how many tullips did the famous families own?
Also: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/there-never-was-real-...
no famous families owned tullips?
Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners
121–130 of 486 posts
Re: Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners
#122How much does it cost the sum of all BTC mining?
For context: The Cost of Bitcoin Mining Has Never Really Increased
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2020.5654...
Re: Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
Users have the money. If there's a fork, users can value one side higher than the other and then developers and miners will follow the money.
> Users have the money. If there's a fork, users can value one side higher than the other and then developers and miners will follow the money. As the article shows, BTC's user side of the equation is actually controlled by a small group of investors. Thus, users like you and me have absolutely zero control or influence over the value of BTC, and are vulnerable to the manipulation done by this small group of investor…
Bitcoin aligns incentives. It's in the interest of those with lots of bitcoin to have everyone else use the same fork, so their coins have value. This discourages bad behaviour from whales.
Let's not forget that bitcoin's monetary policy is fixed. Everyone earns coins the same way as everyone else: by mining or buying. No printing of new money for example. Central banks are far bigger whales than bitcoin's given their ability to print new money on a whim.
Re: Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners
#124what does control mean here?
they can print more bitcoins into existence? they can fake a transaction? they can undo a transaction? they can steal from other wallets?
Re: Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting quotes from the first section of the paper: "We first document that 90% of transaction volume on the Bitcoin blockchain is not tied to economically meaningful activities but is the byproduct of the Bitcoin protocol design as well as the preference of many participants for anonymity." "We show that the Bitcoin mining capacity is highly concentrated and has been for the last five years. The top 10% of miner…
The top 1000 investors hold 15% of the supply? That’s not “highly centralized” if you compare to the stock market. For Tesla, one single shareholder holds 17% of the whole company.
There seem to be a lot of similarities between crypto and growth stocks that are held by founders with > 15% ownership. Similar to early stage investors who have essentially zero cost basis, early BTC holders have zero cost basis when BTC was pennies each versus late stage current investors paying in at $60,000 for each BTC. For early BTC holders its easy to diamond hand.
There are a lot of similarities for sure between Tesla stock and BTC in terms of price versus traditional measures of value (based on current income and enterprise value), not to mention the volatility.
There is not as much price discovery when a handful of owners own more than 50% of stock or crypto and are easily diamond handing. The price discovery is only happening on the portion that's actively trading which can distort the market price. I bet in the early days of BTC there were a lot of tricks like the Jason Fried/DHH Basecamp unicorn example[1].
As they eventually lose interest/need to pass assets to the kids, when they start unloading, there will be price drops as there were once Bill Gates started unloading MSFT stock. Part of the challenge that Steve Ballmer faced (other than lackluster leadership) was the headwinds and downward pressure created by BillG's retirement related unloading of MSFT stock.
[1] https://signalvnoise.com/posts/1941-press-release-37signals-...
Re: Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Money is largely controlled by a small group of investors and central banks. [citation needed] There are an estimated 40 trillion dollars in circulation alone. The US government debt is currently close to 30 trillion dollars. The world's richest person has an estimated value of around 180 billion dollars, less than 1% of the US debt alone. I'm talking about projected value, not cash. In contrast, it was already rep…
You need to compare the relative numbers. Bitcoin is being held by 1000x fewer people than the US dollar. If 100 people control 13% of Bitcoin, then the question is how much Dollar top 100,000 people hold.
But by design Bitcoin doesn't dilute or expand through balance sheet, so in a BTC maximalist world, those 100 people still hold roughly the same fraction, right?
Re: Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting quotes from the first section of the paper: "We first document that 90% of transaction volume on the Bitcoin blockchain is not tied to economically meaningful activities but is the byproduct of the Bitcoin protocol design as well as the preference of many participants for anonymity." "We show that the Bitcoin mining capacity is highly concentrated and has been for the last five years. The top 10% of miner…
The top 1000 investors hold 15% of the supply? That’s not “highly centralized” if you compare to the stock market. For Tesla, one single shareholder holds 17% of the whole company.
I'm sure Elon holds more than 17%?
Re: Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners
#128Soooo. . . you're saying a tiny fraction of the population controls the vast majority of the resource? You mean just like every other major resource on the planet? :)
The capped supply and heavy bias of coin emission toward initial years create a strong incentive for hoarding and pure speculative use.
I would expect much wealth concentration if the emission had been purely linear with a fixed block reward, taking MUCH longer to get down to a small yearly supply inflation (100 years to get to 1%). Such a SLOW emission would focus on the use as a currency rather than "store of value".
It likely would have made Bitcoin's environmental impact much smaller as well, without speculators pushing up the price.
Re: Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners
#129Soooo. . . you're saying a tiny fraction of the population controls the vast majority of the resource? You mean just like every other major resource on the planet? :)
> Soooo. . . you're saying a tiny fraction of the population controls the vast majority of the resource? You mean just like every other major resource on the planet? :) I understand the need to try to dismiss this problem, specially from those who have a dog in the race, but the dream of having a magical pseudo-currency that solves all problems and unexplainably makes everyone richer and richer just falls out flat if…
> a magical pseudo-currency that solves all problems and unexplainably makes everyone richer and richer
That is not what cryptocurrency enthusiasts believe.
I understand that you have to explain to yourself why others are dumber than you, even though they made crazy amounts of gains.
But maybe in the end, we just see something that you refuse to see.
Re: Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Users have the money. If there's a fork, users can value one side higher than the other and then developers and miners will follow the money. As the article shows, BTC's user side of the equation is actually controlled by a small group of investors. Thus, users like you and me have absolutely zero control or influence over the value of BTC, and are vulnerable to the manipulation done by this small group of investor…
Bitcoin aligns incentives. It's in the interest of those with lots of bitcoin to have everyone else use the same fork, so their coins have value. This discourages bad behaviour from whales. Let's not forget that bitcoin's monetary policy is fixed. Everyone earns coins the same way as everyone else: by mining or buying. No printing of new money for example. Central banks are far bigger whales than bitcoin's given thei…
> Bitcoin aligns incentives. It's in the interest of those with lots of bitcoin to have everyone else use the same fork, so their coins have value. This discourages bad behaviour from whales.
No, not really. It is in the interests of those with lots of bitcoins to sell high and buy low. This means whales stand to profit by pumping BTC's value to leave everyone else holding the bag when it's value tanks. Rinse and repeat, and fat whales get fatter. But for this scheme to work, first you need unwitting users to fall for the promise of quick and easy fortunes at arm's reach. A tale as old as time.