I hate to admit it (to myself) I agree with most of you're argument. ...
Ya, I know what you mean. I find myself agreeing with the likes of you, Justusravinair, etc more than I wish as well. What can a guy do?
LOL Sorry, that came off wrong. I agree with much of what you say. I meant I can't believe that Bitcoin has become so fucked so fast and had so much promise in the beginning.
Lemme cheer you up then.
I am amazed that we've seen the success we have without excessive pressure to expand beyond the point of no return. This is, I believe, because things are becoming 'off-chain' more or less organically. Of course I would love to see everything be on-chain from a 'purity' perspective except that it would put unhealthy pressure on the infrastructure, and might have undesired privacy issues. Going 'off-chain' or 'multi-tiered' actually takes away relatively little of Bitcoin's strength because Bitcoin still serves as the foundation.
Further some of the best devs are on 'our side' and there is fighting chance that methods will be implemented which can make blacklist tracking impractical. At least I believe that the case though I admit to not really studying things that hard lately.
Upshot: All hope is not lost for Bitcoin proper, and even if it goes bye-bye (as something that certain of us can respect) it has opened the door for follow-ons to improve upon. These are going to be very interesting times for we who are interested in political/monetary issues.
I hope you're right and changes can be implemented successfully but I do worry that the users will not support it all. It's not that the systems can't be developed but the great unwashed will not support it for lack of understanding. I've been watching the development of CoinJoin and have always known that Gmaxwell is fighting the good fight but (because Bitcoin is a political instrument now) I don't believe he will ever get it included in the QT wallet. It will be interesting to watch it all unfold. In the end I suppose it really doesn't matter if Bitcoin can't be saved because entrepreneurs and exchange deceit have created a windfall for me that can simply be exchanged to a competing coin.