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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

#301

Post by knocte »

ufo wrote: post #211
knocte wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

So loans would need to be short-lived and with high scrutiny, to make sure they are payed back. I consider this a good thing, as opposed to the other extreme: give everyone a loan no matter what (the root cause of the 2008 financial crisis).

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

#302

Post by IkmoIkmo »

malikNF wrote: post #220
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....

Well that's sort of my point... me a large amount of coins stored in a low-transaction account would to me be characteristic of reserve-type funds stored by big exchanges.

In fact, many parties like Coinbase have come out and openly stated that only a small percentage of their users' coins move around, and therefore the vast majority can, and is, stored in 'air gapped cold storage'. i.e. on private keys that never touched a network of any kind. This could result in a few cold storage addresses which carry funds for orders of magnitude more users, rather than a few individuals.

In fact, if you follow your own link you'll find many of the addresses are in fact identified as belonging to exchanges like Kraken or Bitfinex cold wallets. e.g. the second richest address is a $1.9 billion Bitfinex wallet.

So I don't think the title of the research '1000 people own 40%' is hard to dismiss at all. It could well be true, but a mere list of addresses isn't proof to that claim.

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

#303

Post by VMG »

celdon25 wrote: post #296
VMG wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whataboutism started with uninformed statements about bitcoin energy usage. My rebuttal is about the costs of the alternatives.

Call it whatever you want. The days of proof-of-work are numbered, I can guarantee you that.

https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/pos.pdf

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

#304

Post by chrischen »

pc2g4d wrote: post #269
Emma_Goldman wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry. Libertarian philosophy is my bete noire. But the point is evident enough: I highly doubt libertarians can offer a credible macro-economic justification for the creation of a decentralised currency sustained by the whims of the market alone, and that they rely on the force of a prior moral theory. If the moral theory is void, so is the justification. I'm not sure how you would go about justifying bitcoin on its…

> being a store of value You yourself have hit on the justification for Bitcoin's use.

Bitcoin relies on other people to buy in and hodl in order to fulfill its value storing properties. If people stopped buying more (at higher prices since it's a fixed supply) then the value would plummet, and that would be a terrible value store if your value plummets while being stored in it.

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

#305

Post by chrischen »

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…

Point is that the distribution of bitcoin wealth is wholly dependent on distribution of fiat currency wealth.

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

#306

Post by lisper »

chrischen wrote: post #305
lisper wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Point is that the distribution of bitcoin wealth is wholly dependent on distribution of fiat currency wealth.

But that's false. You always need some capital to make an investment in anything, but anyone with the foresight to recognize bitcoin's potential back in 2010 could mine and/or buy coins essentially for nothing.

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

#307

Post by tudorconstantin »

Wow, such FUD, much propaganda lately, all against BTC.

Is it risky? sure. Do you HAVE to buy? of course not. Anybody can sit on the sides and shout "bubble, ponzi, pyramidal scheme", but then don't whine when the early adopters and risk takers got to buy it at just $16K and 3 years later it trades at $1M.

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

#308

Post by scotty79 »

clarkmoody wrote: post #180
fsloth wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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?

But Wouldn't Warlords Take Over?[1] [1] https://mises.org/library/wouldnt-warlords-take-over

> If, by hypothesis, the vast majority of people—although they have different conceptions of justice—can all agree that it is wrong to use violence to settle their honest disputes, then market forces would lead to peace among the private police agencies.

This is pretty much even sillier hypothesis than "if people agree to work together towards common good, through the forces of cooperation, they would achieve prosperity greater than it's possible in any competitive capitalist system" and that one was tried and proven false.

People agreeing that the violence is not the right way to resolve disputes? Author must somehow missed all of history right untill yesterday and have no friends or at least only friends without neighbours.

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

#309

Post by scotty79 »

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…

> Monetary policy is a very powerful instrument for helping the economy along. Without it, it would be impossible to ensure enough liquidity as the market expands. Also, the economy would not be resilient to 'shock' events.

Many countries expressly forbid themselves to use monetary policy to manipulate their economy. Their monetary policy has singular goal: to keep inflation low and stable.

So maybe it's not such a graet tool although tempting.

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

#310

Post by scotty79 »

googletazer wrote: post #287
UncleMeat wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What does "justify" mean here? Are you somehow saying its not fair that early adopters have a lot of coins?

If at some point bitcoin will suck significant portion of saving of whole world then they will own huge share of all of that which seems a bit unfair.
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