Calling top at $16500 (New speculation: Guess the price 19 Feb 2021!)

[BTC-Graphicdesigns]

Why would anyone use Bitcoin Cash over any of the other fast transaction coins? I just don't understand this.

It's Bitcoin.

Matilda can you explain to why you think Bitcoin Cash is so much better than BTC?
I am just trying to understand.

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[iCEBREAKER]

Yeah, I don't see Bitcoin Cash taking over anytime soon.  Bitcoin acts like an index fund because every single exchange in this world trades BTC into altcoins.  It's very difficult to buy a random coin without Bitcoin.  I can't buy Ripple on Bittrex without BTC.  Every single coin on Bittrexs is traded with BTC, not Bitcoin Cash.  That's the reason why BTC can bring the entire market down or even lift the entire market up.  Bitcoin Cash will remain second rate until this changes but I don't believe this will happen anytime soon.

Newbie confirmed

Have you been watching what is going on with exchanges? BCH trading pairs being added at an unprecedented rate for such a new altcoin

Heheh can't believe you still around poking bulls. Are you now pursuing a solo career since your other half left you to go troll for Bitcoin.com 'professionally'?

Dude. BCash (LOL) is a scam. I can tell from some of the pixels and from seeing quite a few scams in my time.

That clock is still ticking...

[RogetBaxX]

Speaking of the lower and upper limits of bitcoin now it's like guessing in a lottery. It continues to fall and is not yet visible due to what it can return to the previous level. Slowly losing its position and demand, too.

[Torque]

[xxxx123abcxxxx]

https://redd.it/7skzff

[sgbett]

Yeah, I don't see Bitcoin Cash taking over anytime soon.  Bitcoin acts like an index fund because every single exchange in this world trades BTC into altcoins.  It's very difficult to buy a random coin without Bitcoin.  I can't buy Ripple on Bittrex without BTC.  Every single coin on Bittrexs is traded with BTC, not Bitcoin Cash.  That's the reason why BTC can bring the entire market down or even lift the entire market up.  Bitcoin Cash will remain second rate until this changes but I don't believe this will happen anytime soon.

Newbie confirmed

Have you been watching what is going on with exchanges? BCH trading pairs being added at an unprecedented rate for such a new altcoin

Heheh can't believe you still around poking bulls. Are you now pursuing a solo career since your other half left you to go troll for Bitcoin.com 'professionally'?

Dude. BCash (LOL) is a scam. I can tell from some of the pixels and from seeing quite a few scams in my time.

That clock is still ticking...

On point. Whoever wrote that for you is funny

[sgbett]

Newbies can be so impatient

[iCEBREAKER]

Whoever wrote that for you is funny

Not as funny as the $4,100 bottom call though! 

[sgbett]

Why would anyone use Bitcoin Cash over any of the other fast transaction coins? I just don't understand this.

It's Bitcoin.

No, Bitcoin is decentralized.

It seems so obvious at first glance to everyone in the space what decentralisation means. Its really easy to think the concentration of mining power to specialists is centralisation, when you first encounter bitcoin. In reality, its not about that, specialisation was inevitable.

Decentralisation is the way in which participants in the network can effectively reach all other participants in the network as quickly as possible. Such that consensus can be reached with minimal opportunity to have your message (tx) blocked, or otherwise obfuscated.

I get the impression that many still think its about end users not being able to mine any more.

I think, in time, you'll come to see why that was never the case. Incentive mech makes the *number* of miners largely inconsequential (they can't cheat, they go out of business, and its big business worth not losing). For the man in the street I'd worry more about whether or not they can freely, without permission, broadcast a tx and know reliably its gonna get heard by those miners - b/c they are the ones that will put it in a block.

Just my 2c. Who knows. Who cares. We're all just bobbing along supporting our own interpretation of Satoshi's Vision. GL!

[sgbett]

Whoever wrote that for you is funny

Not as funny as the $4,100 bottom call though! 

