Whether power can centralize in a given environment depends on "environmental factors," in this case the awareness level of individual acters, their ability to communicate, the level of education and free time (affluence), and other things. These aspects have changed notably with the advent of the Internet, and again with Bitcoin. Centralization of power to some degree is inevitable, but that degree can change whenever the underlying factors change.

I do think it is a very big problem.

And the bitcoin may some day become another  LR, which means some one or some organization will take control of it.

Then this game is over.

You could help. Get a miner that you could run. Get others to do the same. No single drop of rain thinks its responsible for the flood. Every single person who runs a miner, no matter how small, helps keep bitcoin decentralized.

move to litecoin?

this is the dynamic "tension" that exists in Bitcoin.  since there is no CEO you can call up to ask questions or try to manipulate for inside information, we find ourselves constantly evaluating the technology itself.  this is difficult b/c we are dealing something none of us has ever seen before so we find ourselves injecting our own personal biases into how we look at the situation.

i am not saying bury our heads under the sand and ignore what potentially could be centralizing factors.  we always have to live on the edge and assume bad things.  but at the same time i do not share gmaxwell's concerns as to where we are now in the evolution of they system.  i remember having a conversation with theymos way back in Jan 2011 when he predicted we'd be where we are now with a few thousand listening nodes.  now, just b/c he predicted it doesn't mean we are in a safe situation.  the point is that many of us from the early beginnings thought this would happen yet this didn't scare us into participating and helping to build Bitcoin to where it is now.  the question is, has this "centralization" weakened or in fact strengthened Bitcoin?

it's too early to say but i don't think it has weakened the system.  gmax keeps saying someone could hack into BTCGuild and cause havoc right now.  well, as Zangle has pointed out, why haven't they done it yet if it's so easy?  i think it's b/c the pool operators are all over security as much as they can be.  look how fast everyone responded to the hard fork; within minutes.  they have the capacity to cut off an attack immediately if one occurs.  gmax, i don't think you gave a full characterization of the motivations behind what happened either as i read the IRC transcripts from that event very carefully.  Eleuthria was never promised to be paid back as a quid pro quo for his cancellation of the 25 blocks he mined on 0.8.  from what i've read, he "voluntarily" did what was right for the community as a whole first and then was only "reimbursed" by Gavin from his personal faucet (or something like that) much later after the resolution of the fork.  there is a big difference in the interpretations of Eleuthria's motivation btwn this and what you implied.

i also wonder why the top 250 addresses haven't been hacked yet if there truly were a fault in the ECDSA system.  i don't buy the supposition that an attacker is waiting for a more opportune time.  there would be no point in doing so especially as the hashrate and network continues to strengthen in what is a parabolic fashion.  if anything the alarm bells should be ringing full on in NSA if their underlying motivation is to eventually destroy Bitcoin.  same thing goes for any attacker that might try to co-opt the pools.  the best time, in fact, was over a year ago when the network was much weaker.  and as for collusion btwn the pool operators?  ain't gonna happen.  it would've happened long ago.  we all know that slush, Eleuthria, and Deepbit are hard core Bitcoin supporters.  they won't do anything to damage Bitcoin and a collusion to inflate would be just the thing they would seek to avoid.  on top of that, Deepbit is known to be a lone wolf and does what he wants to do.  as i recall, he was still running some pool software based off of 0.3.* (very old) when the hard fork hit and was one of the ones left behind old 0.7 chain as the miners went off on 0.8.  why would he do that?  it's b/c he is happy with the system as it stands, ie, decentralized.  why change anything if it's working out well?

yes, this is exactly right.

they're like little cockroaches that can be scattered worldwide and hidden inside a tower.  more of a quiet revolution in money.

Four lines of code in pynode or whatever could be used to currently crash 86% of publicly reachable Bitcoin nodes— it was 100% before a month or so ago, for at least the last year. This is only a single known and fixed problem. Make the appropriate transaction first and the nodes won't come back up without upgrading their software. I could make more examples, but I'm somewhat wary of stuffing beans up my nose.

Why hasn't someone done it yet?


Because attacks aren't like random process failure. They're generally completely absent, until they're not. You cannot infer security from a lack of failure, only insecurity from the presence of them— it isn't symmetrical.

People are a bit smarter than yeast. Especially rich people, because ones without foresight won't stay rich for long. Invisible hand, you know . And the "invisible hand" is just another name for "people acting", fearmongers you are also important finger of this self-correcting hand.

Bitcoin to me is still decentralized and a free-market.

It is expected that there will be growing pains, as Gavin suggested a while back. It is expected.