It's a network with hundreds of thousands of nodes. Think of it like votes. If someone wanted to modify Bitcoin and add 5 million bitcoins to the supply, it would be a pretty simple code change. BUT, you'd have to convince everyone else running the nodes that they should update to use this new version of bitcoin. Unless the majority of the Bitcoin network agreed to the change, you'd just be forking Bitcoin to a new different coin. If no one is using it, the value would be nothing.
You say think of votes....the only thing that comes to mind when you say that is corruption.
I will admit I dont know much about bitcoin...how did it come to be? Was it one guy that created and then it just caught on?
Like with voting machines, I think the more convoluted a process is, the easier it is to manipulate.
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