I wonder what will happen first BTC $4100 or DragonMint ship a miner heh

[dinofelis]

Why would anyone use Bitcoin Cash over any of the other fast transaction coins? I just don't understand this.

It's Bitcoin.

No, Bitcoin is decentralized.

It seems so obvious at first glance to everyone in the space what decentralisation means. Its really easy to think the concentration of mining power to specialists is centralisation, when you first encounter bitcoin. In reality, its not about that, specialisation was inevitable.

Actually, in bitcoin and all other PoW coins, decentralization IS about how mining is distributed over the different participants.  You are right that the industrial efforts in PoW lead to specialisation, which is exactly why PoW is a failure in maintaining decentralization.  It is not because you *know* that it is going to centralize, that you should waver that away.  All PoW coins with "reward" are centralizing, and that's inevitable, because of economies of scale and specialisation.  But that's just a fundamental error in the game theory of PoW, not a fatality for crypto.

Why is this true centralization ?  Because decentralisation is a political, not a technical notion.  It is about decision power.  The whole idea of decentralisation is immutability of the rules, because all of politics is about modifying the rules so that you can win advantage over others.  The problem of all forms of central decision power is a funny notion, which we call "corruption".  It is the naive idea that we set up a hierarchically controlled power structure with a goal of "common good", just to find out that the deciders in that hierarchy are using their power of decision for their own advantage - which is in fact the most logically expected outcome.  People take decisions because they think that taking them brings them advantage.  People with hierarchical power don't do anything else: they use that extra power to their advantage. 

This is why democracies, big companies, and everything else are "corrupt": because they are made up of people, and we naively thought that they would put their individual essence aside to decide for the common good, instead of for themselves, like everybody else. 

If you can dictate the rules, you can put that to your advantage, directly or indirectly.  This is where decentralization comes in.  The idea is that you "flatten out the hierarchy" and have the decision be taken by consensus of entities with opposing interests.  Any rule change in the advantage of A, will be to the disadvantage of B and vice versa.  If A and B are placed in hierarchical relationship, then it is the highest one that will be able to get his advantage, over the advantage over the lower placed.  That's why the general lives, and the soldier dies.

If nobody is higher up than any other one, then the only thing people can agree upon, is the common set of initial rules.  No rule change is abl to be pushed, because no majority exists as long as the entities are non-colluding.  There is only one point of symmetry between all these different entities: the existing set of rules.

Of course, if it turns out that these different entities can agree upon a collective change of rules, nothing stops them from doing so.  If different sets of entities want different rule sets, they can part and each do their thing.  That's the essence of decentralisation.

In order for that to work, there needs to be a "voting mechanism".  In bitcoin, the voting mechanism is proof of work.  So who-ever can vote with proof of work, has decision power in bitcoin.  The distribution of the voters by proof of work is hence the decentralization in bitcoin.

That's the distribution of mining pools.  Majority needs 3 mining pools, >95% needs 10 mining pools.  That's the state of decentralization in bitcoin.

There's another aspect of decentralization: the actual "writing of the rules".  It is nice to think upon other rules politically, you have to have them running in code.  So actual decentralisation is the number of actual rule propositions.  In crypto, that's the number of independent protocol implementations.  In bitcoin, that's one: the repository on Github of bitcoin Core.   

That's it.

Decentralisation is the way in which participants in the network can effectively reach all other participants in the network as quickly as possible. Such that consensus can be reached with minimal opportunity to have your message (tx) blocked, or otherwise obfuscated.

According to that definition, Facebook is highly decentralized.

Bitcoin, and most of crypto, have a myth about decentralization, while it isn't.  But that's not even a problem.  A zero-sum game that more or less works is good enough to be usable.  The myths are there to sell the religion, and to make believe. 

