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Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2014 20:09:01 -0500
From: kjj <bitcoin-devel@jerviss.org>
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To: Mark Friedenbach <mark@monetize.io>
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Cc: Bitcoin Dev <bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net>
Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Handling miner adoption gracefully for
 embedded consensus systems via double-spending/replace-by-fee
Precedence: list

Troy Benjegerdes wrote:
> Mark Friedenbach wrote:
>> Bitcoin is not a centralized system, and neither is its development. I
>> don't even know how to respond to that. Bringing up altchains is a total
>> red herring.
>>
>> This is *bitcoin*-development. Please don't make it have to become a
>> moderated mailing list.
> When I can pick up a miner at Best Buy and pay it off in 9 months I'll
> agree with you that bitcoin *might* be decentralized. Maybe there's a
> chance this *will* happen eventually, but right now we have a couple of
> mining cartels that control most of the hashrate.
>
> There are plenty of interesting alt-hash-chains for which mass produced,
> general purpose (or gpgpu-purpose) hardware exists and is in high volume
> mass production.
Decentralized doesn't mean "everyone is doing it", it means "no one can 
stop you from doing it".  Observe bitcoin development.  A few people do 
the bulk of the work, a bunch more people (like me) do work ranging from 
minor to trivial, and millions do nothing.  And yet, it is still totally 
decentralized because no one can stop anyone from making whatever 
changes they want.

So it is also with mining.  The world overall may make it impractical, 
perhaps even foolish, for you to fire up your CPU and mine solo, but no 
one is stopping you, and more to the point, no one is capable of 
stopping you.  There is no center from which you must ask permission.

On moderation, I note that moderation can also be done in a 
decentralized fashion.  I offer this long overdue example:

:0
* ^From.*hozer@hozed.org
/dev/null