Bitcoin Forum

There are so many opinions on people saying, someone is wealthy or rich.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/rich
or
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/17/upshot/definition-of-rich-changes-with-income.html?_r=0

Many people consider being rich, as the positive balance in their bank account or the house bond that are paid off.
In many instances, people regard a high income above a certain income bracket, as the indicator of wealth. I know for a fact, most of those people with the high income, has just as much debt, or even more than the people earning less than them.

Do we consider someone being Bitcoin wealthy, when he reach a certain bitcoin count? Say 1000 coins?
Do we know how much other debt these people have, or if they own any other assets?

In your opinion, when do you consider someone as being wealthy or Rich?

People judge other based on the car they drive or the house they live in, but most of these are backed by huge debt. If you subtract the debt owned by these people, compared to the assets they own, they are acctually poor.

Let's not judge people, based on the size of their Bitcoin balance.  ;)

there is no real correlation between being rich  and having tons of bitcoin that now, would make you rich but that previously weren't worth so much

if your income is much greater than your expenditures(with a minimum of 1k salary), say x2-x5-x10, it is evident that you're very wealthy

I have a very simple definition of being bitcoin rich or wealthy. Someone it will be considered rich or wealthy in bitcoin only if he can have FOR SURE every month at least 50 bitcoin as earnings. This money are enough to have a good life, without excesses. The richness and wealth have no end. So I know that not everybody with agree this my definition. But me myself will be very happy and I will consider myself wealthy if I would have that amount FOR SURE mine every month.

To be very honest: more if the value decrease (same amount as today value in euro) but not few if the value increase.  ;)

Someone with 1000 coins is considered wealthy, specially if those coins are hold through time, but chances are, most people will sell all of their Bitcoins before 1 Bitcoin reaches a ridiculous amount, by then, people holding only 1 Bitcoin will be wealthy through natural wealth distribution over time + increased demand.

A single address with a lot of coins, could be a family trust or a charity fund or a business. {Let's not judge addresses}

If you, for the sake of this argument receive say 10 Bitcoins a month, would you consider that person as being wealthy? I am trying to figure out, what benchmark people set in their mind, to determine what they perceive as being wealthy. We throw around words like <Whales> when we look at fat addresses, but we do not consider other factors, like debt. < The more you make, the more you think it takes to be rich. >

Let's say a hacker needs to decide between hacking 2 different accounts on Coinbase. What account would he go for? The account with the 7000 small transfers from faucets or the one with the single transfer for the same amount? I say this, but I doubt if they really consider that or if they just grab whatever they can hack.  

What makes one rich or wealthy is what amount of money/coins they can store.
So it doesn't really matter if you get 1BTC or 1000BTC
It's about how much of that can you actually store.

One person could be getting 500BTC per month yet have expenses/bills/etc that are worth +500BTC
Then again another person could be getting 10BTC and have no expenses what-so-ever.

Who do you think is rich from the two of them? ;)

It is no use putting an arbritrary number on this.. For one country this might make you wealthy, but in another you may just get by the month.. Really depends on the situation.

Well, I think wealthy would mean being have to spend a lot, while getting even more.
But then again, not really since one of the richest men alive (Warren Buffet) lives a pretty lifestyle.
Therefore, maybe the number of 0's in your bank account (or bitcoin wallet) is all that matters.

I don't think there is any strict definition of what is wealthy or not but one thing I know is monetary 'wealth' isn't everything. You an also always lose the money you have quicker than it took you to earn in. Personally wealthy would being financially comfortable without any struggle but even that can soon go if you lose your job or make a bad investment choice or something.

the number of bitcoin you have don't make you rich or poor but the amount you can save up and the equivalent in fiat. because it doesn't matter if you can earn for example 100BTC a month when you should spend more than $30,000 a month on your living expenses. but if you can earn 100BTC in addition to what you spend then you can be considered sort of rich.

For me being rich is having enough money to last the rest of my life without working plus having no debt with my home paid off and self sustaining utilities. Then having enough money in an investment that gives me an income of a few thousand dollars a month to live on.

Once I hit that point I will retire.

why are people like Bill Gates, Elon Musk etc still working then  ;)  ?

The key is having the option.

Then you're just doing something you enjoy, not working. ;)

My idea of retirement is running my own business on my terms.

Well they still have enough money to stop working, some just choose to keep going. For some it's not just about the mopney but success or making a difference.

To own 100 btc is rich for me, last year I had highest 150btc and it was worth over 60k USD, but I was scammed by a shit scammer, former vootcoin dev -  mscollec, he/she screwed us, I hate altcoins now, they are scams.  >:( :(

If i didn't buy his/her scamcoins, I would have 100-500 btc, that's rich enough for me.

Bitcoin Rich is when you look at the first page of the Rich list and one or more addresses of yours are there...

Owning just 21 Bitcoins makes you one in a million. In my opinion, this is enough to be quote-on-quote Bitcoin rich.