Bitcoin is nor decentralized, nor a currency.  But that doesn't mean it doesn't work.  It is a great gambling asset in a great zero-sum game.  Given that most financial assets in the big derivative market are similar, bitcoin has a great future.  But not as a currency, nor as a decentralized system.  It never was, and never will be.  It is a gambling token in a new financial zero sum game casino.  And that has a great future.  It simply needs a story that gives it some "moral high ground" even though it is entirely bogus.

Note that bitcoin needs alt coins to avoid being a simple greater-fool game, and to form a large casino ; in the same way that you cannot have one single financial speculative asset in the financial markets.  They need one another for people to bet on, so that the winners can reap in the money from the losers, but that the losers keep coming back, hoping to be winners one day.

[Subutai]

$4,100 bottom? 

I hope it never happens, seems like yesterday BTC was at 3K and thinking of less than 9K today takes me some time to get used to

What a horrible thought to have 

[sgbett]

Why would anyone use Bitcoin Cash over any of the other fast transaction coins? I just don't understand this.

It's Bitcoin.

No, Bitcoin is decentralized.

It seems so obvious at first glance to everyone in the space what decentralisation means. Its really easy to think the concentration of mining power to specialists is centralisation, when you first encounter bitcoin. In reality, its not about that, specialisation was inevitable.

Actually, in bitcoin and all other PoW coins, decentralization IS about how mining is distributed over the different participants.  You are right that the industrial efforts in PoW lead to specialisation, which is exactly why PoW is a failure in maintaining decentralization.  It is not because you *know* that it is going to centralize, that you should waver that away.  All PoW coins with "reward" are centralizing, and that's inevitable, because of economies of scale and specialisation.  But that's just a fundamental error in the game theory of PoW, not a fatality for crypto.

Why is this true centralization ?  Because decentralisation is a political, not a technical notion.  It is about decision power.  The whole idea of decentralisation is immutability of the rules, because all of politics is about modifying the rules so that you can win advantage over others.  The problem of all forms of central decision power is a funny notion, which we call "corruption".  It is the naive idea that we set up a hierarchically controlled power structure with a goal of "common good", just to find out that the deciders in that hierarchy are using their power of decision for their own advantage - which is in fact the most logically expected outcome.  People take decisions because they think that taking them brings them advantage.  People with hierarchical power don't do anything else: they use that extra power to their advantage. 

This is why democracies, big companies, and everything else are "corrupt": because they are made up of people, and we naively thought that they would put their individual essence aside to decide for the common good, instead of for themselves, like everybody else. 

If you can dictate the rules, you can put that to your advantage, directly or indirectly.  This is where decentralization comes in.  The idea is that you "flatten out the hierarchy" and have the decision be taken by consensus of entities with opposing interests.  Any rule change in the advantage of A, will be to the disadvantage of B and vice versa.  If A and B are placed in hierarchical relationship, then it is the highest one that will be able to get his advantage, over the advantage over the lower placed.  That's why the general lives, and the soldier dies.

If nobody is higher up than any other one, then the only thing people can agree upon, is the common set of initial rules.  No rule change is abl to be pushed, because no majority exists as long as the entities are non-colluding.  There is only one point of symmetry between all these different entities: the existing set of rules.

Of course, if it turns out that these different entities can agree upon a collective change of rules, nothing stops them from doing so.  If different sets of entities want different rule sets, they can part and each do their thing.  That's the essence of decentralisation.

In order for that to work, there needs to be a "voting mechanism".  In bitcoin, the voting mechanism is proof of work.  So who-ever can vote with proof of work, has decision power in bitcoin.  The distribution of the voters by proof of work is hence the decentralization in bitcoin.

That's the distribution of mining pools.  Majority needs 3 mining pools, >95% needs 10 mining pools.  That's the state of decentralization in bitcoin.

There's another aspect of decentralization: the actual "writing of the rules".  It is nice to think upon other rules politically, you have to have them running in code.  So actual decentralisation is the number of actual rule propositions.  In crypto, that's the number of independent protocol implementations.  In bitcoin, that's one: the repository on Github of bitcoin Core.   

