Why would anyone use Bitcoin Cash over any of the other fast transaction coins? I just don't understand this.
It's Bitcoin.
No, Bitcoin is decentralized.
It seems so obvious at first glance to everyone in the space what decentralisation means. Its really easy to think the concentration of mining power to specialists is centralisation, when you first encounter bitcoin. In reality, its not about that, specialisation was inevitable.
Actually, in bitcoin and all other PoW coins, decentralization IS about how mining is distributed over the different participants. You are right that the industrial efforts in PoW lead to specialisation, which is exactly why PoW is a failure in maintaining decentralization. It is not because you *know* that it is going to centralize, that you should waver that away. All PoW coins with "reward" are centralizing, and that's inevitable, because of economies of scale and specialisation. But that's just a fundamental error in the game theory of PoW, not a fatality for crypto.
Why is this true centralization ? Because decentralisation is a political, not a technical notion. It is about decision power. The whole idea of decentralisation is immutability of the rules, because all of politics is about modifying the rules so that you can win advantage over others. The problem of all forms of central decision power is a funny notion, which we call "corruption". It is the naive idea that we set up a hierarchically controlled power structure with a goal of "common good", just to find out that the deciders in that hierarchy are using their power of decision for their own advantage - which is in fact the most logically expected outcome. People take decisions because they think that taking them brings them advantage. People with hierarchical power don't do anything else: they use that extra power to their advantage.
This is why democracies, big companies, and everything else are "corrupt": because they are made up of people, and we naively thought that they would put their individual essence aside to decide for the common good, instead of for themselves, like everybody else.
If you can dictate the rules, you can put that to your advantage, directly or indirectly. This is where decentralization comes in. The idea is that you "flatten out the hierarchy" and have the decision be taken by consensus of entities with opposing interests. Any rule change in the advantage of A, will be to the disadvantage of B and vice versa. If A and B are placed in hierarchical relationship, then it is the highest one that will be able to get his advantage, over the advantage over the lower placed. That's why the general lives, and the soldier dies.
If nobody is higher up than any other one, then the only thing people can agree upon, is the common set of initial rules. No rule change is abl to be pushed, because no majority exists as long as the entities are non-colluding. There is only one point of symmetry between all these different entities: the existing set of rules.
Of course, if it turns out that these different entities can agree upon a collective change of rules, nothing stops them from doing so. If different sets of entities want different rule sets, they can part and each do their thing. That's the essence of decentralisation.
In order for that to work, there needs to be a "voting mechanism". In bitcoin, the voting mechanism is proof of work. So who-ever can vote with proof of work, has decision power in bitcoin. The distribution of the voters by proof of work is hence the decentralization in bitcoin.
That's the distribution of mining pools. Majority needs 3 mining pools, >95% needs 10 mining pools. That's the state of decentralization in bitcoin.
There's another aspect of decentralization: the actual "writing of the rules". It is nice to think upon other rules politically, you have to have them running in code. So actual decentralisation is the number of actual rule propositions. In crypto, that's the number of independent protocol implementations. In bitcoin, that's one: the repository on Github of bitcoin Core.
That's it.
Quote
Decentralisation is the way in which participants in the network can effectively reach all other participants in the network as quickly as possible. Such that consensus can be reached with minimal opportunity to have your message (tx) blocked, or otherwise obfuscated.
According to that definition, Facebook is highly decentralized.
Bitcoin, and most of crypto, have a myth about decentralization, while it isn't. But that's not even a problem. A zero-sum game that more or less works is good enough to be usable. The myths are there to sell the religion, and to make believe.
Bitcoin is nor decentralized, nor a currency. But that doesn't mean it doesn't work. It is a great gambling asset in a great zero-sum game. Given that most financial assets in the big derivative market are similar, bitcoin has a great future. But not as a currency, nor as a decentralized system. It never was, and never will be. It is a gambling token in a new financial zero sum game casino. And that has a great future. It simply needs a story that gives it some "moral high ground" even though it is entirely bogus.
Note that bitcoin needs alt coins to avoid being a simple greater-fool game, and to form a large casino ; in the same way that you cannot have one single financial speculative asset in the financial markets. They need one another for people to bet on, so that the winners can reap in the money from the losers, but that the losers keep coming back, hoping to be winners one day.
If you think my definition of decentralised applies to Facebook you didn’t really understand it. As eloquent and well thought out your post, it boils down to exactly what I said. At first glance it’s easy to think decentralisation is X. You just listed all the reasons why people think that.
I know why you think that. I thought that too, until I came to a better understanding. I doubt many are going to see it becaus you hold the popular opinion. Give it some years.
heh
