The Bitcoin Whales: 1,000 People Who Own 40 Percent of the Market • Hacker News Board

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

#211

Post by ufo » Fri, Dec 08, 2017, 5:37 PM UTC

knocte wrote: post #159

simias wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Deflation means that the rich will get richer >Wrong. Rich people don't have money, they have holdings. Most of the holdings that rich people nowadays have are not money. Isn't one reason for not hoarding cash (and instead investing it in various holdings, stock market, etc...) is that money loses value? If I was a millionaire in dollars I definitely wouldn't keep that on my bank account, slowly having it lose its…

> If I was a millionaire in BTC I'd have a hardware wallet with my secret keys in a safe and that's about it. Lending or investing your BTC would always make you net more than just hoarding it (at least when all prices are denominated in BTC already). > Sure, but conversely I can tell you that the people who don't save money are overwhelmingly poor. For a big chunk of humanity saving money is a luxury. True, I didn't…

The problem with a deflationary currency is that prices, wages and income go down over time. Someone borrowing 100 BTC today will have a hard time paying back that 100 BTC one year from now (let alone the interest) because they will be earning less than they do today.

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

#212

Post by ticviking » Fri, Dec 08, 2017, 5:37 PM UTC

bjl wrote: post #151

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #149

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.

Left-libertarians definitely find property law coercive.

Turns out if you're consistent in applying the NAP then homesteading becomes illegitimate as any exclusive claim on land which was previously free for anyone to make use of is an act of force against literally every other person in the area.

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

#213

Post by ballenf » Fri, Dec 08, 2017, 5:38 PM UTC

pishpash wrote: post #191

googletazer wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upset/uncomfortable - maybe, but at who? The rich family? His own family? Himself? Society? All of those? People on hackernews and in general tend to view "negative" feelings, envy, etc... as generically "bad". These feelings are evolutionary signals from your primal brain that something isn't going right. Its up to you to fix that, however you see fit.

Not all people feel the same way or get the same primal brain screams. Who decides who's right?

Whichever side has more hashing power. Err, I mean muscle+weapon power.

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

#214

Post by pascalxus » Fri, Dec 08, 2017, 5:38 PM UTC

metalliqaz wrote: post #46

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…

I have a very difficult time separating "true" libertarians with members of libertarian parties. Like people don't readily give up how pragmatic they are. On one end, there seem to be people who really yearn for pure individual freedom with no government at all. I'm pretty sure that was tried for the first 50,000 years of humanity and the results are well documented. (spoiler, for populations larger than ~100 people,…

Liberterians such as myself, would like to see a more prosperous world. With the technology we have available today, we're 1000s of times more productive than we were millions of years ago, and yet, 99% of society is still stuck working 40-60 hours a week and barely earning enough money to get by. There are many reasons why this is the case: taxes are only 1 reason. But, most of these reasons ultimately have something to do with government. Housing and Healthcare is no-where near as cost effective as it could be, if we were allowed to zone it properly and innovate on it.

Ultimately, Libertarians stand for the freedom of people. Currently, when a government takes and uses 1/3 of every dollar earned, the society is not free. Note: that ratio would be a lot higher in expensive areas like the bay area, etc.

1/3 doesn't sound like much oppression, but when you add in the multiplicative effect on the spending side, it becomes more onerous because everything is more expensive. The day care has to charge 50% more, etc.

It's about Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Most people, 99% are still working on their bottom tier. It would be morally, ethically, and economically wrong to stop their progress, by taking 1/3 of their productive efforts.

As the above posts mentioned, we do differentiate between natural resources and earned resources. Natural resources like Land should be taxed because you didn't create it from your own labor. On Earnings However, if you make your bed in the morning, you should be able to keep that labor - no one should be allowed to come over and use 33% of your bed.

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

#215

Post by sf_rob » Fri, Dec 08, 2017, 5:42 PM UTC

xg15 wrote: post #192

clarkmoody wrote: post #135

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…

> 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. Bitcoin is such a system: all participation in Bitcoin has been voluntary. Early adopters took a big risk on a fledgling technology, and some have been rewarded with handsome returns. I could never really make sense of that positio…

>Why would you ever voluntarily agree to a high-inequality society where you are at the lower end?

In terms of political philosophy, most libertarians come at it through a rights based framework (see: Bastiat, Locke) and believe rights to be non-arbitrary. You seem to be suggesting a more self-interested framework which I'm not going to argue for/against.

In terms of reality, libertarians skew wealthy and less social. Like most groups they are more likely to rationalize a system that is congruent on the surface with their place in society.

