As long as there is information asymmetry, there will be exploitation. The party with information (power) will use it to its advantage at the detriment of the uninformed party.

One way to prevent this is to make all information available to all parties. But that's impossible. The blockchain has attempted to tackle the information asymmetry problem by making all transactions public - if you have the wallet address, you can see every transaction made. The smart contract is also on-chain, so you can read it too.

But is that enough? On current evidence, no.

Not everyone has the same level of knowledge to make sense of the information that's available to them. The random investor is not sophisticated enough to gather, analyze and make decisions based on information provided.

Also, despite publicly available information, market participants have different motives which are not apparent.

And since the human nature is to acquire, they will all attempt to gain an undue advantage.

Despite it's transparency, crypto isn't fool proof. The human element and the layer of anonymity complicate things, making exploitation likely. Chaos is nature. Entropy is part of our lives. As time goes on, we tend towards disorder.

So, how do we make sense of this?

Well, sadly, some order has to be enforced to keep chaos at bay and protect market participants.

While decentralization sells the fantasy of complete freedom, in truth, its application is in self-regulation.

But for that to work, you need to have all parties on the same level, with equal access to all possible information.

This is impossible because we generate new information faster than the speed of light, so we can't all keep up and there's room for exploitation.

Where does this lead us?

For the random crypto buyer, speculation is the game. It’s simply a way to mutiply capital without the guilt that comes with regular gambling - so we call it volatile investments and have exchanges (centralized exchanges like Binance or dexes like Sushiswap and Uniswap (Ethereum), Spookyswap (Fantom), and Pancakeswap (Binance chain) that serve as platforms for trade or marketplaces. And then there is the whole story about non-fungible tokens (NFT) which are cool pictures purported to mean something.

So, if we agree that this is a marketplace and we are investors, then surely an argument can be made for order and control. And a case for protecting participants - especially the average Joe who is unsophisticated and just looking to grow his investment.

Centralization. Oops, bad word!

Okay, maybe not the "total government control and KYC thing," but some sort of neutral party who is powerful enough to prevent malicious acts among participants and can punish those who err.

This is the only way to protect all parties, limiting their gains or losses to the result of their personal decisions and market forces which is a risk borne equally by all participants.