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Richest Bitcoin Addresses

bitcoinrichlist.com

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Re: Richest Bitcoin Addresses

#191

Post by Frozenlock »

cromwellian wrote: post #181
chrisacky wrote: post #23

Can you imagine how many of these BTCs are actually lost forever. Look at this address: http://bitcoinrichlist.com/address/198aMn6ZYAczwrE5NvNTUMyJ5... The last time this address was touched was 2009, and has an even 8,000 coins (back in the day, this only amounted to 320 mined blocks. You could do that in what?... a few hours/half days?[1]) The owner probably ran his system for a few hours, collected 8000 coins, tho…

This seems like a fundamental flaw in the currency that makes it's deflationary properties worse. Let's say bitcoin is to last a century, over time, there will be gradual losses to all kinds of problems, like hardware failures, owner errors, etc that cause lost of wallets, and thus, coins, forever. There's no way to replace these, so over time, the total number of coins it not only limited, but after the last bitcoin…

I fail to see how you jump to this conclusion.

Suppose that all bitcoins are lost except one.

Well, we just use fractions of the one remaining. While the protocol currently supports 8 decimals, there isn't any hard limit; we can continue dividing forever as needed.

Re: Richest Bitcoin Addresses

#192

Post by pfisch »

fat0wl wrote: post #180
pfisch wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is what everyone does for all equities. It is called the market capitalization, you probably hear it called market cap usually though. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_capitalization

a proxy for the public opinion of a company's net worth vs. current trading price of something with no intrinsic value

Ok, this was a weird segue. I thought we were talking about market capitalization and whether or not people use it outside of bitcoins, which they all do for basically everything.

However, non-voting common stock equities that do not grant dividends basically have no "intrinsic value" either I guess. It is just a proxy for the public opinion of the net worth of the underlying asset, similar to bitcoins.

I think this kind of "intrinsic value" line of reasoning isn't a very strong argument in general though because mostly the value of commodities is essentially based on the value people assign it via free market and psychological principles.

You sort of don't seem like you know much about econ/finance so I think it is strange that you are so outspoken about bitcoins.

BTC could still collapse, and it very well may. Even if we put the potential innovative benefits of btc aside though, things like this are more like cults vs religions. A cult is a cult until it has enough followers at which point it becomes a religion.

Cults and religions have a similar scam potential which is what it seems like you are feeling, however at this point I would say btc is reaching or possibly above Scientology levels of belief/followers. In fact the market cap of btc is possibly more than the market cap of Scientology right now. If btc is going to fall apart as a pyramid scheme it will likely be the largest to ever fall.

However btc is more than a pyramid scheme because it does offer some real benefits over the existing financial systems. The online blackmarket does require a currency similar to btc to operate. Right now sending money across borders is difficult and expensive. Right now buying things over the internet basically must be done with credit cards which has a lot of fees attached. Right now there is no real way to quickly send large sums of money to people without similar fees and specific hours of operation. You also have to go to a bank and deal with a lot of bullshit.

Whether btc will be the solution to these problems I am not sure, but it is a very big deal that it already has so many users/followers. That is the hardest part of changing things, getting large scale adoption.

Re: Richest Bitcoin Addresses

#193

Post by drchiu »

I don't see btc as being able to retain its hundreds of dollars in exchange currency value. Imagine you have 1 mil usd worth of btc, and then imagine trying to dump it all on the open market. You would probably find a widening gap in the bid-ask as your position is liquidated. In other words, there isn't likely enough buyers.

Someone is probably manipulating the supply and demand to serve their own purposes. You might as well day trade something more liquid.

Re: Richest Bitcoin Addresses

#194

Post by PeterisP »

skriticos2 wrote: post #54
taigeair wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No way to recover the Bitcoins?

No. If you delete the wallet, the contained Bitcoins make poof . You basically delete the private key and won't be able to sign a transaction with it ever.

Hmm, so that means that someone who solved the crypto problem (say, NSA) could simply take over [presumably] abandoned wallets, which would be nearly undetectable compared to other uses of such attacks, but could still have a huge impact on Bitcoin ecosystem simply due to the large mass of such wallets.

Re: Richest Bitcoin Addresses

#195

Post by eonil »

I really don't understand how BTC make better world. I mean, it monopolized by a few people from FIRST. And the monopoly will sustain forever.

If someone else make another BTC?

Re: Richest Bitcoin Addresses

#196

Post by PeterisP »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #36
shocks wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but try cashing out $85 million. You'll have a hard time.

Cashing out $85 million of pretty much anything would require some special efforts.

Cashing out $85 million of pretty much any sale (shares, bonds, forex, commodities) is trivial, you simply do it if you have the goods.

The whole idea of Bitcoin transactions requiring special efforts to cash out is a sign of weak liquidity/weak infrastructure. If some bitcoin-exchange-house is limited to cashing out $10k/day, then how can you practically distinguish it from a Ponzi scheme that claims to have money but actually doesn't?