I disagree, there is a correlation between being rich and having tons of bitcoin.

If you have enough bitcoin to make you rich in the fiat terms (within which you live), then you are bitcoin rich.

Don't downplay your wealth here, Amph, you're living light with a big BTCankroll...celebrate it!

P.S., just don't forget to let people know that your wealth is sponsored by Bit-X!

Hey man, the phrase is "quote, unquote". As in you're explaining that you're putting quotes around something you're saying. It's not "quote-on-quote", which doesn't make any sense but could be easy to confuse for the correct phrase if someone is saying it really fast.

I agree wit your 21 coins...1 in a million is a hot place to be! And if you have 21 coins now you're actually 1.5 in a million (since only 14 million coins exist right now)!

Rich or wealthy is beyond well-off. Well-off is having enough to maintain the an above average lifestyle compared the people in your community. There is no line to define rich because rich is comparative term. You call someone rich usually mean he or she is richer than you.

21 million BTC / 7.5 billion humans = 0.0028 BTC per person. If you control more than .0028 BTC, you will eventually be above average wealthy.

But why should we, people of the internet, should compare our lifestyles to those of our local communities? If a Bitcoiner from Ukraine had 100 BTC he would be considered rich in his community, but not in the UK or Germany. Same thing with age. If somebody had 10 coins at the age of 15 he'd probably be rich among his friends ;)
You are right of course that it's comparative and each of us will have a different view. Anyway, a 100 coins is considered a significant amount anywhere in the world, even in the rich countries. With that money you can start your own business or pay your bills for many months.

That is an interesting way to look at it. Almost everybody in this forum can be considered above average wealthy.  ;D
Personally, I would consider anybody with over 100 bitcoins as being 'bitcoin wealthy'.
It may not be too high in fiat terms today, but I expect it to be very valuable some day.

I consider anyone who owns 1% of the total 21 million bitcoin to be wealthy/rich. you can live happily ever after with that much money.

Wealthy still stays in contact with how much they have, and try to earn more.

Rich has someone else doing the job of watching their money, they just go out and spend.

Richnes depend on how much money you have not how much money you spend each day or month wealthy is if you are spending money good money on your each need you are doing it your way spending alot of money and having good life but dont have a huge bankbalance then you are wealthy i prefer being wealthy over rich you seriously dont need to be rich to enjoy good life

Someone holding 100 bitcoins now is not Bitcoin Rich (today) because the value in fiat is still too low.

Another problem is that bitcoins can't easily generate income yet.  So you can't easily earn interest on your stash of BTC to live off.  You have not choice but to slowly sell them to fund your wealthy lifestyle, not a good option.

Bitcoin Rich (today) would need at least a couple of million USD in bitcoin.

No. You'll 'eventually' be dead and maybe your kids will be wealthy. Depending on how long it takes.

Hold until you die just doesn't work. I think everyone should have a price to get out at, or have enough coins to gradually spend the increased price, yet it not adversely affecting their wealth.

No idea about an exact amount, but I would say anyone in the top 0.1% of bitcoin owners can be considered bitcoin wealthy.

Because bitcoiners on average are probably slightly wealthier than the average population. So there are a bigger percentage of wealthy bitcoiners than just wealthy people in the general population, which I would put at less than 0.1%.

i would not counts every human, between them there are ill people and 0-3 years child, do you really thing they care about bitcoin

so it's more like the double of that, we can round it to 0.006


i don't see a difference with fiat, you earn bitcoin fairly easy without any regular job like with fiat, so it is much easy to earn bitcoin than fiat

2M is relative, it depend how many money you need to consider yourself rich, personally i would consider myself rich even with 500k, but better with 1M, more than that it's pointless for me

How did we get to the <21 Bitcoins = rich> number? I see that number coming up all over the forum. In my opinion 21 Bitcoins cannot even buy you a small car in my country.  :(

From all the comments sofar, I like this the most :

If the amount of Bitcoins you have, can pay for every expense you have, without you having to work. <Basically being on pension>
You have to be debt free, and be able to live comfortably on the Bitcoins you have for the rest of your life.

Depending on the lifestyle you are used to, this would be different for all people. Inflation is a @$%$... and living on any income, without a option to beat inflation, kills that idea for most of us.  >:(

Check the Distribution of bitcoin wealth by owner thread by Rpietila.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=316297.0

According to the latest stats published by him, some 349,000 people own Bitcoins (i.e more than BTC1). Out of that number, some 14,000 own more than BTC100. So owning 21 Bitcoins will not make you one in a million (if you take the total number of Bitcoiners).

bank accounts balances, asset holdings coupled with debts may not represent or use as an indicator. Probably all of that wouldn't matter some day because I think the biggest indicator right now is still the bitcoin price. It could change the scenario depending if price goes up or down. Let's look at the price. At 270, anybody holding 100 btc wouldn't be defined as rich based on current inflation rate. But somehow one day, if the price goes up to 5 times that amount, I would say the guy is probably well off.

