y agoIndeed. I did not mean to claim that decentralization is categorically dead -- only practically, in the sense that the masses (the original supposed beneficiaries) probably won't benefit from it.
- Geee 6y agoUh no. Coinbase is not and will not be a monopoly. It's impossible for them to get into a monopoly as long as government allows competition. There's hundreds of exchanges worldwide and there's very little moat in the business. If governments monopolized exchanges, it would still be possible to exchange from person to person.
- ckastner 6y agoI didn't say anything about a monopoly though.
- Geee 6y agoCentralization means single point of failure, which would happen in a monopoly situation. There's no single points of failure in Bitcoin. Private companies offering services on free markets don't diminish bitcoin's decentralization.
- Tenoke 6y agoIs the US government really allowing competition though? They've been pretty adamant at chasing away the much bigger and cheap Binance in favour of the local Coinbase.
- scsilver 6y agoIf something has decentralized parts and then centralizes some of those parts, it's still more decentralized than it is centralized. The point about decentralization is that there are other nodes to build on when one part is removed, even if that node is the biggest one.
- vmception 6y agoCoinbase's success reflects the non-diminishing returns of the margins for dealing in this space. As another person has already mentioned, decentralization is regarding the re-routing possible when a node fails. Whether the node is a validator, miner, or enterprise.