Is the Bitcoin network an oligarchy? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is the Bitcoin network an oligarchy?

#31

Post by hapnin » Sat, Jul 07, 2018, 1:20 AM UTC

Of course only small communities have a majority of btc. Too many people - geeks included - spent too many years believing the fud being broadcast about Bitcoin while others were collecting btc. I've seen the blistering scorn from some here on HN over the years.

When I first ran across Bitcoin in 2010, I thought it was a scam but was intrigued by the tech. After studying it for about a month, I realised it wasn't a scam (though scamsters abound in cryptocurrencies, as in all things money) and went around to my friends in the tech community in my city to show it to them. They know me to be literate in networks and cryptography but only one person in the ten or twelve I approached was equally interested. The rest poopooed Bitcoin, some outright laughing me out of their offices.

Institutional thinking is what kept a lot of smart people from even looking at Bitcoin early on. The findings in this study shouldn't be surprising. In five years, should the internet still be functioning, Bitcoin will be more spread out than it is now.

Re: Is the Bitcoin network an oligarchy?

#32

Post by craigc » Sat, Jul 07, 2018, 1:24 AM UTC

wjnqx wrote: post #29

craigc wrote: post #27

I am well aware that most people on Hacker News hate Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies so a lot of these types of studies and articles that are negative end up making their way to the top. It is strange that this study was from 2017-2018 and yet they only considered data from 2009-2013. Would be nice if there was an explanation as to why. One thing I wanted to point out is this seems to be presented to shine a negative li…

To be fair, stock in Morgan Stanley is not marketed as "decentralized."

Bitcoin is not marketed as anything. There is no company and there are no marketing or sales people. That is part of the beauty of it.

The decentralized claim refers to a decentralized network where the miners and nodes connected to the network are decentralized and no single entity controls 51% of the network (if they did it would collapse). Ownership of coins is not the same as hashing power.

Nowhere do people claim that the coins themselves are decentralized.

Re: Is the Bitcoin network an oligarchy?

#33

Post by darawk » Sat, Jul 07, 2018, 1:38 AM UTC

garmaine wrote: post #16

strulovich wrote: post #2

2009-2013 is a long time ago, so maybe the title should be “Was the Bitcoin network an oligarchy?”

Unfortunately the answer is still yes, just a different composition of oligarchs.

That exact fact makes it not an oligarchy.

Re: Is the Bitcoin network an oligarchy?

#34

Post by UncleEntity » Sat, Jul 07, 2018, 1:50 AM UTC

I'm going to totally guess (having only read the article abstract) and say the circles they are observing are in large part due to the exchanges.

So the exchanges are the oligarchs?

Re: Is the Bitcoin network an oligarchy?

#35

Post by fru2013 » Sat, Jul 07, 2018, 2:06 AM UTC

siruncledrew wrote: post #22

Honest question: Is there an etherscan.io for bitcoin to figure out what the largest token holding addresses are? If possible to figure out who the addresses belonged to, then the biggest coin holders could be known.

https://arewedecentralizedyet.com/

Re: Is the Bitcoin network an oligarchy?

#36

Post by dnomad » Sat, Jul 07, 2018, 2:06 AM UTC

craigc wrote: post #32

wjnqx wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, stock in Morgan Stanley is not marketed as "decentralized."

Bitcoin is not marketed as anything. There is no company and there are no marketing or sales people. That is part of the beauty of it. The decentralized claim refers to a decentralized network where the miners and nodes connected to the network are decentralized and no single entity controls 51% of the network (if they did it would collapse). Ownership of coins is not the same as hashing power. Nowhere do people clai…

This is not true.

Bitcoin was heavily marketed as a currency. It failed at this.

Bitcoin was heavily marketed as decentralized where no single entity owns 51% of the network. In fact Bitmain likely already does or soon will control 51% of the network [1].

The remarkable thing here is that despite these clear, observable failures... Bitcoin will go on. The true believers will continue to HODL and while shorts may pile on in the absence of fundamental economic data there's little reason to buy or sell. The price now is purely a popularity contest.

[1] https://bitcoinist.com/bitmain-51-percent-bitcoin-hashrate/

Re: Is the Bitcoin network an oligarchy?

#37

Post by neffy » Sat, Jul 07, 2018, 2:08 AM UTC

craigc wrote: post #32

wjnqx wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, stock in Morgan Stanley is not marketed as "decentralized."

Bitcoin is not marketed as anything. There is no company and there are no marketing or sales people. That is part of the beauty of it. The decentralized claim refers to a decentralized network where the miners and nodes connected to the network are decentralized and no single entity controls 51% of the network (if they did it would collapse). Ownership of coins is not the same as hashing power. Nowhere do people clai…

I would really beg to differ on that, based on the sheer number of ads I´ve seen over the years on reddit for people to write blogs praising bitcoin, to say nothing of the blatant pump and dump schemes you can find on the dark net.

At least some of the people who got in early, seem to know how to spend money on advertising.

Re: Is the Bitcoin network an oligarchy?

#38

Post by deepnotderp » Sat, Jul 07, 2018, 2:09 AM UTC

HN 2015: Bitcoin is bullshit, don't waste your money on it.

HN 2018: people who got in early in bitcoin have more of it, thus it's bad.

Re: Is the Bitcoin network an oligarchy?

#39

Post by craigc » Sat, Jul 07, 2018, 2:14 AM UTC

dnomad wrote: post #36

craigc wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is not marketed as anything. There is no company and there are no marketing or sales people. That is part of the beauty of it. The decentralized claim refers to a decentralized network where the miners and nodes connected to the network are decentralized and no single entity controls 51% of the network (if they did it would collapse). Ownership of coins is not the same as hashing power. Nowhere do people clai…

This is not true. Bitcoin was heavily marketed as a currency. It failed at this. Bitcoin was heavily marketed as decentralized where no single entity owns 51% of the network. In fact Bitmain likely already does or soon will control 51% of the network [1]. The remarkable thing here is that despite these clear, observable failures... Bitcoin will go on. The true believers will continue to HODL and while shorts may pile…

I think you are missing my point. If Bitcoin is “marketed” as anything, it is by people who got interested in the technology, learned about it, and started to spread the word to other people.

You could say the same thing about many open source software programs or apps.

What I was saying is that there is no company behind Bitcoin that represents it or speaks for it. When you say “Bitcoin was heavily marketed” you mean that people explained it that way to others.

Re: Is the Bitcoin network an oligarchy?

#40

Post by craigc » Sat, Jul 07, 2018, 2:16 AM UTC

neffy wrote: post #37

craigc wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is not marketed as anything. There is no company and there are no marketing or sales people. That is part of the beauty of it. The decentralized claim refers to a decentralized network where the miners and nodes connected to the network are decentralized and no single entity controls 51% of the network (if they did it would collapse). Ownership of coins is not the same as hashing power. Nowhere do people clai…

I would really beg to differ on that, based on the sheer number of ads I´ve seen over the years on reddit for people to write blogs praising bitcoin, to say nothing of the blatant pump and dump schemes you can find on the dark net. At least some of the people who got in early, seem to know how to spend money on advertising.

Interesting, I would be curious to see some of these ads. Are you referring specifically to Bitcoin or other crypto currencies (many of which are flat out scams)?

That said, my point was that any “marketing” was not done by a dedicated team or company. It was done by individuals who got interested in the technology and wanted to share it with other people.