Bitcoin Forum

The topic describes the issue for us. For us to become a decentralized, we should focus more on mass adoption. I know these may provide some mass adoption but with centralized adoption, it is useless and contradiction for bitcoin itself.

I understand your point, we really wanted a decentralised system, in which bitcoin did provide in the beginning. However, as time evolved, specially when the price started to run at the rate of $0.1 to $100 to $10k to the eventual $19k in 2017, the ball game has change. It now become an asset, the best speculative asset that we never seen before, better than gold or even precious metal.


So who is to blame with this kind of evolution?

The way that we are going, I don't like it. It is the opposite of what Satoshi Nakamoto wants. If it is about the price, then maybe we should need a decrease for the price which seems unlikely. I think we need a more solid community and more decentralized platform, exchanges etc. Or we may lose our coins because people may prefer the other centralized ones.

I put very low emphasis on Libra. It is just a centralized, stable coin, backed by garbage fiat currencies. Bakkt and ETFs are good for fundamental value and for building the financial infrastructure for people to invest in Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. Of course that ideally we need a decentralized exchange, not a centralized one, but in order to gain mass adoption of BTC people need to trust the it & unfortunately the majority of population need to see some kind of regulation behind a currency to put their hard-earned money in it. Or.. if I think deeper.. maybe we should change this mentality.

The government will always be centralize wherever we are, I don't think Satoshi has it it mine that the government will be tamed and will instead be controlled by entity.
BTC will always be decentralized even with the Libra launched, Bakkt and there is an approved ETF. Will BTC stop being decentralized if there is libra or ETF? I suppose not. 

It's a nice idea, but it seems like when most people think about how to improve money, they simply conclude "have more of it" and get into the speculation side of it.  The problem is greed.  Only a small number of people recognise the inherent flaws with traditional money and genuinely want to fix some of those problems.  We'll just have to pin our hopes on future generations being smarter.

People have learned to know that bitcoin is a useful tool for profit-making, and have since abandoned bitcoin's primary ethos of being decentralized and away from financial institutions and governmental controls. It's as if we chose to live in a compromise for the sake of having to keep something growing in our wallet while opposing the government's control. But yeah, even if we don't have the aforementioned institutions in the ecosystem, bitcoin would still grow into where it is right now, just not at the rate that we reached everything currently.

Businessman and institution  always wanted to venture trending stuff.  We are in a free world govern by centralized government, so as long as these institution had their permit, they can always participate in any kind of business stuff to take advantage of whatever their target is, and this time it is Bitcoin.  Besides there is no rule on the code of Bitcoin that forbid anyone from the government to participate or institution to take advantage of its popularity and technology.


No one, it is one of the path of Bitcoin, it is a natural occurrence, a product of cause and effect.

Libra has nothing to do with bitcoin.

Bakk and ETF are players that wants to join the ecosystem. Who should decide who may or may not buy bitcoin? Decentralization means that no one control. Those players cannot control bitcoin, I see no big issue.

When people decide to stay in bitcoin for much of the time and only rarely convert a portion to fiat, the goal of mass decentralization will be much closer.  That will only occur when people are confident that they can hold bitcoin and use it to purchase what they need.  The higher the fiat price per bitcoin the better for that to occur.

The only reason a big part of the community cares about mass adoption is because they know it'll bring a massive influx of new users into the market which will eventually help the BTC price skyrocket. Now, we're still far away from actual 'mass adoption', so the only thing that can help the btc price go up to the moon and reach new ATH's is "smart money", you know, capital from the big boys from financial institutions.

There used to be a lot of opposition to this, people didn't want the guys from wall street and the likes to enter the market, but they (bitcoiners and altcoiners) quickly found out that if they want to see their btc/alt stash to grow in value (fiat), they'll need the help of investors, which is why nowadays everyone's waiting for ETFs and Bakkt to finally be the trigger that'll spark a new influx of institutional investors that will eventually pour [tons of] money into the btc ecosystem. Now, Bakkt didn't seem to cause any immediate upward movements in the btc price, but we shouldn't expect smart money to FOMO buy/invest like your typical average joe who sells during the dips and buys during the spikes. I believe we should see the impact of smart money entering the crypto market in the long-term.

