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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

#271

Post by monort »

xg15 wrote: post #264
monort wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this position is technically correct, it is absurd. By this logic, enforcing freedom from slavery is coercive as well, because it requires threat of violence.

Indeed, it is - which proves the parent's point. This would be an example of something that's both just and coercive.

But this definition is unusual and doesn't bring any insight. It reminds me about psychological egoism, that says that there is no altruism, everything is egoism. Technically correct, but doesn't help to explain altruism-behavior.

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

#272

Post by UncleMeat »

googletazer wrote: post #181
Nursie wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Early adopters took a big risk on a fledgling technology I can't agree with that. Early adopters really didn't take a lot of risk, they ran a mining program for a while, or bought some BTC for a few cents to a few dollars.

They could have been doing something else with their time. Instead they were mining, promoting, and trading this technology. By definition there is an opportunity cost to being an early adopter instead of going with the flow - so indeed they took a risk.

Does that opportunity cost justify owning a meaningful percentage of all of the coins that will ever exist?

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

#273

Post by Chris_Jay »

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 would say that wealth concentrating in a small number of hands is not a surprising outcome, nor is it a dynamic anyone with libertarian leanings can really be uncomfortable with. I'll admit I'm unpleasantly surprised by how quickly it happened.

I would say that cryptocurrency has one advantage over traditional systems of money in that it governs with the consent of the governed - if the richest 4% of the cryptocurrency world become too aggressive and stifle innovation to protect their status, cryptocurrency's nature makes it very easy for the other 96% to take their ball and play elsewhere. There have been several 'hard fork' moments already (Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum Classic, etc) and what the majority of people went with was mostly determined by who inspired their confidence. I don't think Greenspan or Yellen could have gotten the majority of miners to switch to their system, that takes the confidence of the majority.

So to answer your last question - I would expect the experiment to lead to a more brutal and cutthroat competition than we are used to, but I also expect the rules to be more fairly enforced, and the incentives of the rich and the rest to self-correct if they begin to diverge.

I can't speak for other libertarians, but for me, finding that tradeoff worth it is what it means to be a libertarian. How clear-eyed I am about the costs I couldn't guess.

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

#274

Post by specialp »

avar wrote: post #146
specialp wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In the context of this discussion, which is gold holders hypothetically pumping & dumping the market it's pretty much only the big reserve holders that matter. How do you think someone who's gold holdings are 1 kg in a warehouse embedded in motherboards is going to extract that to dump it on the market? Most gold by weight is effectively illiquid, while every Bitcoin is equally liquid. As the source the article uses[…

If you add up all those numbers you just gave besides the gold in the ground one, they add to exactly 187200. So no that is not gold in the ground. That is the estimated gold existing that has been mined. You may be reading the articles but not getting the right thing from them. Also gold in the ground does not count as being in the market because well it is still not mined, it is just known to exist.

Also you omitted the direct quote "Total above ground stocks: 187,200 tonnes" from the site you posted. So no that does not include gold that has not been mined.

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

#275

Post by paulgb »

mbrock wrote: post #183
proto-n wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's something that must be mentioned here: there are multiple visions for what bitcoin should be. Probably with much oversimplification, but as unbiased as I can be: One side wants bitcoin to be a decentralized store of value, untraceable, unseizable, a safe heaven for your wealth that's completely permissionless to use. The other side wants bitcoin to be a currency for the day-to-day life that is cheap to use, a…

Multiple competing privately issued currencies is also a trope of libertarianism; people refer a lot to Hayek's The Denationalization of Money .

I've written about why I think this is a disingenuous comparison: https://paulbutler.org/archives/stop-dragging-hayek-into-bit...

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

#276

Post by VMG »

amarkov wrote: post #218
VMG wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

nothing does

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

#277

Post by oreo81 »

tachyonbeam wrote: post #43
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 Am Not a Libertarian but a few thoughts come to mind. Bitcoin is just about as close to the libertarian ideal as you can practically get in this world. The two main flaws that I can see is that it's not as anonymous as it could be, and many governments have already imposed a number of burdensome regulations which prevent people from using bitcoin as they see fit. More anonymity would get around those regulations to…

So if someone would acquire more wealth than this "limit" you think it's okay to steal it from them? How is theft morally acceptable?

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

#278

Post by [deleted] »

lisper wrote: post #265
KirinDave wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number of people who mined for it without using fiat currencies to buy the hardware and energy is, I submit, such an astronomically small value I'd demand you prove to me it exists at all. They might exist, but I suspect their stories are singular. > Still others exchanged goods and services for it. I'm not sure what your point is here. It's not difficult to imagine existing state currencies influence these proce…

> using fiat currencies to buy the hardware and energy The process had to be bootstrapped somehow. And given that the world's economy at the time bitcoin was invented ran on fiat currency, it's not surprising that fiat currency was used to help bootstrap the process. > I'm not sure what your point is here. My point is that your original claim: > Buuuuut, they bought it with fiat currencies, in many cases USD. So... r…

[deleted]

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

#279

Post by KirinDave »

lisper wrote: post #265
KirinDave wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number of people who mined for it without using fiat currencies to buy the hardware and energy is, I submit, such an astronomically small value I'd demand you prove to me it exists at all. They might exist, but I suspect their stories are singular. > Still others exchanged goods and services for it. I'm not sure what your point is here. It's not difficult to imagine existing state currencies influence these proce…

> using fiat currencies to buy the hardware and energy The process had to be bootstrapped somehow. And given that the world's economy at the time bitcoin was invented ran on fiat currency, it's not surprising that fiat currency was used to help bootstrap the process. > I'm not sure what your point is here. My point is that your original claim: > Buuuuut, they bought it with fiat currencies, in many cases USD. So... r…

Did you read a sentence that you disagreed with and then immediately refused to finish the paragraph?

> 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.

I'm just saying, the idea that there is in fact an equitable pre-distribution of agency and power to draw from is fallacious. It doesn't mean we shouldn't try and create better systems; just that we shouldn't pretend such a thing existed.

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

#280

Post by Emma_Goldman »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #242
monort wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this position is technically correct, it is absurd. By this logic, enforcing freedom from slavery is coercive as well, because it requires threat of violence.

Exactly! Which exposes the flaw in basing your political ideology around the removal of coercion.

Hmmm I think it's important to emphasise that anarcho-capitalism necessarily relies on coercion, but it's probably a strawman when speaking about its philosophical defenders. Libertarians want to maximise the account of freedom they build up from the originating premise of self-ownership. They are perfectly willing to license the use of coercion to uphold that propertarian system of rights. What they have issue with is the existence of an overweening state that has de facto and de jure power over you no matter what. They want the means of coercion to be privatised; to be outsourced to local militias, private security firms, and the like.

Of course, like all ideologies, they don't think of this as a system of accumulated power that exploits destitute workers and relies on dystopian bands of warlords to beat anyone who protests into submission, but as something like 'a pure state of freedom'.

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