[hybridsole]

Yep, they should just stick with the current system of 3-5 day transfers, giving over all of your personal information, and being subject to freezing/closure at the whim of authorities with no due process.

Bitcoin transactions rarely take more than 30 minutes, including peak times, if you apply a sufficient network transaction fee (right now equiv. to $0.05). It cannot be "arbitrarily" reversed. RBF is not even in production, and if/when it is, it's is a separate type of transaction that is optional and marked as such. China does not control bitcoin, yes they perform most of the mining but it's because China is huge, has cheap electricity, and produces mining hardware. There are a lot of independent actors involved and if there was foul play (which there has not been any evidence of) the network could route around China without too much disruption.

Bitcoin is not perfect and it's still in its infancy, but it is improving and it is still more censorship resistant and decentralized than any other form of money.

[krinchan]

Ummm...all of the "conventions" about increasing block size had 5 people from China representing more than 90% of all successfully mined blocks. They won't let the block size increase because then it'd be too hard to get them across the Great Firewall.

China is currently an issue and the network won't route around them.

[brighton36]

So what? If China stops mining efficiently, then mining will move to the next country with the cheapest power.

[chillydawg]

But they won't stop, because they currently control the only process that could make them stop.

[hybridsole]

That's not really accurate. There are many stakeholders in bitcoin that are part of the ecosystem and all can determine its future. Mining is one part of the equation, there are nodes that validate transactions, there are exchanges that give bitcoins value by providing on-ramps to other currencies, there are merchants who accept bitcoin for goods/services, there are core developers, and finally the end users, investors and hodlers. If miners decide to damage the network through collusion, then it's unlikely the other actors will allow this for long without altering the code to mitigate the threat. What good are these ill-gotten coins if exchanges will not give them dollars for it, or users have no demand for them? Contingency plans have already been developed for this scenario and, so far, they've not been needed because the miners are as invested in the long term success in bitcoin as anyone else.