Re: Richest Bitcoin Addresses

#197

Post by Ellipsis753 »

cromwellian wrote: post #181
chrisacky wrote: post #23

Can you imagine how many of these BTCs are actually lost forever. Look at this address: http://bitcoinrichlist.com/address/198aMn6ZYAczwrE5NvNTUMyJ5... The last time this address was touched was 2009, and has an even 8,000 coins (back in the day, this only amounted to 320 mined blocks. You could do that in what?... a few hours/half days?[1]) The owner probably ran his system for a few hours, collected 8000 coins, tho…

This seems like a fundamental flaw in the currency that makes it's deflationary properties worse. Let's say bitcoin is to last a century, over time, there will be gradual losses to all kinds of problems, like hardware failures, owner errors, etc that cause lost of wallets, and thus, coins, forever. There's no way to replace these, so over time, the total number of coins it not only limited, but after the last bitcoin…

In theory there's no limit to how much a bitcoin can be divided. Currently 0.00000001BTC is the smallest amount possible. But if there's only 0.00001 bitcoins left in the world then the program can be easily updated to allow 0.00000000000000000001BTC to be sent and used. Bitcoins are a bit like gold, you can just keep dividing a bar up smaller and smaller into dust. Of course if all bitcoins in the world vanished after the last block (with a reward) had been mined then that would be the end of bitcoins but that seems pretty unlikely right now.

Re: Richest Bitcoin Addresses

#198

Post by PeterisP »

csomar wrote: post #115

Interesting as BitCoin proponents complain about Bankers greed and how 1% own a huge percentage of the wealth. It seems that a really small percentage of addresses owns most of the BitCoin wealth. And these addresses might be owned by even less people.

It should be expected that any changes/disturbances in the financial system (including large scale adoption of Bitcoin) will involve some losses for the common person, while a few people will find a way to make a huge profit from exploiting everyone else in this change process.

Just as it has always happened in history.

Re: Richest Bitcoin Addresses

#199

Post by jafaku »

cromwellian wrote: post #181
chrisacky wrote: post #23

Can you imagine how many of these BTCs are actually lost forever. Look at this address: http://bitcoinrichlist.com/address/198aMn6ZYAczwrE5NvNTUMyJ5... The last time this address was touched was 2009, and has an even 8,000 coins (back in the day, this only amounted to 320 mined blocks. You could do that in what?... a few hours/half days?[1]) The owner probably ran his system for a few hours, collected 8000 coins, tho…

This seems like a fundamental flaw in the currency that makes it's deflationary properties worse. Let's say bitcoin is to last a century, over time, there will be gradual losses to all kinds of problems, like hardware failures, owner errors, etc that cause lost of wallets, and thus, coins, forever. There's no way to replace these, so over time, the total number of coins it not only limited, but after the last bitcoin…

Oh great, another genius who has found a "fundamental flaw" in Bitcoin.

sigh

Re: Richest Bitcoin Addresses

#200

Post by oleganza »

cromwellian wrote: post #181
chrisacky wrote: post #23

Can you imagine how many of these BTCs are actually lost forever. Look at this address: http://bitcoinrichlist.com/address/198aMn6ZYAczwrE5NvNTUMyJ5... The last time this address was touched was 2009, and has an even 8,000 coins (back in the day, this only amounted to 320 mined blocks. You could do that in what?... a few hours/half days?[1]) The owner probably ran his system for a few hours, collected 8000 coins, tho…

This seems like a fundamental flaw in the currency that makes it's deflationary properties worse. Let's say bitcoin is to last a century, over time, there will be gradual losses to all kinds of problems, like hardware failures, owner errors, etc that cause lost of wallets, and thus, coins, forever. There's no way to replace these, so over time, the total number of coins it not only limited, but after the last bitcoin…

Creating a new Bitcoin that is incompatible with the old would NOT massively destroy value in the old system. Look at Litecoin and other forks. Bitcoin holders collectively add value to Bitcoin (by simply willing to hold them and willing to pay slightly below the market price to add to their holdings), there is no single person who can change its fate. Even big rich guy's wealth depends on many poorer people to accept his BTC for the service they provide him with.

To switch to Bitcoin 2.0 all holders need to see no future in Bitcoin 1 and panic-sell into Bitcoin 2. If this happens, it's another huge bet (like going from USD to BTC), but the prerequisite is to Bitcoin 1 really be in trouble. Divisibility problem is not a fatal flaw, it can be patched, worked around, or counted in as an extra cost.

On the other hand, USD has tons of fatal flaws: it's being printed like crazy and it needs to be stored in banks that easily freeze, tax and censor accounts. Essentially, USD is not even an asset. It's always a chain of promises by bankers and presidents, who brake them constantly in various ways. Compared to USD, Bitcoin is infinitely better, so people are willing to make a bet that Bitcoin can replace USD. Imbalance like that is the requirement to start discussing a jump from BTC1 into BTC2.

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