[davidgerard]

Others have pointed out that the web people actually use is centralising hugely, but I must note:

>Code is available on github and you can fork it. Mining centralization was the result of competition and some ambitious Chinese living next to dams. There is nothing preventing this from changing in the future.

There is: mining benefits from economies of scale. Increasing specialisation increases your efficiency in hashes per dollar spent, and this increases the barrier to entry. To compete in mining now, you need not just super-cheap power but to design your own ASICs.

Specialised hardware will always be more efficient on a specific task than general hardware. I'm frankly amazed whenever I have to point this out on HN of all places, and have had to do so repeatedly.

As for the code base: the protocol is ill-specified outside the code base. So you need to get the network to adopt your forked code, or you just have another altcoin. Again, this should be well-known if you claim to know how bitcoin actually works in practice.