21–30 of 116 posts
How are you defining an account when you say that 95% of BTC is owned by 2% of accounts?
Adir Shamir did long time ago: https://eprint.iacr.org/2012/584.pd tl;dr: 98% of BTC in circulation at the time belonged to 2% portfolios.
> 95% of Bitcoin is owned by 2% of accounts The problem is, how do you measure this reliably? I'd wager that a large chunk of 95% of Bitcoin is either irrevocably lost or owned by Satoshi (estimate is at "between 750,000 and 1,100,000 bitcoin" -- and arguably these TXs will never be spent). Simply put, there's no way to differentiate between coins that are just sitting there unspent and coins which no one can access…
Keep in mind, though, that other comments on this thread have pointed out that addresses and wallets don't have a 1 to 1 relationship with people. So you won't really be seeing who owns the most.
Leave the word "inequality" out of it. I don't think it means what you think it means.
You're describing the Gini coefficient. Here's an article on why you shouldn't overuse that: https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/07/29/gini.html That being said, 42% of all Bitcoin sits in 2100 addresses. Google "Bitcoin rich list" and you'll also be able to look on that site at other coins as well. People will point out that those are exchanges representing users. And I'll point out, crypt was invented to remove middlem…
Crypto isn't intented to remove middlemen. It's intended to give people the choice of who to trust. People can choose to trust an exchange, or to self-custody, and deal with the consequences in either direction. If I choose to self-custody, it's much safer to memorize a seed phrase than to store cash in my mattress. Most people don't bother and use banks. But I think it's good that people now have a choice in the mat…
> This concentration not only risks to threaten blockchain's own premises [...] BTC was designed specifically to avoid any kind of _state control_ and by _state control_ I mean something along the lines of a central bank. Adding protections here and there will inevitably lead to a system that is similar to current financial system with all the bells and whistles. I think you're missing the point: BTC tries to sell la…
Market goes down, crypto seems to go down with it. Look at something like 1-month BTC and 1-month APPL or something.
It's not supposed to be doing this. I think this is happening because it's become so easy to purchase that people now just have it in their "portfolio", basket of everything, and when they want to sell, they just sell everything, stocks and crypto. They are the same thing to a lot of people.
This means it is getting tied into the existing financial system anyway, even without specific "controls" like central banking.
> This concentration not only risks to threaten blockchain's own premises [...] BTC was designed specifically to avoid any kind of _state control_ and by _state control_ I mean something along the lines of a central bank. Adding protections here and there will inevitably lead to a system that is similar to current financial system with all the bells and whistles. I think you're missing the point: BTC tries to sell la…
Multiple choice question: Which of the following groups have lots of control over BTC?
A. BTC Core Developers
B. BTC Exchanges
C. Credit Card Processors/ACH Entities/Payment apps that allow people to buy BTC from fiat without exchanging physical cash
D. BTC Miners
E. Any judge in the country that can order you to hand over your BTC just like he/she can order you to dig up the cash he/she suspects you have and hand it over.
F. All of the above and many more
(It's F)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Crypto isn't intented to remove middlemen. It's intended to give people the choice of who to trust. People can choose to trust an exchange, or to self-custody, and deal with the consequences in either direction. If I choose to self-custody, it's much safer to memorize a seed phrase than to store cash in my mattress. Most people don't bother and use banks. But I think it's good that people now have a choice in the mat…
I'll quote the first sentence from the Bitcoin whitepaper. "A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution."
You're describing the Gini coefficient. Here's an article on why you shouldn't overuse that: https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/07/29/gini.html That being said, 42% of all Bitcoin sits in 2100 addresses. Google "Bitcoin rich list" and you'll also be able to look on that site at other coins as well. People will point out that those are exchanges representing users. And I'll point out, crypt was invented to remove middlem…
Crypto isn't intented to remove middlemen. It's intended to give people the choice of who to trust. People can choose to trust an exchange, or to self-custody, and deal with the consequences in either direction. If I choose to self-custody, it's much safer to memorize a seed phrase than to store cash in my mattress. Most people don't bother and use banks. But I think it's good that people now have a choice in the mat…
That isn’t what the sales pitch has been for the last 13 years, with lots of fanciful rhetoric about removing the need for banks (“you can be your own bank!” is basically a cliché by now).
> If I choose to self-custody, it's much safer to memorize a seed phrase than to store cash in my mattress.
Are you sure about this? Lots of people have been phished or compromised, whereas someone breaking in and searching your house is relatively uncommon and limited to people in the same area whereas your cryptocurrency can be stolen by anyone in the world.