I find it bizarre that this comment is upvoted since it's so deeply ignorant of the evidence/history. I'll cite my sources down below but I want to emphasize that I really thought the HackerNews community would be more informed about bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. Maybe this was a false assumption on my part but...it's disappointing nonetheless.

"At that stage, most users should start running client-only software and only the specialist server farms keep running full network nodes, kind of like how the usenet network has consolidated." [1, emphasis added]

"The current system where every user is a network node is not the intended configuration for large scale. That would be like every Usenet user runs their own NNTP server. The design supports letting users just be users. The more burden it is to run a node, the fewer nodes there will be. Those few nodes will be big server farms." [2, emphasis added]

To clarify, these are excerpts of satoshi's comment that were in a thread. They've been kept through the Nakamoto Institute website (i.e. my source is a secondary source). I chose this and not the bitcointalk threads because it's Satoshi's writings only.

A few points to note, 'full network nodes' are nodes that do both mining and validating of wallets; not just validating like the Lightning Network or SPV clients. First quote talks about 'like how usenet network has consolidated' which hints at knowing about centralized farming. Second quote is more direct to rebuff the above opinion, fairly directly.

> the biggest thing Satoshi didn't know (or didn't foresee) was that the idea of "one CPU, one vote" was flawed, a victim of its own success, because of mining ASICS.

He knew. In the beginning, it wasn't truly one CPU, one vote. If you had a higher-end single cpu, you definitely got more than one vote since most people don't have the average CPU (it's high-end for a reason). Satoshi clearly had this in mind. Early adopters were awarded more bitcoins with their average CPUs then, than high-end ASICs today. This was all thought out in the economic sense and security sense, attempting to balance both.

>A consequence of that is that bitcoin and related cryptocurrencies really aren't as decentralized as claimed.

I feel this opinion is based on the crypto-twitter opinions. Or based on many 'bitcoin maximalists'. Basically, a narrow-minded group that isn't really seeking to inform the public, they just want to 'moon' and meme.

But looking at this critique from a different perspective, it's extremely decentralized in it's mining function. How many people have mined bitcoins? Throughout time? Has it always been one central authority (Satoshi, Gavin, etc)? Or have people from all stripes been able to? Yes. Many regular working people could buy an ASIC and mine today. That's fairly decentralized, no FED needed to inject a new QE.

Will you make a profit? That's not the question. Decentralization mining exists but at what cost?

I could also unpack the idea that buying coins in 2009 would be considered a decentralization of the currency, since there would be more people (not less/centralized) holding the currency, therefore more dispersed.

But let's return back to Satoshi to conclude. Satoshi thought about CPUs, FPGAs, GPUs, and ASICs. Look at his writings. Look at the OG code. Look at the whitepaper. He created an architecture that creates cryptographic trust through a proof of work function. He knew about Moore's Law and incorporated it. The specifics were quoted above but this conclusion is to bring everything together that bitcoin was thoroughly designed in such a way that thought through ten, twenty years in the future, based on the best science available then. My final thought is that Satoshi 'didn't think about______' is an opinion based on ignorance or it's something outside of the scope of Satoshi's intent with bitcoin. He has many posts that explain enough to settle most debates. Please read more, do less criticizing and when you're informed, let's have a mature discussion.

[1] - https://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/posts/bitcointalk/105/...

[2] - https://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/posts/bitcointalk/287/...

P.S. I'm not a Satoshi worshipper. I've done extensive research and came to my own conclusions. You can debate my auxiliary points but without reading Satoshi's writings, you're missing the context of the actual debate.