Now, Libra, that thing can fuck off!

Everyone iis crying out for decentralization but like you said we need to think deeper. Things are changing and developing very fast, cryptocurrencies have made a big progress since they first appeared but still majority people don't trust them. I agree that regulation is the way to beter trust and adoption, especially by the businesses. So, yes we need to change the way we look at cryptocurrencies and their role in financial and economic world.

A community without these listed above could have been good but leaving in a world where the government loves power and financial control, it will be very difficult before they will give up their authority to control the financial sector because this give them the power to control the lives of people.

We have to start from somewhere. This will not be like people will come and invest and there we go, a decentralized community.
These centralized institutional will come first, they will invest and help in mass adaption. They and we won't even notice that we will move from centralized to decentralized era. The change will happen slowly and gradually.

In as much as Bitcoin was designed to be a decentralised system. But in the long run and from events of the moment, it has become necessary to create a room to accommodate some sort of centralisation in order to achieve that which it is. We need adoption and it's these centralised institution will spearhead it.

The kicker is, we need centralized services like Bakkt and some of these ETFs to push adoption on a institutional level, because that is where the big bucks is. The institutional investors will help to improve Bitcoin's store of value, but not it's currency feature.  ::)

People are normally lazy and they like the convenience of pre-packaged investment tools like ETFs and it also provides a regulated environment where they feel safe. So every piece of the puzzle has it's place.. we should just complete the puzzle.  ;)

Easy to idealize, hard to do

You are talking about contradiction, and it's, but there's not we can do
We are fight against centralization of power and money, but everyone have access to BTC, and this included people and companies with centralized ideas
And this included companies who are behing BTC, that have enought power to dictate some behavior on our system

 I really believe within my heart that Libra would have been thee perfect project (regardless of being centralized) that would help raise a significant amount of awareness towards the block-chain and cryptocurrency in general, helping encourage its mass adoption.
 Facebook is globally recognizable, they have a reach around the planet. If Libra were to have been successfully, I think people would inevitably start checking out other cryptocurrencies, everyone including their granny will have some what of an idea about what cryptocurrency is and how it's used.

I agree, there needs to be a lot more adoption from bigger companies, some good examples would be when Samsung started including crypto hardware in their phones, more of that is needed.

There is going to be adoption by centralised companies and we can't stop that from happening, but most of the world lives in a centralised world and we can't just change that for everyone.

What if we lose the community and the idea of decentralization? Change is hard, when it is about something that most of the people don't know, it is harder. I mean decentralization. When we have etf and libra or something that has regulations, we may lose the community. They may prefer libra or grams instead of bitcoin because these provide regulations etc.

I get mixed feelings about it. I'm not a fan of Libra, however I do think it will help mass adoption of Crypto Currencies in a whole, and help drive up the price of bitcoin. the biggest problem with the Crypto space is the on-boarding process. Its very hard for someone new to get into Crypto, that is what is holding back mass adoption. If Facebook can make this easier, they can bring millions of new users into the space. When they have their Libra tokens which is basically a stable coins, and then they look at BTC increasing in value, they will definitely sell Libra for BTC.

Libra uses a few nice qualities of Crypto to solve some long-standing problems in Swift and credit-card push-transactions, but otherwise does nothing revolutionary, and sooner or later people realize that Bitcoin is unstoppable, then BTC becomes a price stability coin at market what the Libra wants to offer people. Personally, i would like Libra to start up but then fails, because after that, the real value of Bitcoin and the blockchain will became known.

I don't think there's ever a possibility of that happening, look at the current market where we have so many altcoins, but Bitcoin dominance is still at a pretty high level, even when there are so many options out there.

