On Aug 31, 2015 3:01 PM, "Justus Ranvier via bitcoin-dev" <
bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> You keep using the word "decentralized" without explaining (and most
> likely, understanding) what it means.

I believe he explained very well what he meant by decentralized, please
stop suggesting he doesn't understand his own thoughts: it is extremely
irritating.

> You say:
>
> > a system without the trust of third parties to process electronic
payments
>
> What does it mean to use a decentralized network instead of a trusted
> third party to process electronic payments? What undesirable actions can
> a trusted third party perform that a decentralized network can not
perform?

For starters, a third party (or a recuded group of miners controlling the
majority of the hashrate) can censor transactions. It doesn't matter how
benevolent that party is: it can be forced to do it by the laws of its
jurisdiction.

If you don't care about this, I suggest you start a new system without
expensive proof of work, you can replace it with block signing (it can
still be multisig). It is already coded, just fork the alpha or the
blocksigning branch in elementsProject (github).