[audunw]

> is removing the need for reputation and trust

Except it doesn’t. That’s exactly what we’ve learned over the last decade. It never did either of those things. What it did is that it clouded reputation and trust just about enough to trick people into the illusion of a “trustless” system. There is no such thing. In the end you trust the coders trusted by the people who use the apps implementing the blockchain. There’s no tangible difference to trusting the coders trusted by the banks you use. Yes, with some cryptocurrencies they’re not associated directly with a centralised organisation. But that will absolutely change over time if the cryptocurrency ever becomes relevant to the big corporations of the world. Just as the WWW in practice now is controlled by Google and Apple.

The point of selling the idea that a cryptocurrency is “trustless” is to trick you into trusting it just long enough to pull off a Ponzi-scheme or rug-pull. And yes, that goes for Bitcoin too.

[sneak]

Controlling the commercial web is not the same as controlling the web.

Holding a bunch of bitcoin or mining a bunch of blocks does not allow you or anyone else to redefine bitcoin's fundamental rules.

These are incorrect statements.