Earlier quoted context omitted.
> highly regulated Regulated by them, so in practice not all that regulated
Please elaborate. Which regulations do you think are missing?
Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners
221–230 of 486 posts
Re: Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
There seems to be a weird perception that decentralization means that there won't be inequality of power in the system. That's not what it means. Decentralization simply means that there is no central power that can make unilateral decisions about the system like a government can with its currency. This explicit decentralization of power is what people are excited about, because it means any change to the system requ…
You nailed it. Bitcoin is not some kind of panacea that will make everyone rich. It's just money that cannot be fucked with by central bankers, governments, dictators or anyone else for that matter. That's it.
Well, unless you can exert sufficient influence on the system itself from outside. Ask Tor how the whole "anonymity is guaranteed by decentralization" thing works out when individual actors control the majority of the nodes involved. To say nothing about rubber-hose cryptanalysis or simply banning crypto currencies an seizing assets.
It also doesn't really matter if the person fucking with a resource is a state or an extremely rich individual or a company, except for ideological reasons. Diamonds (even natural ones) are fairly abundant and largely worthless but that doesn't stop De Beers from selling them at ridiculously inflated prices because they hold enough of a monopoly to be able to create artificial scarcity (and spend a lot of money on marketing to distinguish their "product" from the cheaper but higher quality artificial alternative).
That crypto currencies aren't subject to the power hierarchies of the institutions you name in the exact same way as state-backed currencies doesn't mean they are not impacted by real world power hierarchies at all -- nor at least less so. Literally the only thing guaranteeing the "value" of anything is (state) violence. The reason you can charge ten bucks for a fancy cup of coffee is that if I drink without paying, you can call the cops.
Re: Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
> highly regulated Regulated by them, so in practice not all that regulated
Please elaborate. Which regulations do you think are missing?
I am not who you are asking but I want to chime in: the problem is not missing regulation, the problem is the rich decide on regulation and this regulation helps keep them rich.
Specific examples: UK capital gains tax is lower than income taxes. This means if you are born in to a wealthy family and given a £1MM index fund, you will pay less yearly tax on your capital gains while chilling at home all day than someone with a £50K job working hard and contributing to society
Re: Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
> For Tesla, one single shareholder holds 17% of the whole company. If said investor abused his leverage to manipulate the stock value to dump his holding on unwitting buyers prior to making it tank, he would be facing a prison sentence. In BTC that would be just another uneventful day.
The problem is that an investor that holds 17% has leverage. In Bitcoin, having a certain percentage of the supply means nothing really, and you can abuse a leverage that doesn't exist. It's more likely that the developers has leverage that could be abused, but then their own holdings would tank, so unlikely to happen.
Unless the goal is to attract independent / free market types, then after they invest, destroy BTC, thus reducing the economic might of the free thinking class...
Re: Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners
#225Here’s a good counter-thesis:
https://mobile.twitter.com/n3ocortex/status/1356673243734822...
Re: Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners
#226How was, or is, this avoidable even now, and in existing monetary systems? One caveat is that though there are a few major actors, no one can be sure where they are physically. It is detached from political jurisdictions, which is the unique goal of Bitcoin.
Re: Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the Winklevoss Capital article you quoted even praise the US dollar as "a reliable store of value" Haha, you must be blind. Nowhere in the article did they say that. I quote: "we believe there are fundamental problems with gold, oil, and the U.S. dollar as stores of value going forward". Then they go on to explain how the dollar is mismanaged. Have fun living in your own world.
> Haha, you must be blind. Nowhere in the article did they say that. Second paragraph. Hard to miss by anyone who clicked on the link. Be my guest and check it out. > I quote: "we believe there are fundamental problems with gold, oil, and the U.S. dollar as stores of value going forward". Somehow you managed to skip just enough of the text to glance over the part I quoted and you claimed it doesn't exist. That isn't…
"For the last 75 years, the U.S. dollar has also been a reliable store of value."
I'm not a native English speaker, but "has been" is a past tense. Then they explain why these times have indeed passed.
If you cannot interpret past, present and future, then there is no point in us discussing this further.
EDIT: Ok, no problem then, Winklevoss twins think the US dollar is a reliable store of value. Great article they wrote about that!
Re: Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
According to the article below, it seems like there’s a similar level of inequality in the stock market as well. https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2021/10/ownership-inequalit...
But are stocks the the appropriate thing to compare Bitcoin with? Why stocks and not money supply? And do you pick a national stock market or money supply or do you sum across the globe? But maybe it also does not really matter and all those things have similar distributions.
It probably just means that stock owners bought bitcoins.
Re: Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
> magical pseudo-currency that solves all problems and unexplainably makes everyone richer and richer That's not what's exciting about bitcoin. What's exciting is that it is the first digital, global money that isn't protected by the proof of violence of the state. The US dollar is the world reserve currency because the United States is the best in the world at deploying destructive power, and the British and French…
I really would like to see a defense of Bitcoin that doesn't rest on the assumption that I want to live in Galt's Gulch.
Re: Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
"but the dream of having a magical pseudo-currency that solves all problems and unexplainably makes everyone richer and richer " I never heard that claim from crypto supporters, only from critics.
You need to read more of their subreddits then.
That's for he mislead, the normies, the grifters and shitcoiners. Those of us in the small minority "controlling Bitcoin" read stuff like this: https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-d...