Here’s why decentralization is still the way to go

When people talk about decentralization, some folks just don’t get it until they see it in action. Recently, there was this token called World Liberty Financial Price Token (WLFI), which is supposedly backed by the Trump family. It seems like some big hitters got in early before it launched on exchanges. Just yesterday, Justin Sun went off on Twitter about his token worth $500 million getting frozen by the team. There are claims that he’s known for manipulating prices and dumping coins. Honestly, I can’t recall a situation where tokens were supposed to be released but ended up getting locked again without any sort of agreement. These are supposed to be unlocked tokens. This shows everyone investing in projects that being too centralized can lead to major issues. This is just one of the many problems that come with centralization.

This is the kind of thing that happens when you buy shit coins that are yet in exchange or the team barely release few of the coins and you can only sell that 10% given to you quarterly, that is crap and nonsense that people should avoid. Of course it is not the first time this type of cheating is happening in the crypto space. Although, I don't know of this story but it is not new non strange. During ICO days, many investors were cheated and scammed this way. Some launchpad too have gone this way with so much hope on investors but never fulfilled. The advise is invest in btc and if you want to invest in altcoins then buy BNB, sol or eth. Don't buy coins that are yet to be listed or coins you can't have in your non custodial wallet.

Decentralization means you're not under a central authority to regulate, monitor and decide over your financial status, also, you have decided to have your private information to yourself and and don't have to risk any data leakage or censorship from the central authorities in charge of the money you have, while as for those using a centralized exchange, they make no difference to using a commercial bank.

The WLFI situation and Justin Sun’s frozen tokens really highlights the risks of centralization. It’s a good reminder to research thoroughly and prefer decentralized options to avoid such surprises.

I personally always choose decentralization but in this case the WLFI token smart contract have blacklist function that works like stablecoin blacklist function, it's centralized control at smart contract level. Apparently besides the fact that they froze justin sun's money it also blacklisted compromised addresses to help prevent scammer from stealing money so it's double edged sword. In this case I think WLFI team is playing safe to obey the regulation, undoubtedly there are some sketchy address participating on the WLFI presale. Whether it's good or not definitely it's up to the public to judge. Personally most of coin that I bought never have blacklisting mechanism because most of them are L1 coins. L1 coin so far is the closest to decentralized currency.

Token were frozen? It should not be a surprised because it is no longer a news that centralisation automatically makes crypto become just like ordinary bank money. With their single point of control method for instance in centralised exchanges, custodial wallets, or even CBDCs, one entity has the power to freeze, reverse, or block transactions just like regular banks can. We all know this undermines the idea of censorship resistance. How about the custodial risk where holding assets on centralised platforms means you don’t truly own them? “Not your keys, not your coins” which is a total joke! The custodian controls withdrawals, access, and security and that's no different from a bank holding your deposits. I will continue sounding it in the ears of those who care to remind them that many centralised services enforce Know-Your-Customer checks, transaction monitoring, and reporting to regulators. That mirrors traditional finance where every transaction can be tracked, taxed, or restricted. I could go on and on because the disadvantages are too much for a seemingly innovative initiative and therefore is likely to prove to be disaster soon! Enough said.

You're right, but in addition decentralized can also be a form of not been controlled by anyone but been independent of it's own, anything you have or get it's you that have access to it no second party that will interfere on it or have access to it, like, if it's money as you said, it's you that have access to it, so decentralized is all about privacy.

If he is not part of the team or affiliated to them, to me he has not done anything bad. He simply has the money to risk to manipulate the price and what the team could have done was to kick him out of the game using money they raised to counter him instead of taking the action that seems authoritative to me and will not make people have confidence to hold the token. This is why I prefer DeFi projects in which no individual can do this. Most markets are manipulated by people with the funds so he committed no offense.

When you’re going all in for centralization, you should know that at some point you risk losing everything or terms of agreement will be changed without your consent. This is what happens when you solely depends on centralization more than you should try and have your own custody. When it comes to influencers that are related to the government, it makes it even more worse these days to invest in their crypto projects. I remember how Trump coin came and the hype moved it up, then few days we saw another coin from the name of his wife which end up being worthless and those that invested heavily in it loss their money. Such tokens needs skepticism before one should invest into them and one should be willing to accept the risk that comes with it as it’s a 50/50 case.

We as investors need to learn from these experiences of the bigger ones. We might be following their footsteps and when things gone wrong, it's best for us to do something about ourselves and investments. Like these freezing has been a possible thing to be done to these big investors and so, it's also possible for the smaller ones like us. That's why I agree that decentralization is still the best choice for all of us, being invested to crypto and mainly to Bitcoin is still the best thing that everyone can opt to and not just to ride to the hype these familiar names does.

In Justin sun's case, I don't think he is at fault either. His tokens are locked but he was offering his community the opportunity for them to give them their tokens to sell at the high price then so that he can profit off his locked bags while giving them around 20% return for their service. WLFI team found out and locked those tokens hence the drama. I knew it was going to result to that because two captains cannot be on the same ship. Tokens just defile the saying "not your key, not your crypto". You can have the keys but whatever team can still freeze your crypto.

