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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

#321

Post by ric2b »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #281
monort wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, I don't believe so. Take taxes, taxes are coercive because if you refuse to follow tax law then the government enacts violence against you right? Now take property, property is coercive because if you refuse to follow property law then the government enacts violence against you. It's one to one.

Difference being that the first is someone taking your property and the second is you taking property from someone else.

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

#322

Post by ric2b »

scotty79 wrote: post #310
googletazer wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So buy it from them. It's a completely voluntary system that requires no permission to participate, has been from the start.

I assume 'fair' to you would mean taking it from them to re-distribute between everyone else?

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

#323

Post by ric2b »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #115
VMG wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the former method of creating currency is fairer and more transparent.

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…

> I can find out how much it's creating

No, you can trust them to tell you how much they're creating. Important distinction.

> I can even vote for people whose dollar creation opinions line up with mine.

The people who run the FED aren't elected, so no, you can't.

> In BTC I don't know who's creating it, what they believe about it and I have no way to affect their creation of it.

It doesn't matter, the issuance is controlled by the protocol and you can know how much Bitcoin will be created on 2105/06/25 by making a few simple calculations.

So if you don't agree with it you can bail out right now and never participate in it, no one forces you to.

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

#324

Post by ric2b »

emiliobumachar wrote: post #239
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…

"A bitcoin address after all can be shared by many users" Only in a context of mutual absolute trust, in both honesty and security competence. Any person who has the password can transfer the whole wallet contents to a new wallet that they alone control, while maintaining plausible deniability. Any person who unwillingly compromises the password to a third party has compromised the entire wallet.

> Only in a context of mutual absolute trust, in both honesty and security competence.

Not at all, look up multi-signature addresses. There are addresses where you need N-of-M signatures to move the coins.

So for example you could have a 6-of-10 multi-sig wallet for a company, so that a majority of the executives were necessary but the money wouldn't be lost if up to 4 of them lost their keys or went rogue or whatever.

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

#325

Post by scotty79 »

ric2b wrote: post #322
scotty79 wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So buy it from them. It's a completely voluntary system that requires no permission to participate, has been from the start. I assume 'fair' to you would mean taking it from them to re-distribute between everyone else?

> So buy it from them.

You can't do that if they don't sell and they won't sell untill bitcoin stores large portion of world's wealth.

> I assume 'fair' to you would mean taking it from them to re-distribute between everyone else?

I have no idea why would you assume that. Especially if you could achieve same thing just by destroying their bitcoin. No need to re-distribute. Share is the thing that matters not the amount.

On more serious note fair for me is more or less how actual brick and mortar econony distributes things. You make things other find useful, you get share of humanity's wealth in return.

Holding things, bitcoin, gold, real estate, copyright strays for me from 'fair'. I see it as the less fair, the less you contibuted to humanity to acquire those things and the more claim on share of humanity's wealth you have by holding them.

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

#326

Post by xg15 »

sf_rob wrote: post #215
xg15 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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.

Well yes, I too can think up the philosophy of xg15ism in which people like me are well off at the cost of everyone else - and then demand that society implement it, pretty please.

I just don't see how that would bring us forward in any way.

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

#327

Post by ric2b »

scotty79 wrote: post #325
ric2b wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So buy it from them. It's a completely voluntary system that requires no permission to participate, has been from the start. I assume 'fair' to you would mean taking it from them to re-distribute between everyone else?

> So buy it from them. You can't do that if they don't sell and they won't sell untill bitcoin stores large portion of world's wealth. > I assume 'fair' to you would mean taking it from them to re-distribute between everyone else? I have no idea why would you assume that. Especially if you could achieve same thing just by destroying their bitcoin. No need to re-distribute. Share is the thing that matters not the amou…

> You can't do that if they don't sell and they won't sell until bitcoin stores large portion of world's wealth.

They do sell though, billions of dollars worth, everyday on several exchanges.

> Especially if you could achieve same thing just by destroying their bitcoin.

So now we're responding with force to a completely voluntary system? Great. And by the way, that is still redistribution, all other assets would go up in value in response.

> On more serious note fair for me is more or less how actual brick and mortar econony distributes things. You make things other find useful, you get share of humanity's wealth in return.

> Holding things, bitcoin, gold, real estate, copyright strays for me from 'fair'. I see it as the less fair, the less you contibuted to humanity to acquire those things and the more claim on share of humanity's wealth you have by holding them.

I agree on copyright, because it's a far different beast with tons of problems, but the others are essentially stores of value that you can get in a voluntary exchange by doing things others find useful.

There is inherited wealth, yes, but I've never found a way that works that solves that birth inequality.

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