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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

#281

Post by nobody9999 »

koonsolo wrote: post #227
nuerow wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 w…

>EDIT: Ok, no problem then, Winklevoss twins think the US dollar is a reliable store of value. Great article they wrote about that!

Just to clarify, I didn't read the article in question, nor do I care what those folks think about anything.

I merely provided you with information about English usage that seemed to have eluded you. Again, you're welcome.

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

#282

Post by m0zg »

anonporridge wrote: post #96
arcticbull wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is it expends unbelievable quantities of resources pretending otherwise.

Where are people pretending that bitcoin will fix wealth inequality?

As an asset not really subject to inflation (AKA tax on the poor), it could be helpful for those of moderate means to protect themselves against losing what little they have.

I've experienced hyperinflation first hand some 25 years ago - it's not fun. I protected myself somewhat by buying (and then gradually selling) dollars, but that won't work if the dollar starts circling down the shitter, which it might.

Going into foreign currencies is also not ideal because they are not legal tender, so you'll have to exit into your local currency, and to protect _themselves_ against inflation the currency exchanges pretty dramatically increase the spread, so you lose some money converting back and forth. BTC is not legal tender either, but it could be used "under the table" in lieu of cash if shit hits the fan, much like silver, gold, or ammo.

With a modicum of lawmaking it could also be used for payments between companies, which in hyper-inflationary economy based on fiat currencies make inflation even worse, because there's a latency between the time the company gets supplies and the time it ships product, and the company must be able to afford the new batch of supplies, so they eyeball what the prices will be, say, 2 weeks from now and set their prices accordingly (and sandbag on top of that as well). Do this 10 times through the supply chain and you get eye watering prices for final product on the shelves. BTC would fix that. It did not exist at the time, so people would barter instead, but that's pretty horrible, since you don't always have the stuff the other side needs, so you end up with horrendous chains of exchanges which fall through from time to time, causing a cascade of problems.

TL;DR: BTC could come in handy when printer goes brrrr.

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

#283

Post by cblconfederate »

peskysamurai wrote: post #207
SergeAx wrote: post #195

> top 10,000 individual Bitcoin investors control roughly one third of the cryptocurrency in circulation > top 1,000 individual investors accounted for about three million of the 8.5 million Bitcoins controlled by the top 10,000 investors I beleive same stats are available for stock markets. I wonder what numbers are there.

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...

Which means that a representative sample of current (unequal) society is invested in bitcoin.

Which means that bitcoin is not fringe and should be taken seriously

Which means that bitcoin investors are not basement dwellers selling tulips, but your average fellow citizen.

So please no more bitcoin investor bashing

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

#284

Post by xiphias2 »

nobody9999 wrote: post #270
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.)

>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.) Actually, that's exactly what Xi (or the CCP, if you like) did[0] a month ago. [0] https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-central-bank-vows-...

And I’m extremely happy about it. Xi had the power to concentrate all Bitcoin miners in China and use it for a 50% attack (even though there would have been a huge uproar about it), it was the weakest point of Bitcoin. The US president doesn’t have that authority / power, states have powers as well, and there are other institutions that provide a counterbalance.

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

#285

Post by ianai »

nuerow wrote: post #141
Hermel wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

I often wonder about this. How liquid are these coins? Ie if it’s a currency then converting every single coin to cash should result in no change to the conversion rate. If exchanging x coin to cash will net about the going rate, but ax results in dramatically less than a*conversion rate then it’s not a currency. If the difference is even further diminished it challenges the notion of it as a store of value.

Edit-This would also provide people who want to cash a large amount of crypto to cash an incentive to prop up the value during their transaction period.

Edit2-latest I can find, it was about $6.6 trillion dollars worth of daily forex activity back in 2019. Also note, this is cited as the biggest market in the world by trading volume. https://www.bis.org/statistics/rpfx19_fx.htm

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

#286

Post by chalst »

csomar wrote: post #253
nuerow wrote: post #141

Earlier 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.

So what you are basically saying is that the stock market is not really a free market; and has arbitrary restrictions to make everything looks stable and legit. Okay.

There is something like a global market in stock markets: capital trade gravitates to the "fittest" stock markets. And in the long term the fittest stock markets are without exceptions ones with transparency rules and rules protecting minority investors, where these rules are backed up by national laws that give these rules teeth.

There's a reason for this: while in the short term dropping these rules gives flexibility, lower costs and the promise of new sources of profit, inevitably if unruly capital markets get big, small investors get screwed and a lot of investor wealth gets destroyed. We've seen this pattern a lot over the last two centuries.

Simplistic free market ideology has a lot to answer for: successful markets need well-functioning institutions.

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

#287

Post by dannyw »

arcatek wrote: post #275
tinus_hn wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, if they start to play with different rules their mined blocks will be refused by everyone on the network and be worthless. That’s not what the issue is with concentrated mining power.

If they start to play with different rules, one of the hard fork remaining branches (or both) will be refused by everyone on the network and be worthless. There's no telling whether it'd be the "hijacked" branch or the original one - assuming they control 50%+ of the mining power, there's a decent argument that the remaining miners would follow their lead if only to stay on the largest branch.

What miners do is irrelevant: the code known as bitcoin, with a 21M hard cap, simply will reject any block that creates more than its allowed bitcoins as invalid, the same way it rejects a random string of bytes as invalid.

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

#288

Post by nuerow »

piva00 wrote: post #254
koonsolo wrote: post #186

Earlier 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.

> For the last 75 years, the U.S. dollar has also been a reliable store of value. This is a result of its comparatively good management by the Federal Reserve and the strength, resilience, and reputation of the U.S. economy. In fact, it is the most widely held fiat currency in the world and recognized as the global reserve currency, denominating and settling the majority of international trade. Basically their whole…

> They aren't "fighting the man", they are trying to convince others to jump onto the bandwagon which they are heavily invested in to make a profit.

I would also add that the Winklevoss Capital article actually reads like a self-serving plea to get third parties to validate their own investment, instead of a selfless heads-up.

The Winklevoss twins already have a few billion dollars worth of BTC, and in their opinion piece they are very clear in the way they argud that as BTC supply is restricted by design then any increase in demand ensures an increase in price. Consequently, the only thing they need to do to ensure that they get richer from BTC is to pump it up and sit on their early mover's ass.

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

#289

Post by fsflover »

worrycue wrote: post #271
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.

They can but generally they don’t allow inflation to exceed 3% - ideally keeping it with 1-3% - as the destruction of the currency is not worth it long term.

So with USD, you trust that people care about long term consequences over short-term profit? With bitcoin, you trust math.

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

#290

Post by leppr »

corobo wrote: post #148
anonporridge wrote: post #108

Earlier 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…

That would have been the case if crypto had been used as a currency instead of as any other stock asset You can't use it anywhere as currency! I guess you can buy weed with it online, but that's about it

I pay for my VPS, VPN, and Netflix subscriptions with BTC. I bought my camera, and various other gadgets with BTC at BicCamera in Japan. I sold my VR kit for BTC. I save and spend my RAI anywhere that accepts Visa with an Eidoo debit card.
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