[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.