[stevejones]

IRC and email are federated systems, they have always been that way. The nature of the federation is different, email systems talk to each other, IRC systems don't. The issue with bitcoin is purely that it solves a problem no-one has, we don't need cryptographic gold. Consensus changes happen to DNS and email all the time, because they solve actual problems and have been made flexible enough to handle change.

The task is not to make a magic free-floating decentralised system, but one which is resistant to getting central points lopped off or controlled. For that look at bittorrent, or even DNS. Whenever the US government has flexed it's muscle, trying to assert control over DNS, other countries have threatened to make their own DNS root and the US has backed down. Anyone can run a DNS root, but that alone doesn't fix the problem, it takes people actually using that fact to prevent centralisation. Bitcoin is stuck in a place where the vast majority of users have to agree to a change before change can be made.