Libra could have worked very well if they did things better, but unfortunately they made mistakes and it ended up in their partners dropping out and then things just kept getting worse there.

I think we can all respect their effort, but it just didn't pan out well.

That's not fair. If you're expecting governments to be open minded enough to tolerate Bitcoin, then why don't you do the same and allow other entities to create their own money? People blame governments for not tolerating anything other than their own currency, but a lot people here do the same. In a free market money should be able to compete.

Governments force you to use their hot air fiat currencies, and alternatives such as Bitcoin and Libra counter that. It provides a welcome bit of choice in the type of money you can use. Facebook doesn't force you to use Libra. Bitcoin doesn't force you to use Bitcoin. It's you who makes the decision to use one or the other, or both.

We are open minded but we should inform the community about what decentralization truly means. We should do this before the goverments and other big companies create alternative centralized coins. Facebook may not be forcing us to use Libra but they have a huge power to make advertisements of their coin. This doesn't seem fair to me. On the contrary, we should act as a whole and spread the decentralized coins.

I guess he is talking about Libra going into the space and testing it for themselves it's not about who has the power behind or what. We all know that entities can wield their power here because it's a free and open market to say the least. I truly wanted bitcoin to be decentralised but with so many actors coming into picture, it will be tested many times and I don't know if we are going to remain on top for many years because there's so much pressure now from governments around the world.

The good thing about these new projects is that they educate people regarding to what is crypto, what can it do, how does it work, etc. The bad thing is, they educate those same people in the wrong way. If these projects would be successful, the non-crypto people would only know that these systems are still governed by a centralized system, which is wrong. They should know the foundations of blockchain.

A good side of it indeed, People will learn blockchain system and probably adopt but the real intensions for being anonymous already been forgotten, those know projects that being popularized around this market has nothing to do with decentralizations. They wanted to ride with the popularity of cryptocurrency but with the govern system of centralized facilities.
It have good effects in anyhow but if we still considering the main goals of being free it will contradict everything.

Decentralization is one of the best feature that Bitcoin is offering to all of us...this is the gift and contribution that Satoshi Nakamoto wanted for us to see, experience and appreciate. However, market realities can be different from the ideals. There is now a big concern that Bitcoin mining is getting to be centralized as it is controlled by a few and not democratized or spread well as getting into this enterprise can be requiring a lot of investment on mining equipment and not all locations are suitable for mining due to high cost of inputs especially electricity. With cryptocurrency exchanges, it is still centralized platforms that commands the biggest part of the market. For now, I see no solid solutions to these concerns except if we users and enthusiasts of cryptocurrency will be demanding for more decentralization. One aspect that can b a big factor for centralization is of course, business and the pursuit of profits.

there is no such thing as "centralized adoption", it is plan adoption. you can not put restriction on who adopts bitcoin and that's what being decentralized means. besides things like Bakkt, ETFs,... are good for bitcoin. it is not all about people getting on board, it is about the whole world with different views getting on board and just like any other currency a "trading market" is expected.
by the way Libra has nothing to do with bitcoin.

BTCitcoin created a new market and the list of new coins and tokens will flow along with derivative market and other institutions starting their business and creating new projects is good and now we will see centralized coins now, all the tokens were centralized and you cannot call them decentralized as per the real essence and hence you cannot blame anyone, people have the right to choice what they want and if regulation allows we will see more centralized coins in the market like Libra. Adoption will not happen in ten years time, it will take a much longer time and throughout history any new market will take centuries to get massive adoption but we are living in a tech world and hence we might achieve that in the next 20 years.

I also want a decentralized system with no institutions behind it, but on the other hand we need mass adoption where institutions play a slightly bigger role. In 2019 the value will go down and many users want BAKKT to change the market, in my opinion users prefer the digital market to move towards green despite the role of other institutions. Actually here the digital market does not have rules on who adopted it, BAKKT or institutions have the right to adopt digital currency, so there is nothing wrong here.

