Ok...and what difference do you see between the Federal Reserve and Google?
I thought the whole point of cryptocurrencies is to get away from central authorities.
I don't quite get where you are going with the first question, but ok:Google is a company organized by a group of people who pooled their capital to earn shared profits and to obtain certain protections under the laws of the jurisdictions in which it is incorporated. The Federal Reserve is cartel of bankers that managed to con the US government into giving them the monopolistic authority to manage the US money supply to the benefit of those bankers and the eventual enslavement of all mankind. It is neither Federal nor a Reserve.
Your second question, however, is extremely interesting!Block chain technologies enable transparent, decentralized, immutable public records.
They are useful for many things you have not dreamed of.
You can use them to implement a crypto currency that is
immune from the corruption of central authorities or
completely controlled by central authorities, or
engaged in a negotiated truce with central authorities.
You can use it to implement other things than currencies - like unmanned companies.
These also can exist on a continuum from completely sovereign to completely subject to central authorities.
BitShares is engineered to be completely sovereign from any of the world's other governments and yet able to interact peacefully with other entities that are still subject to those central authorities. It has been released into the wild and is now on its own. There is no central organization which runs it. It lives in international waters as a creature of Free Space. Whether it achieves its design goals or not depends upon the will of its current and future owners. The BitShares community is as decentralized as its software. So where it will go is up to their independent, collective efforts. I merely point out what is possible.
Market Pegged Assets (MPA) can autonomously track the value of fiat currencies and commodities subject to other legal jurisdictions. They exist outside the current fiat framework.
User Issued Assets (UIA) can be implemented to be fully compliant with the laws in the jurisdiction of each UIA issuer, or entities of Free Space.
MPAs and UIAs can trade freely in the international waters of BitShares Free Space. You should think about what that means!
So, everything you have learned about crypto currency theory and lore is still applicable inside the BitShares Free Space universe. But it is only a small subset of what is actually possible.
You don't have to give up what you like about Bitcoin. But BitShares gives the Bitcoin ecosystem a whole bunch of exciting new possibilities. It does not seek to replace Bitcoin. It aims to extend the Bitcoin vision.