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Is the Bitcoin network an oligarchy?

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Re: Is the Bitcoin network an oligarchy?

#41

Post by dnomad »

craigc wrote: post #39
dnomad wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mea…

You might read the Bitcoin paper written by the inventor of Bitcoin. There is absolutely no doubt that Bitcoin was originally and has always been marketed as a currency. I can see why you might want to deny this but, please, it's insulting to try and rewrite history when the facts are widely known.

Re: Is the Bitcoin network an oligarchy?

#42

Post by craigc »

dnomad wrote: post #41
craigc wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mea…

You might read the Bitcoin paper written by the inventor of Bitcoin. There is absolutely no doubt that Bitcoin was originally and has always been marketed as a currency. I can see why you might want to deny this but, please, it's insulting to try and rewrite history when the facts are widely known.

I have read it multiple times, in fact. I am not denying that it was originally intended as a peer to peer currency, but saying it was marketed as that when the creator was publishing an academic paper of sorts and releasing it for free into the world is a bit of a stretch. Marketing implies that there is a customer you are trying to sell a product or service to.

He or she did not care about getting rich since the original coins have never actually been touched. The creator did not even know that people would start to exchange existing currencies for Bitcoin at the time the paper was published or that it would catch on at all.

I am not trying to rewrite history. I was only stating that Bitcoin is not a company. There are no big corporations controlling it. There is no sales team. There is no marketing team. Anyone who promotes it is doing it out of their own free will.

Re: Is the Bitcoin network an oligarchy?

#43

Post by geomark »

darawk wrote: post #33
garmaine wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That exact fact makes it not an oligarchy.

It's still a small group in control, so still an oligarchy. But the fact that there is a constant rotation of oligarchs makes it a little different, like maybe you could be the next oligarch.

Re: Is the Bitcoin network an oligarchy?

#44

Post by rboyd »

craigc wrote: post #40
neffy wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nah, it was just idiots that were marketing "let me show you how to get rich with bitcoin" courses, etc. I always wonder how much HN hates crypto just because it's important to have a good story for sleeping on crypto.

Re: Is the Bitcoin network an oligarchy?

#45

Post by craigc »

rboyd wrote: post #44
craigc wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nah, it was just idiots that were marketing "let me show you how to get rich with bitcoin" courses, etc. I always wonder how much HN hates crypto just because it's important to have a good story for sleeping on crypto.

I do not really understand it. Posts about other technologies on here lead to civilized, intelligent conversations, but for whatever reason, any post about crypto or Bitcoin just leads to attacks and arguments.

The reason I find it more inexplicable is that when you think about just the idea of peer to peer programmable finances/money without requiring any trusted intermediary that is a huge idea. In my opinion, it is almost as revolutionary as the internet itself.

I guess we will see how things progress over the next 10-20 years.

Re: Is the Bitcoin network an oligarchy?

#46

Post by firsttimeuser »

firsttimeuser wrote: post #28
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://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-addresses....

https://btc.com/stats/rich-list

Re: Is the Bitcoin network an oligarchy?

#48

Post by tuesdayrain »

21 wrote: post #10

When 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".

Probably not the same people.

Re: Is the Bitcoin network an oligarchy?

#49

Post by drdeca »

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…

By "marketed as" people just mean "described as by people promoting it"? Or possibly "described as by people promoting it who have a financial incentive to do so".

This seems obvious to me? Saying "bitcoin isn't marketed because it isn't run by any particular company" in response to people saying it is "marketed" in certain ways seems like missing what was clearly meant to be communicated.

Re: Is the Bitcoin network an oligarchy?

#50

Post by joering2 »

craigc wrote: post #42
dnomad wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might read the Bitcoin paper written by the inventor of Bitcoin. There is absolutely no doubt that Bitcoin was originally and has always been marketed as a currency. I can see why you might want to deny this but, please, it's insulting to try and rewrite history when the facts are widely known.

I have read it multiple times, in fact. I am not denying that it was originally intended as a peer to peer currency, but saying it was marketed as that when the creator was publishing an academic paper of sorts and releasing it for free into the world is a bit of a stretch. Marketing implies that there is a customer you are trying to sell a product or service to. He or she did not care about getting rich since the or…

Correction: doing it out of greed, more than free will.
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