As long as there's a market adoption of crypto, other crypto will be affected, massive adoption of libra and other centralized coins will mainly have influence on how people will treat bitcoin as well. The idea is, people will be exposed to cryptocurrency, and that will enable the world to change its phase from fiat to crypto. When it comes to worrying whenever people will choose centralized over decentralized, the actions needed is let them know the difference of these two so they will decide what best fits the world.

While knowing the difference between centralized and decentralized networks, it still doesn't make decentralized networks any more useful because in most cases you don't need censorship resistant payments.

People are too paranoid here---who's going to block your local grocery shopping payments? I have never had any of my local payments blocked. I value convenience, which is something I enjoy with fiat, not with any crypto.

Crypto is overhyped as means of payment. It's a store of value and then it pretty much stops. The legacy banking system improves too---I already enjoy free and instant bank to bank trasfers 24/7/365. Business hours are something of the past

You should try to expand on your thoughts, "focus on" is a very general statement. What precisely do you want from Bitcoin community - to stop discussing news about Libra, ETF's and other institutions? To vow to never use them? Forbid any discussions about trading on this forum? Change the protocol to somehow cut out centralized companies?

Bitcoin's main goal is to give people freedom to use their money however they like, even if it means giving them to some centralized entities. Telling other people what to do with their coins is more against the spirit of Bitcoin then having some centralized players in this ecosystem.

Libra wasn't that bad - it went under the same microscope bitcoin went under and since it was a centralized operation and relied on it's partners to help and they also had a reputation, it was easily shatterable.

They brought up issues with money laundering, which the same issue has been brought up for BTC, and instead of them just moving on (because no one controls BTC), they had all their partners pull out. It's actually quite sad to see.

Let me explain myself a little bit more. Surely with a decentralized community, we can, should discuss anything including regulations, bakkt, etfs, libra etc. Focusing more on mass adoption is with decentralization. Bitcoin is created against the governments' printing money. Well, look now, governments are trying to 'code' money and using their power to influence people, they can achieve this. Some of the people in the community haven't met the decentralization idea. We should spread our ideas to them and be in front of the eyes more than the governments.

Samsung gained a lot of hype when they introduced crypto wallet within their phones but those didn't get much attention later. However I do hope that all the big companies will become affiliated with bitcoin and crypto and those who will not adopt to this technology will remain behind in the industry.

This is attractive. This is like inciting a revolution. For a while I was already buying the idea that Bitcoin has to somehow embrace the regulations offered by the very system it tries to replace with a much better alternative. But instead of yielding to the traditional powerful system as if Bitcoin has to give up its precious ideas, why not resist instead? Bitcoin is the resistance!

There are pros and cons of all the above institutions and regulatory bodies. We need to regulate in order to get rid of most of the scammers and thieves plaguing this niche market, but on the other hand we need enough leeway and freedom to have  a more democratized way of dealing with our money and more fiscal choices, other than the ones that central banks and governments give us. So where do we draw the line and were do we also compromise, to have the best of both worlds and to attract more and more people into this type of economic revolution. I do believe mobile banking for the Unbanked will be a great leap forward in the after event of the Blockchain's humble beginnings, and harnessing the power of over two Billion People might be just what we need, even more powerful than a handful of institutions and foundations.

Community without libra may be much more healthy in my opinion. But yes, we need institutionals for big financical flows

Crypto community exists without Libra and Bitcoin ETFs for the past 10 years, so it is today, and it is likely to be for years to come. I can understand the obsession with something as Bitcoin ETF which could pump the price of Bitcoin, but what is the purpose of connecting Libra with Bitcoin? The two have nothing to do with each other, centralized coin pegged with fiat (Libra) vs decentralized coin with limited supply (Bitcoin) are two different worlds.

