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Poll: How many Bitcoins do you own?

news.ycombinator.com

81–90 of 128 posts

Re: Poll: How many Bitcoins do you own?

#81
post #59

4 poll responders have over $1.5 million in BTC?

Those polls are rarely accurate especially at the edges (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5536734 ). I added a "5,000,001+" option just to see how many people will click it.

Yea I was thinking about that... an option that is so plainly impossible that it doesn't need to be considered (over 1/3 of all BTC does it). I imagine $1.5 million is just on the edge of plausibility for some adventurous, wealthy founders here.

Re: Poll: How many Bitcoins do you own?

#82
post #78
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At time of writing 2/7ths of respondents own > 0 bitcoin. Are there many other new technologies you'd expect 2/7ths of all respondents to use/own? Especially one that doesn't really have a direct use to most consumers yet and high risk for people investing. 2/7th's is huge.

From HN I'd expect more than that. Don't confuse HN-ers with "general population".

This reply applies equally well to your original comment.

Re: Poll: How many Bitcoins do you own?

#83

Shouldn’t option 2 be ‘0.00000001-10’ instead of ‘0-10’? As it is stated now, someone with no BTC should vote for option 1 as well as option 2. Actually, the other options overlap too. I suggest using ‘11-20’, ‘21-50’, ‘51-200’, ‘201-1,000’, and ‘1,001-10,000’. EDIT: I adjusted option 2 to start with less than 1 but more than zero. Thanks for the correction. I also agree with other commenters that the ‘1-10’ range is…

Oops, good catch... I just edited the poll.

Thanks a lot. Good edit.

Re: Poll: How many Bitcoins do you own?

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, you just deleted 50 BTC? That was possible?

Actually, he hasn’t deleted the 50 BC. They are still there but they are trapped. He only deleted the only copy of the key to transfer them, so those BC will be trapped there “forever”. Actually it’s possible to brute-force search for the key and make the BC free, and transfer them. But with the same method it’s possible to steal BC. The brute-force method is just too slow, and would require a few thousands or perhap…

I think it's this facet of Bitcoin that's going to end up causing problems in the not too distant future. There will be an ever increasing number of "trapped" coins, BTC that belongs to someone who has abandoned it leaving it unused and thereby lowering the liquidity of the currency.

A potential solution would be to incorporate demurrage, which gradually reduces the value of currency the longer it's held, into the BTC algorithms. Essentially by encouraging the holders of a currency to use that currency you'd a) create a more fluid market and b) remove trapped value in some fixed amount of time. If you wanted to maintain a pool of BTC for a long time you'd simply cycle it between two addresses faster than the decay rate so that it's value wouldn't decay.

Re: Poll: How many Bitcoins do you own?

#85
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this. I have some nonzero amount when I mined for 1 afternoon. Technically I don't have zero but I shouldnt be in the same category as people with a thousand dollars worth. With that said.... I said I have zero in the poll.

I think I have .0005 left over in a wallet somewhere. I also said zero. Seeing all this loose change and no easy way to get it out of there I'm wondering if someone can suggest a charity who would accept the measly amounts but use the aggregate for good.

I also have some fractional amount in a wallet whose ID is long since misplaced. I hope one day that's not something I could have retired on :)

Re: Poll: How many Bitcoins do you own?

#86
I have just over 1. I have traded really hard to get here. I started with about 0.3. I wish I had put some real money in but hey ho

I see it as a curiosity that might go somewhere.I think that the govts will wake up and stop it, if it looks too successful.

Re: Poll: How many Bitcoins do you own?

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, he hasn’t deleted the 50 BC. They are still there but they are trapped. He only deleted the only copy of the key to transfer them, so those BC will be trapped there “forever”. Actually it’s possible to brute-force search for the key and make the BC free, and transfer them. But with the same method it’s possible to steal BC. The brute-force method is just too slow, and would require a few thousands or perhap…

I think it's this facet of Bitcoin that's going to end up causing problems in the not too distant future. There will be an ever increasing number of "trapped" coins, BTC that belongs to someone who has abandoned it leaving it unused and thereby lowering the liquidity of the currency. A potential solution would be to incorporate demurrage, which gradually reduces the value of currency the longer it's held, into the BT…

There are trillions of satoshis total, so even if most of them are lost there should still be billions left for people to use. By analogy, a certain amount of the world's gold has been lost but people still use it as a store of value.

Re: Poll: How many Bitcoins do you own?

#89
post #48

0 representation here - I do not own any, though that is reflective to my fiscal status currently though have not owned any previously either. Why I own 0 bitcoins (currently): One aspect I find facinating about bitcoins over normal money is how they can be tracked and every coin can be audited openly down to its creation. Whilst with notes this is possible, tills and other transactions do not note down those serial…

I heard speculation that some ATMs were technically capable of recording the serial numbers of bills that they dispense to a particular customer (via OCR) and that some bill accepters used by banks or currency exchangers were capable of doing the same. Since modern ATMs already have quite sophisticated OTR on the input side -- I've found them very accurate lately at recognizing even sloppy handwriting on checks -- this is quite plausible technologically. It's not clear to me whether governments would ask cash-handling businesses to do this kind of bill-tracking today, and whether they'd expect to learn interesting things from it. (I'd imagine most bills participate in several cash transactions in between bank deposits.)

Re: Poll: How many Bitcoins do you own?

#90
post #34

I wish I had looked more deeply into the protocol back when the 10k BTC pizza event had occurred.

Hindsight is 20-20.

Yep. I looked into Bitcoin when it first came out and I predicted that it would fail. Satoshi's paper never mentioned the emergent pyramid-scheme social dynamics...
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