Just found out about that and if that's true. Well I bet the blacklisting of such activity is written on WLFI's T&C.On the other hand, tokens were always centralized. From governance system which allow team to pass proposal by their own since they owned >80% of premint to the fact that some token didn't adhere by the protocol which ensure decentralization. It's a token after all, just a contract code that lives on a blockchain, not a genuine coin with miners or validator that secure its decentralization.

Projects where the team controls most of their tokens have the possibility for major scams. Here they cheat in such a way that even after seeing it, there is no scope to say anything. Sometimes the team releases some coins into the market and increases the price, and when the opportunity increases, they release large number of coins into the market and take the profit by a large dump. This type of fraud has happened before and is still happening today. The same situation will happen with Trump's World Liberty financial token. After creating a hype in the market, when the price increases, the coins will be brought into the market and profits will be withdrawn, and ordinary investors will lose money. That is why it is better to invest in bitcoin and some top altcoins.

"Decentralization" is merely a buzz word these days used by project founders and developers to help attract the masses. Basically, no crypto project is as decentralized and censorship-resistant as it claims to be. Only a small few are. WLFI is no exception. And investors are starting to notice. Eventually, everyone will move to BTC, ditching altcoins in the process. All in an effort to obtain true freedom and self-sovereignty. What WLFI did, is the same thing any bank or centralized financial institution would do. If your transactions are flagged as "suspicious" or "high-risk", your account will be simply frozen or funds seized altogether. Now Justin Sun has to "buy" his way towards getting his coins unlocked. Otherwise, he'd risk losing everything in an instant. At least, WLFI doesn't have its own blockchain network (AFAIK). Would you imagine if it did? It could've been worse. That's why nothing can "beat" Bitcoin in terms of decentralization and censorship-resistance. And I hope it stays that way forever.

Now people get to see a big example and a big lesson. For someone as big and as experienced as Justin Sun, This is being done to him talk more of you and I the common man. People have to understand there’s nothing decentralised about all this altcoins no matter the hype and who’s backing it, they’re only using it to attract people.

The beautiful thing about decentralization is you are safe from government's monitoring here and there and from unnecessary breach of your privacy or government sitting there watching every move you make with your own money, helping you to decide if your transaction is allowed or not or even freezing your account because they feel like you have violated one rule which you are not even aware of unlike in the decentralization world where nobody can censor you or block you just because of where you live or what they have perceived you are doing which is based on their guesswork.

The term "decentralization" has become more of a buzz word these days. Altcoin projects use it in an attempt to repeat Bitcoin's success. But they ultimately fail due to bad execution. Centralized coins, although still trading on the market, have been a constant victim of outages and hacks. Their design brings the "single point of failure" Satoshi Nakamoto meant to avoid in the first place. Some people are noticing the scam of "decentralization" among altcoin projects, especially when developers or founders have been able to successfully freeze funds at will. Trump's "World Liberty Financial" project is a good example of this. That's why nothing can beat Bitcoin. Censorship-resistance + Decentralization is what makes Blockchain different from the existing monetary system. When you take that away, you get nothing more than Fiat 2.0. Hopefully, there will be a resurgence in truly-decentralized altcoins sometime in the future.

In the past, manipulation was not possible to a great extent, but in the last 2-3 years, it has become easy to manipulate with a tweet or an on-chain movement. We have seen many examples of this. For example, Elon Musk would tweet, and a meme coin would be created about it, leading to a pump and dump. The same thing was happening with CZ, and it continued like this for a while. In the recent pump-and-dump schemes, it is important to note that Binance Wallet was involved in selling and repurchasing. Unfortunately, regulation is necessary because it is a market open to manipulation. If this manipulation is prevented, it could continue in a decentralised manner.

Not paying attention to decentralization can be very expensive indeed, and this is just another example of it. There is not much to say about it, besides wondering why would someone even invest so much money in a single project which is related to such controversial person like Trump. Also, he did not seem to mention it, but one also needs to consider that there could be a reason for the entity behind this token to freeze such a huge amount of money in their assets, there could be some foul play, money laundering, criminal track record or anything, otherwise the issuer of the token is being criminally unfair for their actions against this holder.

I thought regulations were supposed to make the market more centralized? They help stifle manipulation, but concentrates the power into the government. Because crypto is inherently decentralized (sort of), anyone can freely create or launch their own coin/token and put it on the market for trading. We may not like the huge amount of garbage that comes as a result. But that's the way crypto works. Limiting or restricting the ability to create coins/tokens at will or even manipulate their prices, will remove the core values of freedom crypto was built upon. At least, that's what I think. I concur with the OP that decentralization remains the best option. Even if most people don't care about it. Why do you think Bitcoin has been a success until today? Because of its decentralized and censorship-resistant qualities. Take that away from it, and you'll get nothing more than another centralized "Fiat" currency. Just my two sats.