the factory looks just a 3d render.china had monopoly for at least couple years now if people didn't notice.
Yeah it's a render, but anyway bitmain is expanding into ridiculous centralization, that's the thing.
that said if BU comes into play,people even hardcore will switch eventually,since everyone in the game are for profits not for whoever controls btc,think sahosis idea ended when private echanges established,not much different from bank or any other entity where to buy btc you have to provide most details,thus what btc was and is now is completely different things even thou every second person on this forum will tell you its not.
About "even hardcore will switch", you are assuming BU will have the bigger price tag. You fail to explain why.
I argue BUcoin will not have the bigger price tag because ultimately the software is the most important part, and Core devs are obviously the better engineers and cryptographs (and they will not move into BU)
Miners are easily replaceable, devs on this very specific field aren't.
Also, like I said before, hashing power concentrated in the hands of a single entity shouldn't give anyone with a brain any sense of security, and you couldn't sell that coin as a decentralized coin anymore.
This is why I think BTC will win and BTU will be a short lived pump and dump. Of course it's yet to see if noobs fear the big hashrate and jump on BTU. We'll see about that.
Private exchanges are irrelevant with this matter. If you want to deal with fiat, you can't cross that gateway into the system's money seamlessly, regulated and private exchanges meet the requirements of some people in order to buy... let them be.
It is optional anyway. You can use private exchanges or you can trade OTC, the protocol works the same.
that said if chinesse goverment is funding such projects then btc core and devs wont be able to do much,since they have brain power and cash,not to mention population,thus some might boycott it,but competing with 2+billions asians is lost battle,if they decide to make it their own reserve currency.
Yes, Jihan Wu is most likely statefunded, but like I said before, all the chinamen have is free electricity, cheap labour and that's about it.
The devs aren't replaceable, they can't never form a team like Core.
And in any case, they can no longer call it bitcoin, since that would be JihanCoin. He would control all the hashrate and hence what gets or doesn't get activated and so on.