Bitcoin has come full CIRCLE

[moriartybitcoin]

Bitcoin has much in common with the Internet.

The internet began as a decentralized communications network with worldwide nodes. The decentralized architecture of the Internet was designed by the US military to withstand nuclear armageddon.  

How things have changed.

While the underlying architecture remains pretty much the same, the Internet can hardly be considered 'decentralized' anymore.  Mega-monopolies like Google, Facebook and Microsoft dominate what we see and hear online.  Each year, the internet becomes more centralized for the average user, as smaller companies are squashed, amalgamated, or gobbled up by the big corporations.

Thanks to Google, entire governments can now censor and control what their citizens read online. Think: China.  

Like the internet, Bitcoin began as a decentralized protocol.  And while Bitcoin is still fundamentally decentralized in its architecture, in practice - IN REALITY - it is gradually becoming more centralized for the user, just like the internet. How so?

Large companies - pumped full of venture capital cash - are centralizing the user experience.  Buying and selling Bitcoin occurs mostly on large, centralized exchanges such as CoinBase, BitStamp and BTC-E.  Now Circle has come along with the intention of centralizing Bitcoin even more for the average user.  New Bitcoiners who flock to Circle will not even understand the fundamental decentralization of cryptocurrency, just like new internet users hardly understand the decentralized architecture of the internet.  New Bitcoiners will experience total centralization - a central Bitcoin bank like Circle and centralized exchanges like CoinBase, just like new internet users experience the centralization of Google and Facebook from the moment they pop online.

So, while the fundamental architecture of Bitcoin is (and always will be) decentralized, the user experience will become more centralized and more controlled over time.  Hello Big Brother, goodbye Satoshi Nakamoto.

What began as a free market libertarian currency experiment has now come full CIRCLE ...

Dr. Michael Moriarty

[zimmah]

at least the internet and bitcoin give use choice.

there's the deepweb, which is not easy to browse for most of us, but is still quite decentralized.

There is and always will be ways to access the blockchain and use bitcoin in the way you want. It's not as easy as circle and bitpay etc. but at least you have a choice.

Who cares if the masses use bitcoin in another way than you? If it works for them it's fine.

[Chef Ramsay]

BTC would likely stay in its niche area for a lot longer w/o the biggies getting in to make life easier for the rest of those that we hope to hop on board. I'm thrilled with all the incoming innovation quite frankly.

[K128kevin2]

Bitcoin has much in common with the Internet.

The internet began as a decentralized communications network with worldwide nodes. The decentralized architecture of the Internet was designed by the US military to withstand nuclear armageddon.  

How things have changed.

While the underlying architecture remains pretty much the same, the Internet can hardly be considered 'decentralized' anymore.  Mega-monopolies like Google, Facebook and Microsoft dominate what we see and hear online.  Each year, the internet becomes more centralized for the average user, as smaller companies are squashed, amalgamated, or gobbled up by the big corporations.

Thanks to Google, entire governments can now censor and control what their citizens read online. Think: China.  

Like the internet, Bitcoin began as a decentralized protocol.  And while Bitcoin is still fundamentally decentralized in its architecture, in practice - IN REALITY - it is gradually becoming more centralized for the user, just like the internet. How so?

Large companies - pumped full of venture capital cash - are centralizing the user experience.  Buying and selling Bitcoin occurs mostly on large, centralized exchanges such as CoinBase, BitStamp and BTC-E.  Now Circle has come along with the intention of centralizing Bitcoin even more for the average user.  New Bitcoiners who flock to Circle will not even understand the fundamental decentralization of cryptocurrency, just like new internet users hardly understand the decentralized architecture of the internet.  New Bitcoiners will experience total centralization - a central Bitcoin bank like Circle and centralized exchanges like CoinBase, just like new internet users experience the centralization of Google and Facebook from the moment they pop online.