You must be joking. Where do you live?

You can get a lot of good cars for 20 BTC. For example this Mazda 3.
http://www.worldspeedcrewcup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/2014-Mazda3-Sedan5.jpg

interesting thread.

but how can you tell exactly how much someone owns while usually people would spread their coins in different addresses. so it can't be decided on the address's balance.

Nice, but my figures wouldn't be quite that optimistic, at least in the short term.  Most big companies are estimating that by 2020, there will be somewhere between 4 and 5 billion internet users (currently around 3 billion).  I'm assuming that not everyone will be using BTC, as there will still be people who don't recognise the advantages and will continue to trust banks.  I'm going to go with .1 BTC which is assuming that roughly 5% of internet users are using Bitcoin by 2020. 

21 million BTC / 210 million users = .1

If you've got at least a tenth of a BTC, you'll be doing okay.

Although I notice you used the qualifier "eventually", so yeah, I guess if you wait long enough then .0028 might be above average, but that will be in the fairly distant future, I think.  Depends how long it takes for people to stop trusting the banks.

i would consider myself rich if i have enough money that i don't have to work any more and in terms of bitcoin i would like to have something of around 1K to be satisfied ,

They are still working because their kids are not Bill Gates or Elon Musk  :D And the reason is now they can't afford just to stop working. They are addicted to work and making money it is as simple as that. For me the definition of rich is like you keep on spending but it doesn't affect the size of your bank account. That is the rich person in true sense  ;D

I don't think Bitcoin was invented to make any one rich or wealthy. I think the purpose of bitcoin invention was to do some things that could not be done by fiat system and do it with WHATEVER bits you have. :P

I'd say a person is rich when he has more money than he or his family can spend. A person is wealthy when he has far more stuff than he needs, but all these does not necessarily bring happiness. A person is happy when he has learnt to be satisfied with what he has worked for with his hands, without comparing with another. ;D

One Bitcoin off exchange makes u amoung the top 21 Million richest people in the world

 It depends on your perspective. If you are a fiat-minded person, it would be about 2000 bitcoin. If you're a bitcoin-minded person, 5000 would be the number to be interested in.

Being rich is much more of a mental thing (way of thinking) than a monetary thing. You can earn $10,000 a month and waste all your money on unnecessary things or you can earn $2,000 and be smart enough to save $400 or $500 each month which you will use for investment purposes.

Yeah being rich is a mental thing. When every human make a living within there monthly earning the living will give pleasure than getting loans and having comfort with unwanted expenses as mentioned in the above quote.

My definition for whether someone is Bitcoin rich/wealthy is whether or not they have an average year's salary in Bitcoin. This means around 113 Bitcoins, or anything above 100. Those are the people who have a lot of investment into Bitcoin, and thus they likely won't be leaving it anytime soon.

i agree with that,but let me add some rich key,its an luck factor,everybody need luck if they want being rich,people with good wealth not just hardworker,but also lucky guys,they succes in inevestement and not scammed or bankrupct,unlucky guy just lose their money by robbed or scammed.

To me being rich involves millions so you would have to have at least 3000 bitcoin to be rich in my book.  but then there is many differant ways to be rich and not all involve money, health, love, family etc etc

Only under the assumption that the whole world has accepted Bitcoin, which is not case yet.
 I have some feeling 1000$ is a peak, for some time. I don't know why people are not satisfied with this price?

My ex boyfriend bought 6,250 when they were only a few cents. Never touched them and now they're locked away on a HDD with a forgotten wallet password. Is he wealthy?

Being rich for me is have everything you want and also things you don't have you can buy if you want.
Being wealthy is running buissnes have happy family and good amount of money to support your family

i agree with you at one point that you might feel being rish if you have your personal life in a good shape and everything goes well with it without any major problems

though when it comes to definition of what means to be really rich and wealthy i think only billionaires can be counted in such list

I think the word rich mean a person having everything and happy, but by the word wealthy mean having wealth and don;t know how much is he benefiting with it, and don;t know he is living with all the things he need.

my definition for being bitcoin rich,when i have 1000 bitcoin,and i will call my name as bitcoin rich,invest some bitcoin,make some store,and giving away to you all here..

well, i think there is not set number for considering someone rich and when it comes to bitcoin it gets more complicated because the price of bitcoin is always changing and someone who doesn't have that much bitcoin becomes rich if the price goes up.

Being rich for me is when I have no financial restrictions as to what I want to achieve in my life. Of course things like health and family are also an important part of feeling rich because without them your life will be miserable even if you have the most money in the world. I would say being rich is a balance between personal finances, health and family. Bitcoin was invented to give you freedom so in away we are benefiting from it towards our goals in life and should be happy for having the opportunity to use it   :D

well I agree with your point, it's a boon for us to have an opportunity to use bitcoin. one's wealth depends upon health, peaceful life with family members and enough money for living. But being rich completely depends upon the money in your pocket. To earn that money bitcoin helps you in all way.