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Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners

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Re: Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners

#21

Post by jayd16 »

mike_d wrote: post #20

2,153 billionaires have more wealth than the 4.6 billion people who make up 60 percent of the planet’s population [1]. Calling 10,000 unaffiliated people "a small group" by comparison is kind of disingenuous. 1. https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10...

This is just desperate whataboutism. The inequality of life is certainly brutal but it doesn't make Bitcoin a populous utopia either. Besides that the numbers aren't equivalent. Holding stake and controlling its exchange are not the same thing, at least not for Bitcoin or democratic state controlled currencies.

Re: Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners

#22

Post by jayd16 »

ajkdhcb2 wrote: post #19

Users, miners and developers all have different powers and hold each other to account in an interesting way that few people understand so far, affecting what 'control' really means. It needs to be put in context with alternatives. Compared to the alternative of corrupt governments that have complete control to print money at will, I have no doubt that it is a extremely promising experiment. ASICs do seem to pervert s…

In what way do users have control over miners or developers? If the assumption is that corruption can overcome a democratic state, I never understood why its so crazy to suggest it can overcome developers or a mining cartel.

Re: Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners

#23

Post by ajkdhcb2 »

pcwalton wrote: post #9
latchkey wrote: post #7

> the ecosystem is still dominated by a concentration of key players, making the ecosystem susceptible to systemic risk like a 51 percent attack, where a group of miners could take control of the majority of the network. Never mind that doing so would destroy the value of the cap/opex invested. But yea... bitcoin is dead, again.

> Never mind that doing so would destroy the value of the cap/opex invested. "Bitcoin is centralized, but that's OK because the central authorities can be trusted to do the right thing" isn't exactly a compelling argument. Especially when decentralization is supposed to be one of Bitcoin's major selling points.

What do you think malicious miners can actually do?

The inevitable problem that I see is that they will be able to censor transactions, since transactions are not private. But they can't change the rules or the chain splits, so what else do you think people are trusting them not to do?

Re: Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners

#24

Post by graeme »

ofou wrote: post #13

How much does it cost the sum of all BTC mining?

Easy to calculate. Assuming an efficient mining market, yearly costs are 900 * 365 * price of bitcoin. 900 is the number of new coins mined per day.

At current market price, $60,000, bitcoin costs $19.7 billion USD.

Or, 13x Tesla’s famous investment. You’d need a Tesla sized investment every month for a year just to balance sell pressure from miners. This is without any existing investor cashing out.

And this scales linearly with market price. People often talk of BTC to $1 million.

900 * 365 * $1,000,000 = $328, 500,000

Almost $1 billion per day. The 900 will change to 450 in about 3 years after the next halving, but until then that’s the cost formula.

Madness if you ask me. Bitcoin is a heavily negative sum game. You can only take out what others put in, and miners have to take out their share as well, a negative dividend.

Re: Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners

#26

Post by tshaddox »

pcwalton wrote: post #8
sb057 wrote: post #6

Money is largely controlled by a small group of investors and central banks. [citation needed]

The difference is that traditional money is up front about that fact and doesn't use decentralization as a selling point.

Well and also the government doesn’t need to have a “selling point” because of the whole being the government thing.

Re: Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners

#27

Post by mike_d »

jayd16 wrote: post #21
mike_d wrote: post #20

2,153 billionaires have more wealth than the 4.6 billion people who make up 60 percent of the planet’s population [1]. Calling 10,000 unaffiliated people "a small group" by comparison is kind of disingenuous. 1. https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10...

This is just desperate whataboutism. The inequality of life is certainly brutal but it doesn't make Bitcoin a populous utopia either. Besides that the numbers aren't equivalent. Holding stake and controlling its exchange are not the same thing, at least not for Bitcoin or democratic state controlled currencies.

Calling out poor editorialization of the original papers findings isn't whataboutism, but thanks for playing.

Re: Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners

#28

Post by nazgulnarsil »

graeme wrote: post #24
ofou wrote: post #13

How much does it cost the sum of all BTC mining?

Easy to calculate. Assuming an efficient mining market, yearly costs are 900 * 365 * price of bitcoin. 900 is the number of new coins mined per day. At current market price, $60,000, bitcoin costs $19.7 billion USD. Or, 13x Tesla’s famous investment. You’d need a Tesla sized investment every month for a year just to balance sell pressure from miners. This is without any existing investor cashing out. And this scales…

around 500 million in USD demand flows into gold daily, what's your point?

Re: Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners

#29

Post by fastball »

graeme wrote: post #24
ofou wrote: post #13

How much does it cost the sum of all BTC mining?

Easy to calculate. Assuming an efficient mining market, yearly costs are 900 * 365 * price of bitcoin. 900 is the number of new coins mined per day. At current market price, $60,000, bitcoin costs $19.7 billion USD. Or, 13x Tesla’s famous investment. You’d need a Tesla sized investment every month for a year just to balance sell pressure from miners. This is without any existing investor cashing out. And this scales…

There are only 2,144,500 BTC left to mine.

That's 6.5 years at a 900 per day rate.

Re: Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners

#30

Post by exporectomy »

zepto wrote: post #16
JoiDegn wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I think this is not really surprising. Why would bitcoin be any different than e.g. wealth more generally.

It wouldn’t be, but you wouldn’t know that from the hype.

Really? Can you point to any hype from the last, say, 5 years that even hints at thinly spread mining or ownership? Individuals were mining on their PC in its first couple of years, but that ended long ago.
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