So, while the fundamental architecture of Bitcoin is (and always will be) decentralized, the user experience will become more centralized and more controlled over time.  Hello Big Brother, goodbye Satoshi Nakamoto.

What began as a free market libertarian currency experiment has now come full CIRCLE ...

Dr. Michael Moriarty

I don't think it's accurate to say that the internet is not decentralized, or that Google, Facebook, or Microsoft dominate the internet. Certainly Facebook and Microsoft don't dominate the internet. Google dominates advertising, but that is only one small aspect of the internet, and even there Facebook gives them some competition. If anyone "controls" the internet, or rather if you were to say it was centralized around one or a few companies, those would have to be the ISPs like Comcast and Time Warner Cable. They don't control the content, but they control the physical routers and switches that allow you to connect to the internet. Google, Facebook, and Microsoft (and all of their assets) could vanish and they would be quickly replaced by other companies. If all of Comcast/TWC's assets vanished, we would not recover nearly as quickly. Or at least I don't think we would, I guess it's impossible to know for sure.

[Prez]

Whats the next upcoming coin?

[Nathonas]

Eh, the internet really isn't as bad as you make it out to be. You still have a lot of freedom on the web to find and do whatever you need. Having said that, Bitcoin could be moving to a more centralized nature as time goes on. This is natural as it increases in importance and prominence. But in the end I don't think it can get so bad that the entire point of Bitcoin is lost. If it ever gets that bad, I imagine people will abandon it.

[Ron~Popeil]

Ease of entry is the key to mass adoption. Once in the community a fair number of new users will take the time to learn about wallets and cold storage etc.

There will always be a hard core group of people like us that understand the deeper meaning behind it all. 

[spazzdla]

The "problem" which isn't a problem at all is one can always leave the system with BTC and quite easily.  There will always be options to get BTC other ways.  It needs the centeralization to bring the average nit wit in.

[jbreher]

Stuff and nonsense. The internet is massively decentralized, in that the barrier to creating your own service on the web is essentially zero. The fact that hundreds of millions choose to browse a small handful of sites does not change the essential nature of the internet.

It takes a funny thought process to equate the addition of another service as centralization. It is, by definition, the exact opposite.

[BitDreams]

I am expecting bitcoin will allow me to extract control from the controllers.

Place a tracking cookie on my pc? That will be one satoshi please.

Share my tracking cookie with a third party? I see you trading my cookies in the block chain.

Take my picture with your red light camera and store that transaction on the block chain? Demand the right to be notified (through multi-signature transactions) that someone or something is requesting access to that file.

For every instance where someone claims that bitcoin invades privacy I can present an instance of how bitcoin would respect privacy, owning privacy.

[bluefirecorp]

You act as thought mtgox didn't control over 80% of the market with tradehill controlling the other 10-15% in 2011?

Honestly, as long as OTC / person to person currency exchange systems exists, it's still decentralized in my mind.

[haploid23]

OP, you're only correct to some extent. Although exchanges do have a lot of volume and command most of the prices, no one forces users to buy and sell on exchanges. There are thousands of merchants accepting, and you can buy/sell btc locally or trade directly between buyer/seller.

[DannyHamilton]

So, while the fundamental architecture of Bitcoin is (and always will be) decentralized, the user experience will become more centralized and more controlled over time.  Hello Big Brother, goodbye Satoshi Nakamoto.

Satoshi always expected and assumed that processes would become more centralized with time.  Anyone who thought otherwise doesn't have a very realistic view of the world.

Long before the network gets anywhere near as large as that, it would be safe
for users to use Simplified Payment Verification ( section 8 ) to check for
double spending, which only requires having the chain of block headers, or
about 12KB per day.  Only people trying to create new coins would need to run
network nodes.  At first, most users would run network nodes, but as the
network grows beyond a certain point, it would be left more and more to
specialists with server farms of specialized hardware.  A server farm would
only need to have one node on the network and the rest of the LAN connects with
that one node.

Bold added by me for emphasis.