Quote from: jseverson on March 13, 2018, 08:37:10 AM

What people usually refer to when they say that Bitcoin is decentralized is that the system is built in a distributed way, where there are a lot of miners, nodes, and blockchain copies around the globe. What that means is that no entity can take the entire network down.

i agree that the nodes are distributed.. thus not able to take the network down.

but. this part below has become a failure compared the original ethos

Quote from: jseverson on March 13, 2018, 08:37:10 AM

There's no single point you can attack to cripple the network, so it cannot be controlled by governments or similar entities. Everyone in the network just follows the same set of rules to keep the system running.

this is because blockstream employee's working as cough "volunteers" for core have taken on the reigns of bitcoin and deemed any other full node that is not core, is a threat. because they dem that only the core monarchy can set the rules/roadmap
basically if your not running bitcoin core software to be a full node, you should not be on the network and instead should create an altcoin

hre is the blockstream founder and main cor dv saying just that to previous teams that were not core

Quote from: gmaxwell on October 18, 2016, 08:21:30 AM

What you are describing is what I and others call a bilateral hardfork-- where both sides reject the other.
I tried to convince the authors of BIP101 to make their proposal bilateral ... Sadly, the proposals authors were aggressively against this.

and here he is again saying anyone that opposes cores decision can be out rulled by lowering the consensus standard until cores bip gets the vote count it need

Quote from: gmaxwell on December 28, 2016, 05:40:35 AM

If there is some reason when the users of Bitcoin would rather have it activate at 90% .. then even with the 95% rule the network could choose to activate it at 90% just by orphaning the blocks of the non-supporters until 95%+ of the remaining blocks signaled activation.

if you need further proof of core taking control of the network and not allow decentralised teams to offer their own bitcoin proposals away from core, just use the search box for the term REKT and you will see the hate mongering of core supporters wanting core to be the sole controller of bitcoin

also its core and its blockstream gatekeepers of new proposals
gmax: moderates the technical development topics on this forum
rustyrussel: admins the mailing list for proposals
Luke JR moderates the BIPS

making it very controlled by just a few linked entities that end up controlling the roadmap of bitcoins future direction. it might be worth you looking into blockstreams latest controlling trick involving the blockchain. specifically trying to suggest that some devs that were not part of the core team infringed copywrite/patent/licences by copying bitcoin code without naming core as the creator.

thats like a farmer arguing to mcdonalds that all burgers belong to the farmer because the wheat for the bun, the veg/cheese for the filling and the meat of the burger can been shown as sourced from a farmer.

i could go into more detail. but in short. bitcoin is distributed but no longer decentralised.. there is a definitive difference between the two terms