That's it.

Decentralisation is the way in which participants in the network can effectively reach all other participants in the network as quickly as possible. Such that consensus can be reached with minimal opportunity to have your message (tx) blocked, or otherwise obfuscated.

According to that definition, Facebook is highly decentralized.

Bitcoin, and most of crypto, have a myth about decentralization, while it isn't.  But that's not even a problem.  A zero-sum game that more or less works is good enough to be usable.  The myths are there to sell the religion, and to make believe. 

Bitcoin is nor decentralized, nor a currency.  But that doesn't mean it doesn't work.  It is a great gambling asset in a great zero-sum game.  Given that most financial assets in the big derivative market are similar, bitcoin has a great future.  But not as a currency, nor as a decentralized system.  It never was, and never will be.  It is a gambling token in a new financial zero sum game casino.  And that has a great future.  It simply needs a story that gives it some "moral high ground" even though it is entirely bogus.

Note that bitcoin needs alt coins to avoid being a simple greater-fool game, and to form a large casino ; in the same way that you cannot have one single financial speculative asset in the financial markets.  They need one another for people to bet on, so that the winners can reap in the money from the losers, but that the losers keep coming back, hoping to be winners one day.

If you think my definition of decentralised applies to Facebook you didn’t really understand it. As eloquent and well thought out your post, it boils down to exactly what I said. At first glance it’s easy to think decentralisation is X. You just listed all the reasons why people think that.

I know why you think that. I thought that too, until I came to a better understanding. I doubt many are going to see it becaus you hold the popular opinion. Give it some years.

[sgbett]

Back to the subject at hand though, where are we in the speculative hype cycle?

During the mania phase we see a plethora of posts on here all using positive language about buying.

Right now we are seeing a mix of “bit worried” and negative “don’t sell” posts.

Multiple new threads being started by the same people essentially saying the same thing.

This forum has been since the day I joined one of the most reliable indicators of sentiment, over time it becomes easier to read.

So yeah everything points to “return to normal/fear”

The irony here is that all other coins are pretty much following BTC, so if I am BCH shill, I’m technically trash talking “my own coin”

Maybe some people on spec subforum are here to speculate about what is likely to happen, and not here to try and pump/dump a coin, or some other agenda.

Just maybe.

GL All!

[dinofelis]

Back to the subject at hand though, where are we in the speculative hype cycle?

I think this is bitcoin's third bubble that just burst.  

First bubble: summer 2011.  Starting out at something like $0.1 in 2010 and doing x300, up to near $30 in the summer of 2011.
Then the bubble burst, down to $3 in 2012.   x300, /10.

Second bubble, December 2013.  Starting out around $3 (previous burst bubble),  x400, up to near $1200 in December of 2013.
Then the bubble burst, down to $200 in 2015.  x400, /6

Third bubble (?) December 2017.  Starting out around $200 (previous burst bubble), x100, up to near $20000 in December 2017.

Note that it gets somewhat less violent, and longer.  So maybe down only a factor of 5.  I think your $4000 are close, and it will take a few years maybe.

However, one big game changer: this time, bitcoin is not alone.  Market monopoly gone.  Down from over 85% to some 35% market share.

Was this the last one ?  It looks a lot like the few bull traps we saw in 2014.

I think there will be one more but I don't know.  

