Is This Still Adoption?

[Glowy]

If institutional money drives the market…
Is crypto still decentralised in practice?
Or we are watching it slowly move from decentralisation?

[Charles-Tim]

Who told you that cryptocurrencies are decentralized? The person explained cryptocurrencies to you wrongly. Cryptocurrencies are not all decentralized, but only ones like bitcoin as a good example is decentralized.

But most cryptocurrencies are centralized in one way or the other. Ethereum is not completely decentralized, even in a way that the cofounders are the ones that are controlling what is happening.

But there are centralized ones like BSC network and some other networks and token like USDT that developers can freeze People's coins on noncustodial wallet.

[rat03gopoh]

Institutional money has nothing to do with practical decentralization. If you hold your crypto in a self-custody wallet and guarantee it will never be frozen, that's decentralization. Institutional adoption only affects you (the speculator) psychologically, and that is what creates the price effect.

However, their involvement clearly reduces the active market supply because their planning is longer than that of retail adopters.

[Ambatman]

Cryptocurrency are just digital currency and majority face the hurdle of normal
Which is being centralized
Except for Bitcoin.

Is crypto still decentralised in practice?
Or we are watching it slowly move from decentralisation?

Now if we talking about Bitcoin
At its core or protocol level it remains decentralized and nothing has changed
A gun is kept in a show room doesn't mean it can't kill with a bullet.

[legiteum]

If institutional money drives the market…
Is crypto still decentralised in practice?
Or we are watching it slowly move from decentralisation?

Crypto hasn't been "decentralized in practice" for most users for... 10 years or more. Most people who use crypto do so with an app or a broker or some other kind of centralized system that often isn't even really buying the crypto directly for them, but are instead just marking down their holding in some Oracle database.

Chains like Ether went from PoW to PoS because nobody really cares about decentralization anymore.

Why did this happen? Because there's no longer a reason to have actual decentralization--today it's just a marketing word like, "turbo" (many electric cars these days are calling themselves, "turbo" lol). Bitcoin needed decentralization in the beginning because the idea was illegal so it needed to resist being shut down by governments. But now Bitcoin and all digital currencies are perfectly legal, so this is no longer necessary.

There's no exhaust-driven forced induction device on the latest copy of TurboTax, and there's no "decentralization" in almost all of today's "DeFi" products and digital currencies. And you know what? Nobody cares.

[serjent05]

If institutional money drives the market…

This simply means institutional organizations are adopting Bitcoin.

Is crypto still decentralised in practice?

Cryptocurrency can be centralized and decentralized, although the government frown decentralization, they cannot stop if someone wanted to create a decentralized cryptocurrency.

Or we are watching it slowly move from decentralisation?

Did Bitcoin become centralized?  We do not watch cryptocurrency specifically Bitcoin, moving to centralization, and the services integrated to it are already centralized so they are just as they are.  It is that there are more and more centralized company integrating Bitcoin into their service.

[Churchillvv]

If institutional money drives the market…
Is crypto still decentralised in practice?
Or we are watching it slowly move from decentralisation?

This seem like an altcoin discussion rather than a bitcoin discussion to me, basically when you say crypto it’s assumed you are talking about altcoins most times or all the crypto in general yet bitcoin is not in this category of coins which are not decentralized yet decentralization of bitcoin is becoming a dream as people are captured into one or more centralized systems in other to get bitcoin. However decentralization is a core feature of bitcoin and not any other cryptocurrency.

[HONDACD125]

If institutional money drives the market…
Is crypto still decentralised in practice?
Or we are watching it slowly move from decentralisation?

The decentralization of cryptocurrencies does not depend on how many coins one possesses, the decentralization lies in the network and the blockchain that won't get effected in any way no matter how many bitcoins institutional investors or whales have, they might be able to manipulate the market with that temporarily, but they can't do anything with the network itself. If we talk about Bitcoin and its blockchain specifically, it's not like those projects where investors who have a large percentage of the total supply will have the right to participate in decision making of the ecosystem or how things should work, in Bitcoin, your billions worth of coin have no value for the blockchain and it doesn't give you any privileges at all.

So whether institutional money drives the market, or whales gain control over the largest portion of the coins available in the market, the blockchain won't get affected, which means that decentralization will still exist no matter what. If you have got the information that those who have a lot of bitcoins get to control the network or the blockchain, some of your information is coming from a wrong source and you need to update your information by doing more research and learning more about Bitcoin and its network, and also about other cryptocurrencies.

[Zlantann]

If institutional money drives the market…
Is crypto still decentralised in practice?
Or we are watching it slowly move from decentralisation?

Do you mean institutions like the government and ETF providers? Some of the policies of these institutions could affect the crypto market. Bitcoin and altcoins such as Monero are decentralized while others are controlled centrally. Institutions like BlackRock and others might be promoting centralization. Some people prefer to invest in Bitcoin through these intermediaries. However, there are still many who use Bitcoin without third parties. They deal with Bitcoin through decentralized platforms.

[Rruchi man]

If institutional money drives the market…

This simply means institutional organizations are adopting Bitcoin.

If institutional organizations are buying into bitcoins, they certainly have the intention to hodl longer than many individual investors.

Because they hold long and will likely keep buying into the market, scarcity that will lead to an increase in value will follow.

[aoluain]

Firstly, please separate Crypto from Bitcoin.

Largely Crypto = $hitcoins are centralised

Bitcoin is decentralised, each individual has the power over their coins.

