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The Bitcoin Whales: 1,000 People Who Own 40 Percent of the Market

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Re: The Bitcoin Whales: 1,000 People Who Own 40 Percent of the Market

#111

Post by lancebeet »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #52
lancebeet wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the dilemma. Nobody is forcing you to use bitcoin and it's still an incredibly small market in the grand scheme of things. The libertarian position is (generally) that government mandated fiat currency is a tool of state oppression. No such force exists when it comes to bitcoin, and if people are unhappy with the concentration of bitcoin in the hands of a small number of people, they are free to us…

What's the difference between a government manipulating a currency and a cabal of wealthy individuals manipulating a currency? Or is your problem mainly that businesses have to accept dollars?

Government currency is mandated, bitcoin isn't. If bitcoin is manipulated, people can choose not to use it. If government currency is manipulated, people have no other (legal) choice but to continue using it. This makes the two distinct to a libertarian.

Some libertarians may be more pragmatic than others. For example, some may argue that so long as a government issued fiat currency is in use (as it is today), manipulations by the government should be held to a minimum. This may be the cause of the confusion.

Re: The Bitcoin Whales: 1,000 People Who Own 40 Percent of the Market

#112

Post by beager »

mmgutz wrote: post #96

I read an interesting analogy yesterday in a poker chat of all places. The guy basically said, let's put bitcoin to buy a coffee litmus test. If I were to buy a cup of coffee in the current frenzy, I would be at the cashier waiting a day for the transaction to go through and when it does go through the fee for transaction would be greater than cost of the coffee. If that is true, how is bitcoin better? Would that tra…

The narrative has shifted as the dynamics and value have shifted. It’s more like gold now. You wouldn’t pay for coffee with gold.

Re: The Bitcoin Whales: 1,000 People Who Own 40 Percent of the Market

#113

Post by EGreg »

testvox wrote: post #82
sevensor wrote: post #28

It's interesting to see how this is playing out. Libertarians have long argued that government-issued fiat currency is a tool of state oppression. Now we have a real-world experiment demonstrating on a grand scale what happens when you create a currency by consensual fiat. I'd be interested to hear what libertarians think about this: Is Bitcoin truly the kind of currency libertarians have been advocating? Have I misc…

If they are good stewards of the money and invest it well then they will keep it and we all gain from their investments. If not they lose it and someone, hopefully more responsible will have it. In the long run the right people (those who can make profitable investments) will have control over capital.

How do you know being a good steward of that money doesn't mean just hoarding it and doing nothing?

Bitcoin encourages hoarding while it's going up. Who knows where this runaway phenomenon will lead.

At least the dollars and euros exchanged for it don't go anywhere. Bitcoin has fast become a store of value and redistribution of the world's wealth to early adopters, as any new fixed money supply would be.

Re: The Bitcoin Whales: 1,000 People Who Own 40 Percent of the Market

#114

Post by specialp »

avar wrote: post #85
pc86 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you but this is an apples to oranges (or perhaps apples to 747s) comparison. The top 1000 holders of gold don't have anywhere near 40% of the market. Not to mention that 40% of the market for BTC is only a few million coins.

> The top 1000 holders of gold > don't have anywhere near 40% > of the market. You're right, they have a lot more than that. Total world gold reserves are around 30K tons. The US alone has 8K tons, Germany 3K, IMF 3K, Italy 2.5K etc. So just the to 2 holders of Gold have almost 40% of the market, and the top 10 have 80%. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_reserve

I guess you didn't read the article you posted as evidence. In that article it says all the gold ever mined is 187,200 tons. Percentage of reserves != percentage of gold market. That would have the USA at ~5% and that is a country of 300+ million people. This is a lot different than 1000 individuals.

Re: The Bitcoin Whales: 1,000 People Who Own 40 Percent of the Market

#115

Post by frgtpsswrdlame »

VMG wrote: post #101
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but what's the importance of that fact?

I think the former method of creating currency is fairer and more transparent.

Well it's obviously not necessarily more transparent. I know that the Fed is creating money, I can find out how much it's creating and I can listen to government officials explain why we should create more/less money or why we should make money in this instance but not that one, etc. I can even vote for people whose dollar creation opinions line up with mine.

