how are alt coins decentralised?

[tomaso88]

I don't understand how most (not all) altcoins and ico's are decentralized as they claim to be?
If it requires a business or corporation to run the project how is that decentralization?

Bitcoin, monero, litecoin etc work just fine without organisations running them, any developer can pitch an idea and if the majority like it, it gets implemented usually. But all these ico's on the other hand just seem to be fundraisers for business ideas instead of raising development for decentralized platforms. for example if the website for these currencies ico currencies went down they would no longer be usable.

how are these companies calling their projects decentralized if they aren't decentralized at all, how is this any different then just fundraising a business idea except for the fact if the business screw up they aren't accountable at all.

[ZeroTheGreat]

Many of them don't.

Bitcoin's decentralization rests on hard way to achieve consensus on new rules between strong different groups of people: developers, miners, exchanges, merchants and users. Those groups partially want exact opposite things, hence status quo. Many of alts just aren't big enough and too young to have that, also some designed to follow checkpoints by someone in charge and decentralization vanishes.

Watch things closely when dealing with each new project, sharks're everywhere

[malami]

Most are centralised until the "final" stage of the product is released. After that they aren't supposed to function any different than bitcoin or litecoin.

[Spoetnik]

It's simple, their not.

It's more about a degree of this attribute.
On a scale of 1 to 10 how decentralized is it.

For example Ripple vs Bitcoin.. obvious right ?

A good way to think of it is.. someone has the keys to the Github account right ?
Then.. be aware the owner of Cryptsy claimed his exchange was hacked and everyone lost their coins via a malicious Github code update.

Also..
An ICO by design in itself is the antithesis of decentralization.
When i envision how ICO's got started i always thought of it this way..
I sit at home and "make" some coin by downloading Github.zip
Then, i run the coin at home by myself and premine how ever many coins i want. (as total supply)
Next step is send it to a centralized exchange who sells my shitcoins.
Now tell me.. what part of that is decentralized ?

NONE OF IT

AKA: ICO = scam.

Oh and tacking on the ability to mine the coin later is irrelevant.
It's like robbing a bank then saying.. well, i'm planning to give some to charity.
So fucking what !

Bad is bad guys.