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I am so sick of this strange take on decentralization that, because some people happen to use an exchange to store their money, somehow that means decentralizat
by saurik 4y ago
I am so sick of this strange take on decentralization that, because some people happen to use an exchange to store their money, somehow that means decentralization is worthless. :/ E-mail is decentralized even if most people don't host their own e-mail servers and even if most people use the same third-party host, and it simply wouldn't be the same product or anywhere near as powerful or valuable to its users if it were fully centralized on exactly one provider.
The reality is that there are a number of exchanges--I don't even have access to Binance in the US! (I can use Binance.US, but that's an entirely separate product from a technically separate company)... I have been mostly using Kraken recently, but I used to use Coinbase--that are all able to cater to different markets under different regulatory schemes and yet can interoperate because of the decentralized blockchain protocol, and that's why the tokens stored on Binance have value in the first place.
So, no: I assure you that these people value "decentralization" even if they are using a custodial wallet of some kind, in the same way that I hope we can all agree that the people who use e-mail or telephone numbers or domain names all value decentralization even if almost no one runs their own fully vertical stacks of servers, carriers, and registrars, because without that decentralization you would be trapped into a walled garden and forced to deal with a single jurisdiction: that you even can use Binance and interoperate with Coinbase is decentralization at work.