(16/16) The following post is part 16 of a 16-part story about how I came around to crypto. Part 15 can be found here. And this is going to be somewhat of a cheat post. I don’t totally know where to close it out, so I think this is as good a spot as any.
Decentralization works! But people (corporations, governments) are forever power-hungry and control-seeking. I read recently that one reason Ukrainians who are stuck in Ukraine can still communicate with the outside world is that Ukraine has an unusally high number of Internet service providers - decentralization! Compare that to China where the government has strict control over the internet. This also shows that even though the internet was designed with decentralization in mind (completely flat organization, multiple networks, and path-finding that works sort-of automatically, even when parts of the network are disconnected), it still got dominated by governments who want to control it.
By the way, there are still points of centralization in the internet - technology such as DNS and organizations such as IANA. Crytocurrency has points of centralization such as exchanges. Watch out for who controls these points!
Decentralization works! But people (corporations, governments) are forever power-hungry and control-seeking. I read recently that one reason Ukrainians who are stuck in Ukraine can still communicate with the outside world is that Ukraine has an unusally high number of Internet service providers - decentralization! Compare that to China where the government has strict control over the internet. This also shows that even though the internet was designed with decentralization in mind (completely flat organization, multiple networks, and path-finding that works sort-of automatically, even when parts of the network are disconnected), it still got dominated by governments who want to control it.
By the way, there are still points of centralization in the internet - technology such as DNS and organizations such as IANA. Crytocurrency has points of centralization such as exchanges. Watch out for who controls these points!