Libra has a good chance of never seeing the light of day, it is so limited in its idea that almost the whole world has already opposed it in the beginning. As for other things, there is no adoption without cooperation with the current financial system whether we like it or not.

The hype and enthusiasm of the crypto community towards Libra, Bakkt and ETF is natural. Although Libra is centralized and contradicts the decentralized Bitcoin, Libra comes with the name Facebook. If Libra is truly released it is likely that many people will start adopting it.

Government is don't like about decentralized thing.
So i think they will always try to block and banned cryptocurrency.
For community who love about decentralized is still support Bitcoin, we don't care about government. We need focus on mass adoption about blockchain technology.
There is maybe a hole about decentralized, so Facebook coming with their greedy project, to make crypto with centralized system. What the hell...
Bakkt, Bitwise, etc ETF i never use it. So i don't know is it give effect for Bitcoin or not.

If we are talking about the things you are mentioning themselves, then it's definitely not the real crypto adoption, I agree. After all, decentralization is a very big part of what Bitcoin is, and the free market and natural price formation are also a part of it. However, I think the idea of those who say these things are good is sometimes that with those projects more people will generally learn about cryptocurrencies, and then they'll get interested in the real ones (especially, in Bitcoin), which will boost adoption. And this certainly can happen, but I also think that there is more potential damage than benefit in that.

Centralized adoption is still better than no adoption at all.

With no adoption tokens will slowly die because nobody will want to do anything but hold. Centralized adoption will give people a choice that is more than hold or sell. They will also have a choice to spend even if it's centralized spending. From there we can go into decentralized spending. It will always remain an option.

Actually this is what decentralization is all about. Even if someone decides to launch anything he definitely can without approval from anyone LIBRA, Bakkt, ETF are examples of this. As long as people involved want to dive into this it is definitely legible. I know some would say that Bakkt is an exchange thus acting as an intermediary but so are almost every exchange and wallet working in cryptocurrency world too. We need to understand this that with the common folks a complete P2P world with no platform providing assistance will never be practical. People really want much more than just transferring of money to buy goods and services.

I'm conflicted on this one.  While it's probably healthy to maintain a reasonable distrust of governments, it doesn't necessarily mean we should place boundless trust in corporations either.  Sure, they're free to do it, but I also believe we have a responsibility to warn potential users about the dangers of such a service (should it ever get off the drawing board). 

Think of it this way.  If any individual on this forum launched a centralised service similar to Libra, where they had total control over the funds and people started to put their personal wealth into it, some here would naturally question if it was a scam.  Or they would question if the security was robust enough.  Or ask what safeguards are in place to prevent the service itself interfering with their transactions.  Why is it suddenly perfectly safe for a big-name company to do it and why should anyone trust them with their wealth?

It's worth pointing out that Facebook have already demonstrated security weaknesses (https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/facebook-phone-numbers-data-breach-privacy-a9092641.html).




But would Libra really counter it?  Considering that they need permission from governments to go live, I'm sure there will be many of the same restrictions as you'd be subject to in fiat currencies, which rather defeats the point of Libra being an alternative.  There are also numerous privacy concerns.  They already get a vast trove of information about their users via Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, so then add to that users' financial transactions and spending habits as well?  It sounds like a recipe for disaster.

you are right , and i hope people stop hoping much . for these things
bitcoin already grow without these etf or bakkt , by the way the last ( bakkt) Is it good if he controls the market in this way?
More than 20 percent price drop since the first days of launch!
i hope he will do somthing for to make prices above 10000 usd  per btc in short term

Bitcoin begins without ETF, BAKK but as more years come many are adopting bitcoin in their company, lives and in any ways. I think without any of mass adoption the price will not growing, mass adoption is very important so they know about bitcoin and how to use it. Although it's risky but we know what the benefit of bitcoin if you really understand how to manage and use it.

That's a good point - we've seen too many companies and people focus on the connection Libra would have to BTC, when they are completely different things with different goals.

