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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

#241

Post by qeternity »

blatchcorn wrote: post #223
qeternity wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> the problem is not missing regulation, the problem is the rich decide on regulation and this regulation helps keep them rich.

Ok - so the rich have decided on regulations which are not the ones that are best for everyone. So…missing regulations? By definition, if we have the wrong regulations, then we’re missing the correct ones.

Capital gains taxes are lower for a specific reason: the capital that was initially invested was already taxed. These laws benefit average people much more than they do the rich on a relative basis. Go model out a retirement portfolio that is taxed/compounded at ordinary rates vs capital gains rates.

What people really want is higher capital gains for rich people which is fine, but you fundamentally misunderstand why they’re lower in the first place, which is double taxation.

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

#242

Post by qeternity »

krageon wrote: post #232
qeternity wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please elaborate. Which regulations do you think are missing?

I'm not rich, so my opinion isn't relevant. That's the problem, not any specific detail (which your question is focusing on).

Self fulfilling prophecy there.

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

#243

Post by [deleted] »

krageon wrote: post #209
qeternity wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, we know who those 50 are, and the wealth they own is in highly regulated markets. We know what they own, how much they own, when they buy/sell. We also dictate that they cannot trade on insider info and must generally play fair. Say all you want about the efficacy of the above measures, they are absolutely not perfect. But it's completely different to bitcoin where none of the above applies, and often the opposi…

> highly regulated Regulated by them, so in practice not all that regulated

[deleted]

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

#244

Post by 2pEXgD0fZ5cF »

sb057 wrote: post #6

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

I'd say the main takeaway is that the narrative of "crypto currencies decentralize money and transfer the power and control from banks/rich people to the people" is just complete bullsh*.

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

#245

Post by JumpCrisscross »

nuerow wrote: post #176
EdwardDiego wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> . The US dollar is the world reserve currency because the United States is the best in the world at deploying destructive power, Orrrrr.... because its value is backed by the world's largest economy?

> Orrrrr.... because its value is backed by the world's largest economy? There's also the fact that oil is quoted in US dollars, and about 65 countries, about a third of all the countries in the world, peg their currency to the US dollar[1]. [1] https://www.investopedia.com/articles/forex/040915/countries...

> oil is quoted in US dollars

As a former trader, this claim cracks me up. It makes the times I quoted crude contracts in euros and loonies and yen seem so subversive…

The truth is, until recently, dollars were easy to transfer. The Fed started moving money electronically in 1915; by 1918, a national wire system was established [1]. Between the USSR and U.S., only one embraced free movement of capital. As a result, when Lufthansa bought Airbus jets, they settled in dollars, and trades quoted in pounds would be settled in New York in dollars. That has since changed; so has how oil is traded.

The last time the petrodollar hypothesis was remotely true was in the early 1980s.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedwire

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

#246

Post by danbruc »

SergeAx wrote: post #233
danbruc wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I believe that currently Bitcoin is much more investment vehicle than payment matter.

In which case I don't care. If you offer 10% of your company and keep 90%, the allocation is heavily skewed, but whatever, it's your company and before you offered 10% in stocks it was skewed even heavier, you owned 100%. But if the government would give a third of all the money that will ever be printed to a small group of people, that does not sound like a currency I would want to adopt.

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

#247

Post by tinus_hn »

FabHK wrote: post #235
YossarianFrPrez wrote: post #102

Earlier 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…

> just 0.1% (about 50 miners) control close to 50% of mining capacity So, the much-vaunted "mathematical guarantee" that only 21m BTC will ever be mined depends on the benevolence of those 50 miners not to fiddle with the code base. Makes perfect sense to trust those honourable individuals more than the central bankers in control of fiat. /s

How are these miner going to fiddle with the code on your computer?

That is not the issue caused by this concentration of mining power.

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

#248

Post by [deleted] »

danbruc wrote: post #220
peskysamurai wrote: post #207

Earlier 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.

[deleted]

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

#249

Post by JumpCrisscross »

olalonde wrote: post #236

That's a pretty misleading headline. Miners and investors do not control Bitcoin regardless of their hash power or amount of BTC owned. 50+ miners is also well enough to prevent any 51% attack. Finally, the ownership estimate is flawed given that it relies on blockchain analysis. The existence and popularity of custodial wallets (e.g. exchanges) makes this sort of analysis extremely unreliable.

> 50+ miners is also well enough to prevent any 51% attack

That number sounds trivial for even a very wealthy private individual to get them each in a vulnerable position.

For example, how many are in China or the U.S.’s reach? Because that means literally two people, Xi and POTUS, could round them up and effect a change. (Not saying they would. But a damning vulnerability for a libertarian ideal.)

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

#250

Post by fsflover »

FabHK wrote: post #237
fsflover wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government can print USD for themselves, effectively stealing money from everyone through inflation. With bitcoin, even "small group controlling 90%" can't do that.

Sure they can. There's a line in the code halving the codebase mining reward every 210,000 blocks. Just comment that line out (or replace halving with doubling). Done.

It would bring bitcoin price down to zero. Also, I'm not sure that miners can do that without everyone else agreeing.
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