Institutional investors may eventually own a larger percentage of Bitcoin and they
may be able to move the markets favourably because of that but they wont be able
to change how Bitcoin works. The developers of the open source code can do that.

If anyone is worried about the markets being controlled, well they are a few years
too late with their concerns.

[Wiwo]

If institutional money drives the market…
Is crypto still decentralised in practice?
Or we are watching it slowly move from decentralisation?

First you misunderstood the decentralised aspect of cryptocurrency and you make assumptions that all cryptocurrency are decentralised but that is not so mate and again institutions don't control market movement, yes high inflow of capital can change the phase of the market but not an entire control since the force can be temporary change in market direction.

Bitcoin as a decentralised coin have it own way of market movement that beats every expectation and speculation around it.

[Gozie51]

If institutional money drives the market…
Is crypto still decentralised in practice?
Or we are watching it slowly move from decentralisation?

I don't think the issue of decentralized or centralized should come in here when it comes to market interaction. What you should be looking at is demand and supply which is what controls market liquidity. Bitcoin is decentralized yes but it is tradable digital asset that will fluctuate in price depending on the volume of trade. Therefore, we don't expect the price to be stable. You need to know that institution money will have some amount of influence on it when it comes to the market because of the large request. Afterall, bitcoin transactions is open source through Blockchain, so everyone can see what is happening on the network and that itself can change demand and affect the price. So institutions buying or hodling bitcoin doesn't mean adoption itself but the trust to buy and hodl.

[vanesha]

I believe the distinctive feature of crypto, its decentralization, will never be lost. Cryptocurrencies have been around and widely known for over 10 years, and that hasn't diminished their decentralized nature. Although the existence of exchanges that require KYC makes cryptocurrency seem like it's losing its decentralization, there are also DEX markets that are reopening cryptocurrencies to restore decentralization. Money may be a medium of exchange, but I think eliminating the decentralized nature of cryptocurrency is almost impossible.

[Dunamisx]

If institutional money drives the market…
Is crypto still decentralised in practice?
Or we are watching it slowly move from decentralisation?

For now let me go with the option that suggest the going into this innovations gradually because of the technology advancement, and we cannot conclude by saying that government are winning ages over the actualization of Bitcoin centralization, because they cannot be in charge to control this digital currency for anything, lastly not all the cryptocurrency have been decentralized, a number of demand centralized except Bitcoin.

[FinneysTrueVision]

It is still adoption, even if institutions are the ones doing most of the buying. Bitcoin as a protocol is still decentralized and that’s not going to change anytime soon. With much of the current activity being exchange and ETF related, then you can argue that it has moved further away from its cypherpunk origins. Most people do not seem to give much importance to self custody and censorship resistance. They willingly give up their personal information so that Binance and Coinbase will allow them to transfer their funds. This reliance on centralized custodians is concerning to some degree, but it does not change the fact that you can still send Bitcoin to whoever you like when you control your own keys.

[Davidvictorson]

Who told you that cryptocurrencies are decentralized? The person explained cryptocurrencies to you wrongly. Cryptocurrencies are not all decentralized, but only ones like bitcoin as a good example is decentralized.

But most cryptocurrencies are centralized in one way or the other. Ethereum is not completely decentralized, even in a way that the cofounders are the ones that are controlling what is happening.

But there are centralized ones like BSC network and some other networks and token like USDT that developers can freeze People's coins on noncustodial wallet.

Excellent explanation. I hope the OP has gotten the point. I think he’s mixing up bitcoin with other cryptocurrencies.

On the other hand, if we have more institutional buy-ins as well as governments getting involved bitcoin would like move to being , highly regulated which equals in my estimation semi-centralized. I stand to be corrected.

[Mene_rence]

Institutional money has nothing to do with practical decentralization. If you hold your crypto in a self-custody wallet and guarantee it will never be frozen, that's decentralization. Institutional adoption only affects you (the speculator) psychologically, and that is what creates the price effect.

However, their involvement clearly reduces the active market supply because their planning is longer than that of retail adopters.

I partially agreed with you! However, we have to seperate two things here - technical and economical decentralization.
Technically, crpto and Bitcoin is still decentralized but economically, bitcoin is centralized.
Institution can not change the rules or policy no matter how they buy, however, concentrated ownership drives massive volume and influence. This can lead to over price, over regulation, over price and over sentiment.
In practice, we are seeing decentralization die in our own eyes but technically, crpto is decentralized.

[GFOXOG]

Depends maybe bitcoin moves into a new "phase" of adoption with all the new funds taking note and new regulations allowing access to bitcoin then we might see something big next cycle.

[Zaguru12]

On the other hand, if we have more institutional buy-ins as well as governments getting involved bitcoin would like move to being , highly regulated which equals in my estimation semi-centralized. I stand to be corrected.

I think this is where we miss things up, this is certainly about price if institutions buy and government also buys too I think a huge significant of the price belonging to them can cause them to think of manipulating the market. But still yet this cannot be done by one institution or the government directly like they come and set their own price, rather they will have to buy and sell their own bitcoin too and it is from the sale that much supply is in the market then it will not be able still called centralization per se because even other retail traders needs to sell before they could all affect the market.

Bitcoin decentralization though is on its network, on bitcoin network there is no control or should I say censorship on the type of transaction a miner can accept. If at all the miners with high power decide to censor some of their transactions then this what I will call centralization