In fact, this is not bitcoin's bubbles, but crypto's bubbles.  It is a highly speculative market, like the stock market, that bubbles regularly.
My take on crypto is that it is the new financial gambling circus casino.  It is perfect for that: no fundamentals.  Only betting coins.  I think it will replace a large part of world's big capital's demand for financial casino, which is now the derivatives market, estimated at about 1.6 quadrillion dollars or so.  I think crypto will eat a big chunk of that.  It doesn't have its place in the money market, because it is speculative, not a currency.  It's all about getting rich, and screwing others.
However, I think bitcoin is clunky.  I don't know if bitcoin will still be there for the next bubble.  I hope so.  But it is very old-fashioned now, and clunky.  The next bubble should bring crypto to the many 10 trillions side, so some percentage of the world finance casino.  But I don't know what crypto.  Will bitcoin + cousins still be part of it ?  I expect a times several 100 for the next bubble for the whole of crypto, but bitcoin's market share may very well drop by a factor of 10, so maybe the run-up will be meagre, and I'm not sure it will get over the previous ATH this time.  We'll see.  I think it will take a few years of bear market in any case.
When *that* bubble bursts, we'll not be the dominant species on earth any more: intelligent machines will have taken over through crypto.

[Tzupy]

Back to the subject at hand though, where are we in the speculative hype cycle?
...

IMO we are in a market position similar to April - May 2013 (a wave III and IV), except that back then the price was manipulated upwards by Markus the bot.
So if we already completed an ABC correction, we are going to move sideways, maybe even touching the ATH, and with multiple support tests, for the next months, before rallying as high as 100k$.
If the correction is not over yet, then we can expect another large drop, but I doubt anything less than 6k$. And the recovery would take longer, maybe over a year, but eventually should reach over 50k$.
On the short term, 24h and 12h MACD are negative and won't cross into positive soon, but 6h could cross into positive in a couple of days (or it could be a fakeout, so be careful).

[dinofelis]

you said:

Decentralisation is the way in which participants in the network can effectively reach all other participants in the network as quickly as possible. Such that consensus can be reached with minimal opportunity to have your message (tx) blocked, or otherwise obfuscated.

I replied:

According to that definition, Facebook is highly decentralized.

Then you say:

If you think my definition of decentralised applies to Facebook you didn’t really understand it. As eloquent and well thought out your post, it boils down to exactly what I said. At first glance it’s easy to think decentralisation is X. You just listed all the reasons why people think that.

Facebook allows you to reach all other participants in the network as quickly as possible with your message, there is immediate consensus that this was indeed your message and in as much as your message is in agreement with the "protocol", it will not be blocked or otherwise obfuscated.  This is why I said that if that's what your definition is about, Facebook satisfies it perfectly.

This is, however, not the communication problem a crypto currency needs to solve.  In fact, a crypto currency needs to solve the INVERSE problem: how to avoid that you can obfuscate, hide your message or give YOU the opportunity to otherwise deny participants in the network to learn about your message.  A crypto currency needs to solve the problem of global non-repudiation, not of divulgation !

Indeed, what you, as a user of a crypto currency, would actually want, is that you can send a message to SOME participants, while hiding that message from other participants.  If you want to buy a car with bitcoin, you would like the car salesman to learn about your message (your transaction).   But you would like to hide that message to the jewellery shop, and you'd like to send a similar message to the jewellery shop, making them believe you can spend your coins again.   The whole machinery of bitcoin is such that, no matter how you try, you cannot hide the fact that you sent a message to the car salesman.

The solution that all crypto currencies have, is that there is some form of collective, unique repository/database where these messages have to be registered, and which can be consulted by all participants, in such a way that nothing can be erased from that repository, or at least, that the effects of that message cannot be reversed in that repository.  

And then, there's the battle of how we secure this repository against erasure.  How do we make a repository such that once a message is inside, it cannot be removed.  How can we make sure that all LATER participants in the system will be made aware of the message that you sent, even if you want to avoid that by all means ?

In fact, if we would have such a system, in which we can register messages for all participants, which cannot be erased, that's all we actually need.  In such a universal scribble book, we could invent all kinds of tokens, of which we can determine that we transact them with a digital signature.  Everyone could invent his own token.  I could invent the dinofelis token, and  you can have my dinofelis token number 1 against a pizza, with the declaration that I'll never emit another dinofelis token number 1.  In as much as people value the dinofelis token number 1, which is now unique (I cannot put a message in the scribble book to emit another one: it is clear to everyone that that second one is bogus and in contradiction with what I said before), you, who sold me a pizza against that token, can transact it with your signature, for a pancake.  I wonder whether the dinofelis token number 1 would rise a lot in value, honestly.   But bitcoin's creator restricted enormously the liberty to write stuff in that universal scribble book, and invented rules to make dinofelis tokens, the only ones that one can transmit on the scribble book he invented.  He invented a lot more rules: when the scribble book will be updated, who decides, and so on.

