@Ultrafinery and AlexGR
You have some good thoughts there and I don't think we are so far apart really. Satoshi was worried about a 51% attack, but that is not what is happening. The Chinese miners have the most to lose if bitcoin were to be hurt by an attack. They are participating and each time they route a Tx they are spending their money on electricity, parts, rent. Their effort is rewarded with fees and a chance at a block reward. This not only strengthens the network, it is the network.


You may be right that many people misunderstood bitcoin. Many seem to confuse "fair" with "moral". Bitcoin is fair because there are no rules or barriers to the market like in all other monetary systems. It is not, however, moral. It is not distributed based on need or who is most deserving. The Chinese account for most sale, most mined coins, most capitol input, take the greatest risk, and therefore have come to dominate the network. Of course this could all change tomorrow. Anyone on Earth may build a bigger mine and take their shares.
The only other option I see would be a system where some people decide who can participate in bitcoin and who can't. If that ever happened I would divest 90% of my BTC and would assume the project really is dead.

I would also like to see broad, worldwide mining by a diverse set of mines. But if one or a few players gain an 80% share of the hashes then they deserve to decide the future. It is not great if you disagree with their decisions. However bitcoin is designed to be in the hands of it's users and miners. No one forced anyone to do something or kept anyone from joining in. They invested the capitol, they built the mines, they took the risk, and now will receive a large proportion of the wealth generated.

If you or I had done the same then we would be the beneficiaries. During the time the Chinese were growing, many other bitcoin peers, like in the U.S., were engaged in senseless infighting and fruitless speculation. Speculation produces almost nothing in the economy while building mines directly strengthens the network and is worth something. IMO, bitcoin is not about what I want or some social equalizing by giving everyone a trophy. It is a capitalist contest in which the hardest workers get the most. Ironically, China seems to get this more than the west. 

I like to start with my money. If you want my money then you will have to accept my money, which is bitcoin.
I have helped many businesses in the last 5+ years to get set up with BTC. Normally I demonstrate the system by being their first bitcoin customer. Typically they choose to use a payment processor because it requires very little staff training and minimizes risks. This is also 2% less than a credit card and they receive a deposit in their bank account that same day. 

After following up with these businesses they often report few or no additional BTC sales. Some however have had great success and all have been happy to be able to offer an additional payment option with almost zero cost or obligation. So my advice is to "show them the money!"

Bitcoin is about rewarding actual work and investment. China has gone big and now will be rewarded. It's that simple. If you thought ass sitting was a way to be successful with bitcoin then you don't understand bitcoin's complex set of rewards and incentives. Any country, business, or individual is free to compete in mining and no entity has the authority to stop that.

Awww, why did you have to go and ruin everything with logic. 

I looked into buying a some of these here in the U.S. and found a problem I could not get around. The problem of becoming a money transmitter. The bank laws were sewn up long ago to keep the "little man" out of the banking profits. They did this by requiring a special license for each state and those can cost as much as $25 million USD  ! Even if I bought a lot of them I would likely never be profitable. 

It is hard to buy something like real estate with bitcoin easily. I am currently looking for 40 acre or larger plots in Wisconsin and have found none for sale in BTC. Of course I could use a service that allows BTC to be spent as fiat. There are some credit cards, etc. that have this function. However I am holding out for a bitcoin sale. The problem is finding the right place AND the right currency.

www.bitcoin-realestate.com

https://www.bitpremier.com/5-real-estate

It gets even more silly when you know that the C.B. of Turkey was founded in the Ottoman period and was in it's hey day during the time Turkey was a Nazi ally.

Ya know, your right. This is a bigger deal than I made it out to be when I first saw it. If this sort of thing caught on broadly then bitcoin may actually become a threat to fiat. Not just an option, but an threat.

Many (most, all?) are in no way privately owned. 

Cash out? for what, shitty fiat cash?
I have never sold a bitcoin and plan on spending mine throughout the rest of my life. I may leave some in my will, but cashing out is a dumb financial decision IMO. I paid fees in fiat to get my btc and it makes little sense to pay again for the same money I wanted to get rid of.

Start with the "white paper" by Satoshi Nakamoto. Everything here is about this one document. You can find a link to it just below this post. Where it says "the gospel according to Satoshi".

Poor bitcoin, dead again. 

Dobar dan!
I was in Croatia during the trouble and I loved the place. If I go back I would definitely be interested in a place that takes BTC.   

It has been months since I looked at it closely. I compile from source but it's true that I don't check every distro. I also know C++ but I'm not good enough to call myself a coder and do relie on the community to discover malicious code  to some degree.

They struggle to make their budget like every other agency. While they have big money they also have huge expenses. The annual budget is about 11 Billion. They are not stupid and anyone proposing to spend 10% of the budget on an operation with no logical purpose will be looking for a job soon.
Then my new provider in Panama gets the worm. China may be a different story. They are a totalitarian state and could do whatever they want to their people.
I fly all the time and have never been strip searched, and I commute from the middle east. They do not support a strip search and that is why it is not happening.
Banning smoking in bars was a decision by society because few people smoke anymore. It doesn't bother me, but most people support the ban. When most Americans smoked it was unthinkable to have such a rule.
Now where did you come up with this 40% figure?

You can't keep a good idea down. 

If I were Satoshi I would have done a spend from the Genesis block and signed it "I am Craig Wright". Then I would go back into hiding forever. 

-Dirt on Devs? Why would that make a difference in mathematical calculation? This is an open source project and any person on the planet can be a dev. The bitcoin core dev team is the most recognized team, but the community can chose any distro by simply running it.  Devs have absolutely no more control than anyone. They come up with ideas that are adopted by consensus. Some people may adopt whatever the devs write or support their work. That is a choice we all make equally.

-So the NSA is going to offer millions (billions?) of dollars to miners in China? Where is that money coming from? It would take congressional funding. "Congress I want a billion dollars to give to the Chinese so that we can disrupt the bitcoin network for a few weeks. Oh, and we get nothing in return." that is not logical.

-Blocking port 8333 is extremely easy to deal with. It would also require the cooperation of every single provider on Earth. It is impossible to imagine. As I mentioned earlier, loss of net neutrality is the only way to broadly disrupt transactions. This would, however, only apply to servers in the U.S. I would just rent some server space in Panama and carry on.  

Illegal on what grounds? The law is not just a guy who says what is illegal. There has to be a legal justification and the courts in the U.S. have already made their decision. Some people point out that liberty dollars and other currencies have been found to be illegal in the past. But none of those arguments were found to be valid in the case of bitcoin. If you live in a dictatorship or something then this may be a problem.

I have yet to see a single feasible idea of how bitcoin can be "destroyed". Not in this thread, not in any thread in the last 6 years. The only possible concern I have is a loss of net neutrality. If that happens all decisions about what will be allowed on the internet are in the hands of a few people. It would be the end of all electronic privacy and bitcoin may be the least of our concerns.