Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

techspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

401–410 of 486 posts

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

#401

Post by bart_spoon »

argentinian wrote: post #336
nuerow wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The government can print USD for themselves, effectively stealing money from everyone through inflation. Not quite. The only people bitten by inflation in the long run are those who stockpile cash and intend to perpetually live off capital gains without contributing anything to society. Meanwhile, the vast majority, which are either salaried employees or own businesses, see both their income and expenditures adjust…

> This is in fact one of the often ignored aspects of inflation, as well as taxes: a way to mitigate or avoid concentrations of wealth detrimental to society. As somebody living in Argentina, a country with usual double digit inflation, your argument is complete bullshit. Here the wealthy are not affected by inflation: they can save in real state, strong currencies, shares... And the same rich families stay rich for…

They are speaking of modest inflation, the 1-3% mentioned above. Obviously hyperinflation is bad. But deflation will also harm the poor just as much, while the rich are the sole benefactors.

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

#402

Post by lowdownfork »

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.

Those sound like non-arbitrary restrictions to make everything actually be stable and legit.

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

#403

Post by sam0x17 »

janandonly wrote: post #211
sam0x17 wrote: post #155

The death-knell in my opinion for true decentralization of the bitcoin network (ignoring mining for a moment) happened when the blockchain became too large for it to be practical for normal users to have the whole blockchain on their machine and operate a real node. I am sure there is some creative solution to this, perhaps an additional mining process by which old records are combined to save space (i.e. transaction…

The current BTC blockchain size is 422GB [1] so that easily fits on a single 1TB SSD. How is that "too large" ? [1] https://bitcoin.clarkmoody.com/dashboard/

Anything over 40 GB is impractical for wide-scale distribution that would create a healthy network, and really anything over 2 GB is problematic and will have a much narrower reach.

This is evidenced by the fact that almost no one these days actually runs a local wallet. The number of logical nodes has decreased while the number of wallets has dramatically increased.

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

#404

Post by chalst »

qeternity wrote: post #241
blatchcorn wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 in…

Capital gains taxation is not double taxation: it is taxation only on the increase in value of assets.

CGT generally has the same rate as income tax: the reason why the rich are better off earning through capital increases than wages is that they get to decide when the capital gains happens, which means that their wealth managers and tax accountants can optimise their affairs to minimise tax.

The fundamental misunderstanding is yours.

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

#405

Post by tinus_hn »

jstanley wrote: post #389
tinus_hn wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difficulty adjusts automatically. Bitcoin wouldn’t have come this far if it were that fragile.

It doesn't adjust immediately though. If a large majority of miner suddenly disappears then the block mining rate does indeed drop until the next difficulty adjustment.

So if 50% of the mining power left the next block would take on average about 20 minutes. Where it routinely takes about that long, because that’s just the way statistics work. A non issue.

Here’s a graph of the time blocks took over the last three years:

https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-confirmationtim...

Look at the peaks and try to remember the issues that resulted in.

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

#406

Post by bart_spoon »

argentinian wrote: post #343
nuerow wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As somebody living in Argentina, a country with usual double digit inflation, your argument is complete bullshit. The only bullshit I spot is this idea to use Argentina, or Zimbabwe or Venezuela, as the posterchild of responsible monetary and economic policies, when they are actually the result of gross and perpetual mismanagement. https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-argentina-faces-an-economic... Meanwhile most of th…

I agree, the inflation here is the effect of the perpetual and gross mismanagement. What about your idea regarding inflation as a way to avoid concentrations of wealth? (the idea I quoted and I replied to). That one is unsustainable.

There is a distinction between inflation and hyperinflation. An analogy would be someone saying that a modest reduction in caloric intake is healthy for most people, and you responding that it isn't, anorexics die without enough calories.

When inflation is present, but less than 3%, there isn't an incentive to hoard it, because simply sticking it in a bank account means it will be slightly less valuable a year from now than it is today. For poor people, who are spending most of their money on necessities, it won't mean much (unless their employers don't match incomes with inflation, which IS a problem). But for rich people, it offers a powerful incentive to spend today, or to invest their money with hopes that the returns will offset the inflation. A rich person's money flowing through the economy, be it through exchange for goods, or through investment, is far more valuable to society than it is sitting under their mattress.

Debts are also easier to pay off. With inflation, your debt of $X is easier to pay off in the future than it is today. Poor people struggle to pay off debt more than rich people, and governments are more likely to rack up debts to pay for public works and infrastructure, knowing the bill will be easier to pay down the line with inflation.

Compare that to deflation. With deflation, your money gets more valuable over time, not because you invested it in something useful, but simply because it exists. Now if you are rich, why do anything at all with your money other than stick it under a mattress? Why spend it, or take the risks that come with investment, when you are guaranteed it will be worth more than you have now in the future? Poor people don't have this luxury. They have to spend money on their needs today, which means they are missing out on even more value tomorrow.

Deflation is just as toxic to the economy, and especially poor people, as hyperinflation.

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

#407

Post by bart_spoon »

robocat wrote: post #161

“The 50 richest Americans now hold almost as much wealth as half of the U.S.” - Bloomberg - https://archive.vn/25Bz4 Is there any reason to think bitcoin is that much different from ownership ratios of other financial assets?

'Bitcoin isn't any worse than other financial assets' doesn't give anyone a reason to use Bitcoin. As you point out, it appears to struggle with many of the same issues as other assets, with a bunch of extra baggage on top of it.

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

#408

Post by bart_spoon »

spiorf wrote: post #133
nuerow wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. No, not really. At all. You're trying to make it sound like everyone is just an anarchist activist trying to fight the power, when in reality it's just people scrambling to make a quick buck. Let's be real and put it in perspective: do you feel that peop…

Motivation of participants is irrelevant. Bitcoin is working because its participants are greedy and behave as such.

> Bitcoin is working

It isn't working though. It isn't practically useful for anything. They only people getting value out of bitcoin are doing so by converting it back to fiat. You can't buy virtually anything with Bitcoin.

If Bitcoin was meant to be a pyramid scheme where you get rich by convincing others to prop it up long enough for you to cash out, it is working. As a currency, its a total failure.

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

#409

Post by zepto »

exporectomy wrote: post #30
zepto wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That’s a straw man.

The hype is all about how it’s distributed and nobody controls it, when in practice it’s not much different from conventional money except that those with power are even more hidden.

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

#410

Post by cwkoss »

qeternity wrote: post #198
robocat wrote: post #161

“The 50 richest Americans now hold almost as much wealth as half of the U.S.” - Bloomberg - https://archive.vn/25Bz4 Is there any reason to think bitcoin is that much different from ownership ratios of other financial assets?

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…

Between international holdings and shell companies, I'd be impressed if anyone could generate a top 50 list that was more than 60% accurate.

We can generate top 50 lists of the more-regulated wealth, but there is also significant wealth hiding with little accountability.

Post reply on HN