Is the Bitcoin network an oligarchy?
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Re: Is the Bitcoin network an oligarchy?
#22009-2013 is a long time ago, so maybe the title should be “Was the Bitcoin network an oligarchy?”
Re: Is the Bitcoin network an oligarchy?
#3How do these users have political control like an oligarch would have?
Re: Is the Bitcoin network an oligarchy?
#4Oligarchy means controlled by the few. Anyone with a Raspberry PI, decent network bandwidth, and a few terabytes hard drive can be a node and start validating and relaying transactions. Besides, Bitcoin is not proof of stake, so having a lot of bitcoin does not give someone more control of the network. So no, Bitcoin is not an oligarchy. All of these big addresses likely belong to exchanges like CoinBase, etc.
Re: Is the Bitcoin network an oligarchy?
#5How do these users have political control like an oligarch would have?
This is a good question, and I'm afraid of the answer
Re: Is the Bitcoin network an oligarchy?
#6>Leonardo Ermann from the National Commission for Atomic Energy in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and colleagues from the University of Toulouse, France, have examined the structure of the Bitcoin-owner community by looking at the transactions of this cryptocurrency between 2009 and 2013.
The study is 5 years old?
Guessing back then it was libertarians and drug dealers.
Also isnt this true of any early adoptor? The first smartphones were a small group too.
The bigger question is- Why is this news?
This seems to be agenda driven rather than a discovery. Who benefits from pushing anti-bitcoin ideas? These are not accidents, these studies are expensive to run. Why was this study completed?
Re: Is the Bitcoin network an oligarchy?
#7How do these users have political control like an oligarch would have?
All around bad article. How did it get to top of HN?
Re: Is the Bitcoin network an oligarchy?
#8With the emergence of electronic id cards in several countries (e.g. Estonia, Germany), there is the real possibility of equally distributing currency to card holders, even depending on properties such as current residence or birth date (dystopian version: names or only people with specific biometrics: eye color, heights or specific facial features). It is possible to create a signature scheme that guarantees privacy while avoiding double spending. One limitation to this is that organisations wanting to use signatures (at least in my country) must register with the government as a service provider, which might be a point of failure.
Re: Is the Bitcoin network an oligarchy?
#9How do these users have political control like an oligarch would have?
Any entity that controls more than 51% of network capability (i.e. owns and operates a lot of expensive hardware) can, in theory, begin making fradulent transactions called "double spends".
Any common user of the network that is unfortunate enough to get caught up in this scheme would lose their money. And the long term value of the network would most likely plummet, but in 2013 it didn't for some odd reason :)
Re: Is the Bitcoin network an oligarchy?
#10When bitcoin appeared, everybody was saying that "only retarded people would `invest` in such an obvious scam. you would be better to blow your money in Vegas, at least you'll get a free drink". Now the same people say "it's not fair that some got to buy it at such cheap valuations".