They also tend to have the smallest financial stake, which ironically makes them potentially more dangerous than miners or exchanges -- not due to malicious intent, but because their actions are often driven by passion, innovation, and personal conviction rather than rational economic incentives. (Sorry fellow members core devs, nothing personal  )

What makes this even more complex is the level of community support they receive. In almost every controversy, people are forced to choose between supporting profit-driven miners and exchanges, or a small group of talented developers who happen to be good at writing C code. Naturally, the latter often appear more principled and thus gain more support.

Take the UASF saga as an example. Miners ultimately backed down -- not because they couldn't win, but because maintaining a contentious chain split would have risked catastrophic damage to the entire ecosystem. Core developers, on the other hand, had relatively little at stake financially, which gave them the freedom to push ahead without the same level of risk.

For anyone who read my earlier post and came away thinking that Bitcoin isn't decentralized in decision-making, it absolutly is. While we often refer to 'Core devs' as a unified group, in reality, there's constant internal disagreement. The same goes for miners and exchanges. Everyone involved -- whether it's a miner with millions in infrastructure, an exchange handling billions in volume, or a developer who's sacrificed their eyesight debugging low-level code -- wants what's best for Bitcoin, each from their own perspective.

So, even if your individual vote doesn't mean shit, you can at least take comfort in this, unlike traditional monetary systems, Bitcoin isn't shaped by a handful of old men in a closed room. It's a global, open-source lobbying arena, where every stakeholder is fighting for the future of Bitcoin -- usually in pursuit of their own self-interest, which, more often than not, aligns with your own.