[JulianMorrison]

Mining is supposed to fade away in importance - it was just a way to bootstrap. And huge computing power applied to mining means that it's so much harder for a hostile entity (hello, US government) to plug in a supercomputer and steal control.

[forensic]

Right now it is trivial for a government, botnet owner, or even a sysadmin with access to several thousand machines to completely corner the bitcoin market and actually use a cartel to "steal" bitcoins from others.

Bitcoin is not controlled by a central authority. Instead it is controlled by any specific individual or group that is able to get about 30% of the computing power of the network. While this is very expensive for your average middle class person, a typical millionaire or billionaire (not to mention government) could completely dominate bitcoin overnight.

Bitcoin is NOT democratic. It's ruled by people who are wealthy in conventional currency because those are the people with access to the most computing power.

[Unseelie]

That's the case with any currency or stock..It doesn't stop IPOs.

[forensic]

the entire point of bitcoin is to be free from government control unlike normal currency