[chii]

> users of bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies) have effectively no say in the design of the system they have to trust.

how is that any different to the existing currency system like credit cards and banking?

And users _do_ have a say in bitcoins. Namely, they can vote with their wallet (literally and figuratively).

[dragonwriter]

> how is that any different to the existing currency system

Fiat currency is governed by central banks, which are arms of government, and are accountable to the public in the same way as the issuing government. Obviously, the degree of accountability varies from government to government.

[devrandomguy]

That is a pretty loose definition of accountability. If your bank screws around, are you going fix it by voting for a different candidate in the next election? I would say that my ability to purchase and run mining hardware, at a loss if necessary, gives me more control over my altcoins than my citizenship gives me over my bank.

[dragonwriter]

> I would say that my ability to purchase and run mining hardware, at a loss if necessary, gives me more control over my altcoins than my citizenship gives me over my bank.

It's roughly similar to buying shares in a publicly-traded bank, which you can do as well as electing candidates for public office to whom the central bank, which is the entity making monetary policy decisions, is accountable.

So it gives you more relative power with altcoins only to the extent that those with more wealth are relatively uninterested in the altcoins in question compared to traditional banking; were a digital currency to succeed beyond a small niche, that would change and you would find yourself as drowned out by moneyed interests as you are in traditional banking on that avenue of leverage, and without the other avenues of accountability that exist with the governance of fiat currencies.

[chii]

> It's roughly similar to buying shares in a publicly-traded bank

i dont believe that even owning a bank could you directly control monetary policy or procedures that the gov't legislates. You'd have to own either the majority of all banks, or own the gov't yourself (i.e., dictatorship), and even then, it's a hardsell.

[arethuza]

Except for the Eurozone where the ECB doesn't appear to really act as an arm of anyone's government.

[dragonwriter]

ECB is an arm of the EU (a government, but not a nation-state) accountable, as I understand it, through the European Parliament primarily and secondarily through the Council; and it is also accountable to the people of Eurozone countries through the accountability processes of their individual central banks, since the national central bank chiefs are governors of the ECB.

[ceejayoz]

Brexit demonstrates an available route to expressing disapproval of the ECB's actions.

[arethuza]

The UK wasn't in the Eurozone - and I've been reading Yanis Varoufakis's books about his time as the finance minister of Greece and I've been fairly shocked at how fundamentally undemocratic (not to say unreasonable) a lot of EU institutions and the likes of the IMF are.

And I say that as someone who voted Remain in the Brexit referendum (note that Varoufakis actually campaigned on the Remain side in the UK).

[ceejayoz]

The Eurozone nations have EU exits available to them, too.

[marxidad]

Banks are regulated by democratic governments.