At the end of Tuesday's article, a reader left a comment discussing the following issue:

"The original intention of cryptocurrencies, which stemmed from Bitcoin brought by Satoshi Nakamoto, was to achieve decentralization and avoid the manipulation risks posed by centralized governments and markets. However, as the industry has evolved, the entire crypto sector has begun to accept regulation from the centralized world. Personally, I feel this is fundamentally contrary to Satoshi Nakamoto's decentralization philosophy…"

This issue will be an eternal topic in the crypto ecosystem, past, present, and future.

To share perspectives around this issue, I believe a very important starting point is: how should we understand "decentralization"?

Different interpretations of "decentralization" by different people can lead to entirely different understandings of Bitcoin and the crypto ecosystem. Such differing interpretations often result in significant disagreements and intense debates among individuals on this issue.

Here, I tend to believe that there is no right or wrong viewpoint, but rather, it depends on the starting point from which we understand "decentralization."

My logic is quite primitive, which is to understand "decentralization" from Satoshi Nakamoto's white paper—because this is his most complete, thorough, authoritative, and verifiable idea.

In Satoshi Nakamoto's white paper, he did not discuss Bitcoin's price manipulation, nor did he mention Bitcoin's holding manipulation or regulatory issues; he only focused on a very basic technical question:

Is there a technological means to enable people to transfer money over the internet without relying on a centralized institution? Or in other words, is there a technological means to solve the single point of failure problem that is difficult to address in the existing internet architecture?

Everything he discussed revolved around this technical question.

So, in my understanding, the "decentralization" that Satoshi Nakamoto referred to is a very pure technical issue.

Therefore, at any time when commenting on whether Bitcoin is still "decentralized," I do not know what standards others use, but my primary standard will always be the judgment criteria described by Satoshi in the white paper.

Returning to reality, if we still use Satoshi's pure technical standards from the white paper to evaluate today's Bitcoin:

Does it rely on a centralized institution (such as a bank, international organization, or company) to facilitate transfers? Or is there any centralized institution or organization that, if it ceases to exist/collapses/goes down, would prevent transfers within the Bitcoin network from being completed?

I believe the answer is very clear:

It does not rely.

If any organization or centralized institution collapses, the Bitcoin network can still operate normally.

We can even say that even if a third world war is occurring on Earth and the internet is down, fortunately, we still have Bitcoin nodes operating in space, freely roaming, so the Bitcoin network can continue to function normally.

Before Bitcoin, there was no such precedent or network in human society.

So from this perspective, Bitcoin's "decentralization" can be said to have succeeded and is continuously being reinforced.

However, in reality (including in the crypto ecosystem), the vast majority of participants often do not understand "decentralization" in the way Satoshi Nakamoto defined it in the white paper.

Many people's understanding of "decentralization" has been extended to include many sensitive thoughts and logics.

In my view, this is very normal.

This is a natural result of every technological advancement in human history—humans will rethink and redefine philosophy, politics, and humanities.

If we were to share around these "extended" ideas, it would not be something that could be clarified in just a few articles.

Here, I will only share one of my core viewpoints.

Long-time readers know that I have said this more than once:

The future of the crypto ecosystem lies in Ethereum.

However, in previous articles, whenever I shared this viewpoint, my focus was on aspects related to price, value, and economic models, which are more economically oriented.

In fact, I have another viewpoint that I have never mentioned in previous articles:

What I refer to as "the future of the crypto ecosystem lies in Ethereum" not only pertains to economic value but also to people's thoughts on the extension of "decentralization."

However, since this viewpoint I have never mentioned before is more radical, I have not shared it in detail.

After all, many of my readers find it difficult to accept my statement that "Bitcoin is not digital gold at least for now, but a special type of digital collectible," let alone my even more radical viewpoint.

Take it slow, no need to rush.

Let's allow time to unfold and verify step by step.

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