And this is where my notion of decentralisation comes in: the whole set of rules, the people who can decide what goes into the scribble book and what not, and so on, becomes a matter of power.  You're not emitting your own token.  The rules of power decide who emits tokens.

That said, it is this funny formalisation in "rules" that have tricked people into thinking it is worth something - and given that it is now a Keynesian beauty contest, it IS worth something.   If one would have set up just a scribble book in which my dinofelis token number 1 was registered, it still wouldn't have taken on any value in the market.  Nobody cares about that.  The whole marketing around the notions "currency" and "coin" and so on were sheer brilliant.  But they also implied "power".   Power to obtain goods and services.  Power to deny goods and services.   Like any power structure.

If you think about it, it is entirely crazy.  Anyone out there can start a scribble book.  Anyone out there can invent different rules.  There is strictly no reason why one would spend a fortune to have a token in one scribble book, while a token in another one doesn't cost much, and if you want to, you can invent your own of which you are the master, and it cost you nothing.  This is the purest form of recursive belief system, or, if you want to, the biggest greater fool game in the world.  A token in a scribble book is, a priori, worth nothing, because you can, if you want to, make your own scribble book.  But given the fact that it has now been proven that people value it, you can bet on the fact that others might value it too.  So even if YOU don't value it, others do (and even if they don't, they know that other others do....).  You may buy it against genuine value, just to hope to sell it to a greater fool.  Because it is in THIS scribble book, and not in THAT scribble book.
Nobody believes a bitcoin is actually worth anything, but everybody believes that he will find someone who believes he will find someone who will accept it against value, just to pass the hot potato to someone else.  Too bad for the last one in the row.

[dinofelis]

Back to the subject at hand though, where are we in the speculative hype cycle?
...

IMO we are in a market position similar to April - May 2013 (a wave III and IV), except that back then the price was manipulated upwards by Markus the bot.

Nope.  This is 2014 all over again.  Crazy run up, ATH, crash, bull traps in steps on the way down for a long period.
In the run-up, how many people do you think got burned, and are now bag holders ?  That' like the MtGox run-up.  At every modest upward movement now, some of those bag holders will take their losses and curse crypto, pushing the thing down again, removing hope of all others.  The longer it takes, the deeper it goes.  Until all of these bag holders have cashed out, taken their losses as the greater fools that fuelled the gains of the previous holders that sold them on the right moment.  Bottoming out for a while, until the next run-up.  Or not, of course.  But it is not thinkable that in the near future, people are still going to BUY near the ATH.  There's a lot of burned bag holders wanting to sell, to cut their losses.  First, all of these have to get out.  That takes time, the time to accept and forget.  None of the FOMO buyers during the run-up are capable of HODLing while they see how they got burned, seeing their paper losses increase at every down movement, and losing hope at every weak attempt at recovery.  

[sgbett]

you said:

Decentralisation is the way in which participants in the network can effectively reach all other participants in the network as quickly as possible. Such that consensus can be reached with minimal opportunity to have your message (tx) blocked, or otherwise obfuscated.

I replied:

According to that definition, Facebook is highly decentralized.

Then you say:

If you think my definition of decentralised applies to Facebook you didn’t really understand it. As eloquent and well thought out your post, it boils down to exactly what I said. At first glance it’s easy to think decentralisation is X. You just listed all the reasons why people think that.