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

#216

Post by nhaehnle » Fri, Dec 08, 2017, 5:45 PM UTC

alexasmyths wrote: post #196

clarkmoody wrote: post #135

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, this creates built-in demand for the fiat money." Not really. The real underlying demand for a currency comes from the advantage that everyone gets by using the same currency in a common market. The 'required for tax' purposes is a side-show. Does anyone with any financial background appreciate that most businesses in the US want to use a single currency for their US transactions, and…

> The real underlying demand for a currency comes from the advantage that everyone gets by using the same currency in a common market.

> The 'required for tax' purposes is a side-show.

Why can't it be both? :)

> Totally false. Inflation is a target by most central banks. They can make it positive or negative, generally, and target specifically 2% for certain reasons.

This is a bit questionable. There are good reasons why a slight positive rate of inflation is a good thing, and while you could try to target a negative rate, it would almost certainly be very harmful to the economy.

Basically, people and even many companies have fewer contracts or prices for selling things than for buying things. So when relative prices need to adjust, this adjustment happens more smoothly and faster when prices don't have to decrease in nominal terms (because e.g. an employee whose compensation should go down in real terms will fight very hard against a nominal decrease in their income, but will fight less hard against a broad nominal increase in their outlays).

So you should generally aim to have only very few (if any) items in your basket of goods whose prices are decreasing.

(Economists call this the zero lower bound and focus on salaries, but I'd expect the effect to apply to other prices as well.)

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

#217

Post by Emma_Goldman » Fri, Dec 08, 2017, 5:46 PM UTC

clarkmoody wrote: post #135

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…

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 not a moral realist so I think that libertarian philosophy is nothing but the most venal elements of capitalism congealed in thought, but I should add that the classical formulation of libertarianism is internally incoherent. You omit that for any transaction to be legitimate it must not only be voluntary but must also consist of the exchange of things legitimately acquired in the past, i.e. voluntarily acquired. This chain of voluntary exchange is what is supposed to grant one a title to that thing. But of course, in reality, that does not exist in the least. The distribution of things over history is primarily a function of brute coercion and happenstance. Nozick knew as much, and his suggestion is as pitiful as his scruples: we need to 'reset' society according to the Rawlsian difference principle and then begin our libertarian accounting.

In any case, I can't take seriously anyone who thinks that humans aren't interested in freedom because they want to be free to do things, i.e. I want to be free to see my family not only in that I don't want someone to stop me from doing so, but I also want the means to be able to do so. The one is more or less pointless without the other. And that obviously requires more than negative liberty. Or that, in another vein, that capitalist enterprises are not vehicles of accumulated power that sustain themselves by exploiting workers, ordered along hierarchical top-down principles. One only need step into sociological reality to see as much.

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

#218

Post by amarkov » Fri, Dec 08, 2017, 5:48 PM UTC

VMG wrote: post #124

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

If you disagree with money printing, your vote will not matter. In bitcoin, the inflation schedule can be checked very easily. It doesn't matter who is creating it as long as the supply is stable and predictable.

In Bitcoin, the number of outstanding currency units can be checked very easily.

What I care about as a consumer is being able to predict the value of my currency at future times. Bitcoin doesn't allow me to do this at all.

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

#219

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Dec 08, 2017, 5:49 PM UTC

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #194

vidarh wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK doesn't have fully nationalized healthcare. * GP surgeries (doctors offices) are private businesses, and may provide NHS services or private services. * The NHS contracts out for a growing number of services, ranging from operating whole departments (e.g. Virgin operates the out-of-hours walk in centre for non-emergency care next door to the A&E/ER at my local hospital) to cleaning. * The NHS rents out facilit…

OK, you're sort of shining a spotlight on my ignorance here, but a few thoughts: 1. Maybe "fully nationalized" isn't technically true, but my understanding was that the UK was widely regarded to have a nationalized healthcare system. Not really interested in whether that's technically true at the margins unless there's some major policy impact. 2. "Cost-effective" is an interesting term, because it assumes we agree o…

[deleted]

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

#220

Post by malikNF » Fri, Dec 08, 2017, 5:50 PM UTC

IkmoIkmo wrote: post #128

There's absolutely no source to the claim that 40% is owned by 1000 people. Only at the very end of the article we see a lateral claim, that 17% of bitcoin is held in just 100 addresses. It's not unlikely the same reasoning (i.e. 40% of coins on top 1000 addresses) is used for the larger claim. But that says very little. A bitcoin address after all can be shared by many users, in the same way a bank vault can contain…

While I agree with you, it would be hard to dismiss the title of the article since looking at the btc rich list there's quite a few addresses with low number of transactions, but massive amounts of btc in them.

https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-addresses....