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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

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you think people in Africa aren't getting paid enough, why are you not selling your PC / smartphone to help them out? Because that would not solve the problem, and it's quite naive to think it would. This gets into lots of debates in ethics that are far from solved. I do however donate regularly to groups that do economic development in African communities across the world though (more than the cost of a new iPh…

It would not solve the problem globally, but you can feed a person making a dollar a day for a long time. Yet you're not doing it. And that's why I'm not buying your argument. You want the redistribution of wealth, but not your wealth.

Again, that argument doesn't work.

Let's look at an example of Bill Gates - if instead of investing any money or time in Microsoft, he gave away everything he could, he would not help as many people in the end. Again, you need money to make money. Of course you need to also consider the other effects of Microsoft in the calculation, which is no easy matter, but the general point is that investment by him eventually led to greater helping of those suffering injustices.

This does not consider that subsidizing someone's current lifestyle doesn't nearly have the impact of helping them develop economic means. It's a classic give a fish versus teach fishing.

And again, someone being hypocritical is not an argument against the logic. It just means that person is selfish and hypocritical. I don't claim that solving these problems is easy or not in direct conflict with human instincts.

There are also issues of fixing injustices justly. It's hard to give up x% of your wealth for a good cause when others are not. I would love to see something like a global 5% reparations tax (scaled by income, benefit from injustice, etc) that I would happily pay because it would be just for all. Of course, getting that to happen is kidding yourself at best.

All of your flawed arguments are still based on you assuming that I'm a hypocrite and no information that I gave you. I would call double BS on your reasoning for disagreement given that you had no knowledge of it when you took the position. Your argument neither had the knowledge nor logic to stand even with the knowledge present.

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

#162

Market manipulation is a big risk here. Basically "wolf of wall st" style shenanigans, or the stuff that salomon brothers did in the mortgage bond market in the 1980s. Essentially a few big investors who've cornered the market, acting in concert, can move the market essentially according to their own desire. I read yesterday that the order book for btc was $33 million (don't know what the daily volume is; could anyon…

Mouse over the orderbook on this page: https://www.gdax.com/trade/BTC-USD It will show you how much money you need to move the market on that exchange.

thats a lot more volume than i thought based on the comment i read yesterday. also just found this site https://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/price/6m/USD?c=e&t=l which has historical price and volume data. looks like 24 hour volume has generally been around 100-150k BTC / day

could still manipulate markets with 40% concentration and that much liquidity, but would be much harder than if the daily volume was on the order of tens of millions like i mistakenly thought

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

#163

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…

Government-issued currencies usually come with legal tender laws and citizens are required to pay taxes using the government money. Since taxes are not voluntary, this creates built-in demand for the fiat money. The creators of alternative competitor-money are punished as well. The libertarian position is that human interactions should be voluntary, so the coercion problem is where libertarians find issue first. A si…

"The libertarian position is that human interactions should be voluntary, so the coercion problem is where libertarians find issue first."

So basically everyone should be armed to their teeth? Because, if there is no state to impose control, a warlord will emerge who will. Or is there some other solution to the problem that humans have known tendencies toward violence and power hunger?

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

#164
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of these people are likely affected by capitalism to an extreme: imperialism. Much larger of an injustice than anything you listed. The people who are most able to take risks (in the investment sense) are those with the most. An exponential growth system such as this only widens the gap, voluntary or not. Everyone can get in, but the benefit is unequal. You need money to make money. This does not solve any equal…

Imperialism is not capitalism, they are orthogonal concepts. You're right, imperialism did cause problems, but the extreme poverty has been shrinking. And now we have the mechanisms for almost anybody to get out of it. I grew up very poor, as in barely enough money for basic food and new clothes once-twice a year. Now I'm in the top 3% of US earners (not counting Bitcoin).

Imperialism is the final stage of capitalism.

> but the extreme poverty has been shrinking

Indonesian 12 y.o. who makes Nike sneakers for 1$ a day will probably disagree. Humanity as a whole have made tremendous advancements in medicine, engineering and agriculture, technology as a whole have been advancing in giant leaps, yet benefits of those advancements are largely felt by 10-20 countries and 3-5% of the population. Even in the US some people cannot afford insulin and other types of basic healthcare. Workers's wages are stagnant for the past 50 years, while their productivity was steadily rising (https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/02/why-the...).

> And now we have the mechanisms for almost anybody to get out of it. I grew up very poor

Survivorship bias, "if I've made it, then anyone can".

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

#165

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…

Government-issued currencies usually come with legal tender laws and citizens are required to pay taxes using the government money. Since taxes are not voluntary, this creates built-in demand for the fiat money. The creators of alternative competitor-money are punished as well. The libertarian position is that human interactions should be voluntary, so the coercion problem is where libertarians find issue first. A si…

> The libertarian position on wealth inequality is that as long as the distribution of wealth was determined voluntarily (without state privilege, in particular), then there is no problem.