Facebook allows you to reach all other participants in the network as quickly as possible with your message, there is immediate consensus that this was indeed your message and in as much as your message is in agreement with the "protocol", it will not be blocked or otherwise obfuscated.  This is why I said that if that's what your definition is about, Facebook satisfies it perfectly.

..snip..

I bolded the important part which invalidates the comparison to facebook: Facebook can block your message.

I think you've inferred something that isn't there as a result of not considering that Facebook is a central authority, whereas PoW creates a decentralised network, in which participants are increasingly incentivised to ensure it can be trusted en masse. It's distributed trust.

As long as you can broadcast a tx to the network you can be almost certain that it cannot be blocked.

To compromise this, is to compromise belief in the system which reduces perceived value, which degrades security by reducing incentives.

[dinofelis]

I bolded the important part which invalidates the comparison to facebook: Facebook can block your message.

I think you've inferred something that isn't there as a result of not considering that Facebook is a central authority, whereas PoW creates a decentralised network, in which participants are increasingly incentivised to ensure it can be trusted en masse. It's distributed trust.

I know you said that, but no cigar.  Bitcoin's mining pools have hash majority with 3.  Let us say, 4.  The 4 biggest mining pools hold
65% hash rate under their knee.  See https://blockchain.info/pools  If these 4 entities decide that your transaction is not going to make it in the block chain, then you can transmit it as many times as you want, it won't make it into the block chain.

They will firstly not include your transaction in the block THEY make.  Moreover, they can decide NOT to mine on top of a block that contains your  transaction, as made by a minority miner.  If ever a minority miner includes your transaction, his block will get orphaned, and given that the 4 entities have 65% hash rate, his orphaned prong will always lose.  They may be friendly to these smaller pools, and inform them that they should exclude your transaction, or lose their blocks.  If these 4 guys maintain a blacklisted set of addresses, then the coins in these addresses are dead.  You'll never know.

Note that mining POOLS are the entities that decide on what block they mine, and what transaction they include.  The miners connected to the pool don't have anything to say in this decision, and don't even KNOW these decisions.

The only thing you can do is shout here, or on coindesk, or on national TV, or on Facebook (oh sweet irony) that your transactions always remain in the mem pool and never get confirmed, and in those cases they get confirmed once, that block gets orphaned.

There's your "decentralization". True, you need 4 guys (strictly speaking, 3 guys) to decide that together.  Zuckerberg can do it on his own.

Now, why isn't this happening ?  Well, maybe it IS happening. There is no way to know that amongst all the rejected transactions in the mempool, there is not one of a poor guy that is excluded. But if it isn't, it is not happening for exactly the same reason it is not happening on Facebook: because of the market.  If it would get known that the mining pools do this, they may lose business.  Miners may connect to another mining pool.  Bitcoin may plummet in the market.  And exactly for the same reason, you get your messages through on Facebook, because Zuckerberg doesn't want you to tell the press that Facebook is censoring you.  

In fact, there's more chance that Zuckerberg is afraid of this bad publicity, than the mining pools.  Remember that they played perfectly according to bitcoin's rules.  No node will complain.  So, your message is just as guaranteed (or even more) to get through on Facebook, than on the bitcoin network.  And not because of decentralization.  Because of fear for bad publicity.

There.  Be careful if you insult a Chinese king of bitcoin.  You may never transact again.  And note that it doesn't cost them a single hash, or a single fee (apart from yours, of course).  And now, re-read what I said above about "decentralization".  Because not only the mining pools have this power.   Core has that power too.  If they decide to blacklist your address in the next version of bitcoin core, then you can do what you want, your transactions will not any more be part of the official bitcoin protocol !  If you think that's a joke, that's more or less what Vitalik did with the DAO hacker.  Ethereum's protocol was modified so as to kill this guys' transactions and pretend they never happened.

All this "decentralization" talk is entirely bogus.  Salesmen snake oil.  But it is not needed (in most cases).  Because of the market and fear of bad publicity.  Like with openly centralized entities.