Quote from: inBitweTrust on April 25, 2015, 08:49:58 PM

Quote from: DecentralizeEconomics on April 25, 2015, 08:43:54 PM

BTC would be great if it wasn't centralized and its security wasn't dominated by the mining conglomerates instead of the currency holders

This is a fair criticism of Bitcoin but one that can possibly be overcome with solutions like the Lightning Protocol, ASIC appliances, and other algorithms being introduced to change the incentives. There some core developers who even think PoW should be migrated away from, others think a hybrid approach can be adopted, others believe that the laws of thermodynamics and economics will naturally solve the mining centralization dilemma.

Imo, Bitcoin will never be changed from PoW.

Quote from: inBitweTrust on April 25, 2015, 08:49:58 PM

Quote from: DecentralizeEconomics on April 25, 2015, 08:22:53 PM

You are assuming that BCNext was a liar, cheater and thief. Imo, from what I have read, inquired and experienced this was not the case. I'd like anyone who believes otherwise to run a taint analysis on the NXT funding address. I think it is pretty obvious that BCNext was an idealist and not out to make as much money as possible by scamming others because he limited donations to 21 BTC.

You are straw manning my position and I made such a claim. If I were to make an educated guess I would suggest that BCNext and a few other developers/partners decided to spread multiple investments across several accounts for multiple reasons. Protecting their privacy and insuring the best chance of success of their project they believed in. Humans can rationalize certain behaviors and believe they are doing the right thing at the same time. Additionally, all it would take is one of the early partners /devs to create a bunch of shill investment accounts, who suggested it had to be BCNext ?

All economic systems gravitate towards 20% of the participates controlling 80% of the wealth. Personally from what I've seen, it's my opinion that the initial distribution was spread between separate entities. I cannot prove this, but you can't prove your allegation either.

Quote from: inBitweTrust on April 25, 2015, 08:49:58 PM

Quote from: DecentralizeEconomics on April 25, 2015, 08:22:53 PM

Your belief of mining being more "fair" than a crowdsale is imo not accurate. With mining a currency, you are simply abstracting the crowdsale from the coin and sending your money to the hardware manufacturers and electricity providers. That doesn't make it more "fair". There will always be people with more money who can purchase more mining hardware and pay a larger electric bill.

By wasting resources on hardware and electricity you can make it very difficult for a few people to corner the market. It is no longer just about who has the most capital to buy the hardware and electricity but who can develop the fastest chips, who can cool the chips the best, who can find the cheapest space , who can contract the best support staff to maintain the hardware, who can source the cheapest electricity(notice all those poor chinese mining Bitcoin... why isn't all mining centralized in the US where most early bitcoin users came from and all the money is located?)

Any government or large corporate entity could take control of the Bitcoin blockchain in an instant.