Buuuuut, they bought it with fiat currencies, in many cases USD. So... right there the entire idea breaks down. Still, maybe that's unfair. A valid criticism of this argument is that it's a variant of the the serf comic argument (or genetic fallacy) in which those embedded in a bad system may not question it because they benefit from it.

The real problem from a libertarian perspective is that bitcoin (and really all PoW blockcahins) just encodes how a new State, a plutocratic one based around processing power and energy availability, is formed. This is in a very literal sense what bitcoin encodes, with the miners being the only folks with any real votes (in that if miners as a group refused to mine other currencies and actively discourage others from doing so, other currencies cannot scale and are locked out).

Not that bitcoin is scaling all that well. Or eth for that matter.

As we've seen from recent research, Bitcoin is slightly better than existing systems at discouraging monopolies (because even accidental misuse could crash the currency), but I seriously doubt a mining duopoly dictating most of the future of bitcoin is something that any libertarian actually calls a positive outcome, other than a snarky nod to damaging existing states.

The long term evolution of the system is pivotal on some new, non-PoW scheme. PoS is the major contender right now. There might be other methods as derivations (e.g., PoW coupled with physical location, PoS with term limits, PoS with accreditation, etc). Non-PoW systems will also scale much more effectively than PoW systems, as well.

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

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Since taxes are not voluntary >The libertarian position is that human interactions should be voluntary, so the coercion problem is where libertarians find issue first. Do you believe obeying property law is voluntary? I find it to be coercive.

Instead of answering your question, I will leave this: Very small children understand and recognize property, since it is a natural right. The toy in my hand is "mine," and when some other kid comes along and takes it, I get upset.

What is a "natural right?" How is one identified? How is it distinguishable from a right that is not a "natural right"?

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

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Since taxes are not voluntary >The libertarian position is that human interactions should be voluntary, so the coercion problem is where libertarians find issue first. Do you believe obeying property law is voluntary? I find it to be coercive.

Instead of answering your question, I will leave this: Very small children understand and recognize property, since it is a natural right. The toy in my hand is "mine," and when some other kid comes along and takes it, I get upset.

> The toy in my hand is "mine,"

Then the stronger kid comes along and takes the toy away, because he is stronger and now it's in his hand and he says "it's mine".

Would you find it coercive to forbid the stronger kid to act this way by means of a law (enforced maybe by the teacher) that forbids stronger kids to steal from smaller kids?

edit: oppressive -> coercive, sorry

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

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Government-issued currencies usually come with legal tender laws and citizens are required to pay taxes using the government money. Since taxes are not voluntary, this creates built-in demand for the fiat money. The creators of alternative competitor-money are punished as well. The libertarian position is that human interactions should be voluntary, so the coercion problem is where libertarians find issue first. A si…

>Since taxes are not voluntary >The libertarian position is that human interactions should be voluntary, so the coercion problem is where libertarians find issue first. Do you believe obeying property law is voluntary? I find it to be coercive.

Not to directly answer your question, but to elaborate slightly, many political philosophers would draw a distinction between natural property (e.g. land, natural resources) and 'made' property. They would say that in the case of found property (land, natural resources), property rights are indeed artificial and coercive. But the value that has been added to those natural resources by the efforts of a person is theirs. This is, in part, the justification for the Land Value [1] tax. It's an interesting question where Bitcoin ownership may fall on that spectrum. I'm not sure, to be honest. But I think that might provide a framework for thinking about the issue.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax

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

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Since taxes are not voluntary >The libertarian position is that human interactions should be voluntary, so the coercion problem is where libertarians find issue first. Do you believe obeying property law is voluntary? I find it to be coercive.

Instead of answering your question, I will leave this: Very small children understand and recognize property, since it is a natural right. The toy in my hand is "mine," and when some other kid comes along and takes it, I get upset.

Very small children also constantly think they own things that they do not. They are also quite fond of stealing things that they want to have (the opposite of property rights).

The small children argument in general is a super poor one, I don't know why anyone would ever use it. People are naturally bad at various things, and children are almost definitely bad at those things (due to a lack of experience/training). There are few things that children are better at than adults, and the most important thing is that they're better at learning and/or otherwise being adaptable and dynamic.

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

#170

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…

Government-issued currencies usually come with legal tender laws and citizens are required to pay taxes using the government money. Since taxes are not voluntary, this creates built-in demand for the fiat money. The creators of alternative competitor-money are punished as well. The libertarian position is that human interactions should be voluntary, so the coercion problem is where libertarians find issue first. A si…

I'm sympathetic to the inflation argument, but it doesn't seem to match what actually happens. For example, Bitcoin inflated by about 20% in a 20-minute period yesterday. The theory doesn't seem to match the practice here.
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