Exactly.  That is why I don't want to see Bitcoin balloon to the point where it is impractical for smaller players to be full peers.  Preferably individuals if possible.  More than that, I want to see core Bitcoin be small enough so that it could use non-corporate communications channels if the solution is attacked by that sector which I see as a high probability event in the case of the next economic crisis.

Even the threat of eventually just saying 'fuck it' with respect to pruning and making a simplistic tweak to just expand the transaction rate (block size) has been enough to make me that much more inclined to sell out, and I did a fair amount of that at the beginning of the year.  Even if Bitcoin can be pretty big riding on the backs of the large corporate players it's just not a very interesting solution to me at that point.

Sidechains, or seeing some real progress toward them before it's to late, has been most inspiring to me indeed and has reinvigorated my hopes for Bitcoin.

The race now seems to be between the Bitcoin Foundation guys trying to get Gavin's exponential growth in place and the blockstream guys trying to save Bitcoin to be something similar to what it was advertised to be when I first took a position.