Aww, give him a break, it is a public Uni, so government payroll and in a country arguably even more socialist than the US. It is a handicap difficult for most to overcome, at least until they are tenured.
We can't expect him to even nibble at the hand that feeds him. Even though the criticisms are fairly speculative, at least he is looking at it.
We can't expect him to even nibble at the hand that feeds him. Even though the criticisms are fairly speculative, at least he is looking at it.
I am already tenured, actually, so I could badmouth the government at will (which in fact I do) with no risk.
But of course I can't expect someone who is invested in bitcoin to admit that its future is in danger.
Great. Everyone has expectations. You should be able to look deeper too. Get past these little issues.
The centralization of the pooling is only one layer of the mask. There is also centralization of the mining, and centralization of ASIC production, core dev centralization.
Each layer is a problem and has a risk of cartelling. The Nash equilibrium inherent in the incentive structure doesn't prevent any centralization, it merely makes it less likely, given merely economic incentives.
If Bitcoin ever becomes meaningful enough to threaten any of the real power structures in play, the game changes.
So your critique is pretty thin, we're not only aware of the issues, some of us get pretty noisy when one of them gets amplified. This is one of the ways that the risks are addressed. Because the block chain is right out in the open, so much of this is visible and addressable as it happens.
The fundamental issue is that the centralization that concerns you, and which is inherent in Bitcoin, is incredibly minuscule when compared to EVERY OTHER FORM OF MONEY with its almost nonexistent barrier to entry. It is the reason many of us like it. Governments are busy trying to set up barriers for people to be their own banks with Bitcoin and force people to use the current banking cartels, but ultimately it is a bit difficult to prevent so long as it is easy to download and run a node.
You are worried that Bitcoin is not better at the thing that it happens to be pretty good at, such that it beats every other choice?
The "perfect" will always be the enemy of the "good".
We'd all like perfect, but if you wait for it, you miss what's good.