In BTC I don't know who's creating it, what they believe about it and I have no way to affect their creation of it. Seems like the democratic governing system is more fair and transparent so where did I go wrong?

Re: The Bitcoin Whales: 1,000 People Who Own 40 Percent of the Market

#116

Post by celdon25 »

zardo wrote: post #79
Klathmon wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no libertarian, but wouldn't the fact that you can buy bitcoins with traditional fiat currency throw a wrench in this being a valid experiment? Since anyone that received an "unfair advantage" with government-issued fiat can turn around and use it to get an unfair advantage in bitcoin as well?

So in order for libertarian society to work as desired we first have to... evenly distribute the wealth? I don't think we'll find any libertarians taking that position.

Does even (or rather, less uneven) distribution of wealth imply involuntary coercion? I don't think it has to.

Re: The Bitcoin Whales: 1,000 People Who Own 40 Percent of the Market

#117

Post by redblacktree »

VMG wrote: post #78
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the difference between a government manipulating a currency and a cabal of wealthy individuals manipulating a currency? Or is your problem mainly that businesses have to accept dollars?

Anyone who has a miner can generate bitcoin. Only the FED can create new USD.

This isn't really true. New USD is created anytime someone gets a loan. The Fed impacts that money creation only indirectly by setting rates (not considering QE -- even with QE, the point remains: new money is created when a loan is made by a fractional-reserve institution)

Edit to further elucidate: It isn't exactly the loan that creates money, but what happens with the money after the loan. It will almost certainly land in a bank account somewhere, adding to that bank's reserves, which allows them to lend 90% of the loan's value again. (assuming a 10% capital reserve requirement)

Re: The Bitcoin Whales: 1,000 People Who Own 40 Percent of the Market

#118

Post by frgtpsswrdlame »

lancebeet wrote: post #111
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the difference between a government manipulating a currency and a cabal of wealthy individuals manipulating a currency? Or is your problem mainly that businesses have to accept dollars?

Government currency is mandated, bitcoin isn't. If bitcoin is manipulated, people can choose not to use it. If government currency is manipulated, people have no other (legal) choice but to continue using it. This makes the two distinct to a libertarian. Some libertarians may be more pragmatic than others. For example, some may argue that so long as a government issued fiat currency is in use (as it is today), manipu…

>If bitcoin is manipulated, people can choose not to use it. If government currency is manipulated, people have no other (legal) choice but to continue using it.

Isn't this going to create a run on the currency? So say tomorrow some news comes out proving these btc whales are responsible for 80% of the order book and are manipulating the market, isn't it the slowest people to react who are stuck holding the bag?

Furthermore, isn't the problem with btc that we don't know if it's being manipulated or not? Manipulation or not at least I know what's going on with the dollar.

Re: The Bitcoin Whales: 1,000 People Who Own 40 Percent of the Market

#119

Post by nnash »

sevensor wrote: post #28

It's interesting to see how this is playing out. Libertarians have long argued that government-issued fiat currency is a tool of state oppression. Now we have a real-world experiment demonstrating on a grand scale what happens when you create a currency by consensual fiat. I'd be interested to hear what libertarians think about this: Is Bitcoin truly the kind of currency libertarians have been advocating? Have I misc…

Considering the difficulty involved in even buying bitcoin I'd have to say no. If you want to make a sizeable investment you need to hand over large amounts of personal data to an exchange. I'm talking the works; routing number, passport, proof of residency etc. I should be able to simply walk to a BTC ATM put cash in and add it to a wallet on my phone (perhaps you can in some places?). Additionally, exchanges like Coinbase are required to report any transaction over 20,000USD to the IRS. Fiat cash is much less of a PITA.

Re: The Bitcoin Whales: 1,000 People Who Own 40 Percent of the Market

#120

Post by charlesdm »

ct0 wrote: post #37
charlesdm wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These coins were mostly sold off to venture capitalist Tim Draper, for $50m: https://hacked.com/tim-draper-has-made-over-110-million-sinc... Might sound like a success story now, but at a certain point he was down 70% on his investment!

Wonder if he sold them after he made his 10% or so

I think he still owns them, according to a recent interview.
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