Yesterday, at BTC Prague, Tether’s CEO, Paolo Ardoino, stated that full decentralization belongs only to Bitcoin.
He stated:
“Bitcoin is about certainty. It’s like a clock that keeps ticking, keeps ticking forever. When it comes to the concept of unstoppable or decentralized products — because everyone uses the term “decentralized” — there is only Bitcoin.”
He also stated that he is a big fan of the 1MB limit on Bitcoin blocks, and the fact that only one is mined every 10 minutes, because this way everyone can participate. Even in the poorest country, one can easily download a block and participate.
The reference was obviously to other blockchains, which have blocks that are also much larger and above all much faster, but in this way require the nodes to download large amounts of data in a short time, effectively excluding those who have slow Internet connections.
Summary
Bitcoin: The issue of decentralization according to the CEO of Tether
According to Ardoino, Bitcoin is the only cryptocurrency that is not truly centralized.
He said that Bitcoin is the only example of a currency governed solely by mathematics, and that it essentially cannot be modified. The other criptovalute instead have a more or less high degree of centralization.
For example, he referred to those groups of developers who meet every month to decide whether to launch a new version of the software, whether to change monetary policy, and who in fact continue to change things.
The reference is obviously to Ethereum, which unlike Bitcoin evolves (that is, changes).
The Bitcoin protocol is practically unchangeable, except rarely and with the consensus of the community. Instead, the Ethereum protocol changes relatively often, even several times a year, and the decision on what to change, and how, is made by a relatively small group of developers, and not by the entire user community.
Moreover, it is evident and undeniable that the Bitcoin protocol changes only rarely (on average once every about 4 years), that the changes are often just additions and not real modifications, and above all that its monetary policy has never been changed. At present, it is reasonable to imagine that no one in the world is truly capable of changing it.
Instead, for example, the Ethereum protocol changes almost every year, sometimes even with profound modifications such as the transition from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake, and with a monetary policy that has already been changed several times in its nine years of existence.
If you add to this that such decisions are made by a relatively small group of developers who meet every month, the picture that emerges is certainly one of a greater degree of centralization compared to Bitcoin.
Tether and Ethereum
Tether, for example, is a traditional centralized company that issues tokens on Ethereum and on other blockchains.
To tell the truth, the first USDT tokens issued by Tether in 2014 were issued on Omni, a Bitcoin sidechain, but at that time the Ethereum blockchain didn’t even exist, as it was created the following year.
In Tether know well what centralization is, just as any traditional company with shareholders and a CEO does.
Ethereum is actually a project carried out by a foundation, the Ethereum Foundation to be precise, which however is in all respects a centralized organization with a single executive director (Aya Miyaguchi).
Instead, behind Bitcoin there isn’t even a single foundation, given that there are several centralized entities working on Bitcoin but none that actually have power over its protocol. For example, the same website bitcoin.org, often mistakenly considered as the official website of Bitcoin because it was originally created by Satoshi Nakamoto himself, actually now belongs to an independent group of contributors that does not represent Bitcoin itself.
In other words, in some ways, foundations like the Ethereum Foundation seem more similar to centralized entities like Tether than to the unorganized community of Bitcoin.
Of course, there are also several Bitcoin foundations, but there is no “official” one.
The altcoin
The speech is still different for many altcoin.
For example, behind various altcoins there are actually real companies, as in the case of USDT and Tether.
The difference lies in the fact that while it is Tether, and only Tether, that issues the USDT tokens, cryptocurrencies like BNB, SOL, XRP, TON, or ADA are actually issued by a not entirely centralized network, even though behind BSC, SOlana, Toncoin, and Cardano there are real companies that effectively manage the crypto project.
There are therefore different degrees of centralization, ranging from the maximum, represented for example by Tether, to the minimum, probably represented only by Bitcoin where it is close to zero.
There are crypto projects, such as Ethereum, that have a higher degree of centralization compared to Bitcoin, but lower than others, and there are others still, such as XRP, that have a significantly higher degree of centralization, although lower than Tether.
The highest degree of decentralization is probably only found in Bitcoin itself, behind which there is no single entity, subject, or organization that has any kind of centralized power through which it can manage its development or arbitrarily decide its evolution.
At most, there are large holders of BTC who can influence its price in the medium-short term by selling them.
