Wed Aug 17, 2016 5:11 pm

I only partly agree.



Decentralization is certainly part of Bitcoins value proposition, and so are a lot of other factors. Demand, trust and usefulness are also part. And more.



The point is that you get to a point of diminishing returns.



Consider the value of a car. The car has to be able to get you from point A to point B. If it can't do that consistently, the value drops like a rock. A car should be able to keep you dry and warm in winter. If it fails that the value drops considerably as well.



We have gotten pretty good at building cars that meet these basic requirements, and as such we don't talk about them very much. People talk about the much harder problems like being able to go fast, be safe and now even have the car drive itself. People don't select on being able to stay dry because it is the easiest to fulfil promise. Anyone that can't isn't even relevant.



Being able to be decentralized is similarly really not that difficult to fulfil a requirement. People find it hard to put a number on this, but the reason for that is mostly that it hasn't been raining a lot (to stretch this analogy to its end).



I think decentralization is easy to do and keeps on being easy to do even if we would have much much bigger blocks. Because if some country would start censoring Bitcoin, we'd see 50 or 100 new nodes spring up in a week. Look at piratebay for examples of how this works.



So, Roger, I agree its a key tool. I would assert its a value in and of itself. But similarly to you, I think its a value that has such a low threshold of being good-enough that we don't really need to worry about it.