One's a decentralised crypto that focuses on giving power to the people, and another one is a centralised crypto made one a chain of large companies, and it's looking to conquer the industry.

I can’t believe that two years has passed since the Libra news got announced and all the good ol’ Day of the hype we once enjoy the last crypto summer, btw they’re all here to rip any possible profit from crypto, so far their efforts are proved to be fruitless, I wouldn’t brother to spend even a few minutes of my life to know about their well being.

We have build big community for bitcoin and have to fight with Libra, Bakkt, ETFs and Institutions for make bitcoin stronger and not depend with them, many time bitcoin always have big effect after the community of ETFs and Bakkt make announce to reject bitcoin and make bitcoin price down, we have make big community how to get support with many country to allow bitcoin and make bitcoin have higher price at the next time and never have bad issued with above community.

People don’t really understand the basic things, so they mix things up that don't really have anything in common. When I saw the headline in one local newspaper "Here comes Libra, killer of Bitcoin" I just laughed at that statement. FB is powerful, but I think they took too much of a bite and that they could have been smarter in their plan. Personally, I don't even use FB and their possible product doesn't interest me at all.

I can pay directly with BTC for many things today, and I remember just a few years ago the value of 1 BTC was only $200. We have reached this point today without any ETFs, futures or some magic Libra coins. If we can attract just 3-4% (from total world population) of ordinary people to start using Bitcoin, it would be a great success.

We cannot stop this from happening, it's bound to happen first, they will hate, then they will ignore you then they will praise you, then they will want to be with you, Facebook and these companies hate Bitcoin for the disruption they are bringing to the ecosystem, now after ten years, they want to be with us and they want to exploit this technology to their advantage, soon they will conquer us.

Aren't we, bitcoin believers, against institutions? Governments are kinda an institution. On the other hand, most of the big companies feed from governments and they probably don't want a decentralized world. If we have Libra, Bakkt and other 'centralized-regulated' systems, we will be moving away from the roots of bitcoin I guess.

In short this makes bitcoin more "friendly" to be accepted by the government so that it can be adopted en masse. Even though it is indeed the opposite of bitcoin's character. This decade is enough to prove, that bitcoin can still be a quality investment tool and commodity even though it is not fully accepted by the world, there are some countries that prohibit its use. However, overall, almost accepting bitcoin to be traded and invested even with caution because of high risk, but it is legal.

The adoption we have been aspiring from the beginning has consequences and the SEC getting into the middle is just one of it. We don't even need all of this since BTC will be useful still without them but since they are already here and launched like BAKKT, there is nothing left to do but go along. Libra and ETF has been discussed already, we may like it or not, approved or not, the threat is there already.

From the beginning, its just the marketplace that we all need. Somewhat like a silkroad but not involving illegal stuff I guess. Merchants accepting BTC and cryptocurrencies is all that is needed.

I think we shouldn't go too hard on Libra. I know that Libra is a stable coin and different from Bitcoin. But also I think that Libra has more chance on being a local currency in countries compared to Bitcoin. In the end, Libra will not be volatile and the governments will like it.

Forget about libra, because chances are that it won't be released anyway.  And yes, I assume that if it does make it to market it will be centralized, but it's only one coin anyway and isn't a big deal in the grand scheme of things.

Bakkt is an exchange for institutions, and since none of us probably will ever use it, it shouldn't matter that it's centralized.  All of the other big exchanges are, and it really isn't a problem. 

You can't decentralize everything and I don't think you would want to necessarily.  That's capitalism for you.  There are always going to be institutions and organizations that exclude some people.  Either you can accept that or you go crazy.  Personally I don't have a problem with this, nor with any of those things mentioned in the op.

Why have think with Libra coin after two months do not have launching to public, today Libra team still not working with their project based on schedule where their coin listing and can trade on exchange market, Libra coin still not look what kind of coin will be crypto part and depend with their self without have connection with bitcoin and altcoin, maybe they have own platform.