Bitcoin Forum

Do you think in the past year and a half (since ATH), has there been a quiet redistribution of bitcoins? Do you think major players are quietly accumulating right now?
 
One payment processor, Bitpay, has said they don't sell their coins on the open market. They have private buyers for them. Also, since the public market has been relatively stable since the beginning of the year, if any major players were accumulating, they wouldn't do it on the public markets.

If you have any data on Bitcoin distribution from late 2013 to now, it would be great to see if it's getting more or less concentrated.

As a general rule of thumb, when a promising asset (and BTC is the most promising thing of the past 100 years) stays really small, with a small marketcap, while you see tons of news about it and how much it will disrupt the world, but you still don't see any growth.. then yes, someone is staking up BTC daily in small amounts to not trigger a panic buy.
Since we are poor, the smart thing to do is follow and buy as much as possible during times like this, and hold on even if you see dips to scare people away.

I have wondered about this myself. My plan of buying a fixed dollar amount each month seems to be working for me so far.

Bitpay partners with Bitwage, who provides Bitcoins to anyone receiving a paycheck via direct deposit.  Simply setup your direct deposit to send a percentage to Bitwage's deposit account and you receive Bitcoins to your wallet address every pay cycle.  No action is required to withdraw your Bitcoins.  They are sent to your actual on-chain Bitcoin address immediately.  It is essentially Bitcoin direct deposit.  It circumvents hostile banks that might try to keep their customers from sending funds to Bitcoin exchanges.  This allows for a complete cycle wherein Bitcoins spent at merchants who do not wish to keep them are then sent to Bitwage's customers rather than being converted to fiat currency at an exchange.

I never really understood the reason for doing this. If you want to convert a certain amount of pay into BTC every month simply setting up an account with an exchange and sending the $ amount you want to buy over every month, works out to be the exact same. The only thing I can think of is the Bitwage path is automatic, but manually buying on an exchange isn't exactly hard and probably results in less fees. Both paths require you to provide your banking and personal information so there isn't an advantage for either one.

Look at bitfinex to see how the price was managed down from an attempted bubble last July in the mid 600's through the use of heavy leveraged shorting (at one stage up to 35000 bitcoins). Someone has bought a lot of coins in the last year.

You don't need to use your own bank account for this.  You just need a job that offers direct deposit.  You get to cut out the extra middlemen of your bank and an exchange.  Right now Bitwage is free to use.

could be, but i really think the large traders that wanted to buy coins in a quiet manner have already done so. or maybe it is a group trying to buy up huge loads of coins without moving the market. that can explain why it takes so long.

Whaleclubs buy small amounts on a daily. They did this with LTC and they did this with DOGE for long periods of time. But with Bitcoin is different, because millions of non-whales that want to get in are paying attention, so it only takes a push from whales for legit increments in the price that may establish solid higher floors.

I believe there could be some truth in the OP. There certainly has been a lot of manipulation over the last year or so.
My advice would be to do the same as the big players may currently be doing - keep accumulating, buy as much as you can gradually. Even if it's only small amounts keep buying for that future moon bound rocket launch.
Don't get left behind, make sure you are prepared. No regrets!

Agreed 100% , I've mentioned this a few times already.

They're going to accumulate till around block reward hitting 12 and then start to manipulate it upwards.

Redistribution? Not really. I can't see a major flow of bitcoin from large holders to small users. Early miners who holds thousands of bitcoins aren't really selling. May be a few to buy things and gamble a bit. Some have sold all their holdings and exited the scene, I believe they are a minority. New bitcoin users are buying and gathering small amounts, that's tiny amounts compared to the large holders. Large holders still have lots and newbies still have too few.


I would think so. I base my optimism on the diversity of investors from the bitcoin auctions. Major players are certainly interested and there are MANY of them. Most of these investors aren't buying from exchanges, it's too slow. There are 3600 bitcoin minted everyday by miners. I believe a large portion of these minted coins are sold to these low-profile players.

Then it's up to the newbies to entice their coins away with higher prices.

If you did gather vast amounts of coins for negligible expenditure there's really no temptation to sell anything now unless you hit sudden desperation.

I have been not so quietly accumulating.

You can create a chart for me and it would show 2013: some bitcoins  2014: more bitcoins  2015: even more bitcoins

And the rise will look natural because of the halving, because of the ETF, because of the world currency crisies, because of the... :)

Of course there has been a redistribution, from early adopters to piglets bagholders bitcoin enthusiasts.
Major players are quietly distributing now, they will accumulate when we'll reach double digits (or close).

Yes, I do think it's entirely up to the new users to buy coins at fair market price. If they are not buying, we can't help them. My comment was a response to OP's question, stating the absence of "redistribution". Redistribution, to me, is not a tiny "shift" of distribution, it has a "magnitude" to it, and it's not happening  :D

I can imagine a bit of both accumulation and distribution; that is to say, much like many other markets.

I think there will be the 99% / 1% kind of distribution all over again.  Average people in a decade will likely be buying in mBTC while there are a couple of large holder companies that have been collecting all along without trying to disturb the public market.  As I write that it reminds me of the gold market.

This.  

Average Joe bitcoiners see the price doing nothing, so they do nothing (i.e., don't buy, don't accumulate).  But they are mistaken to think that MM's, large institutions, banks, etc. are not quietly accumulating right now.  It's easy for them to accumulate off exchange directly from large miners (or perhaps they ARE the large miners? Hmm?) without moving the market one iota.  Then they will run it up when they are ready.  This happens in pretty much every equity/asset market on the planet.

This is why over time in the future the majority of Bitcoin will likely be owned by the 1% wealthy oligarchs.  Because Average Joes are just completely ignorant of how the financial world really works.

You keep trotting out this scenario but each time it looks less and less likely.

Besides, the high volume capitulation at 160 and the months later were the accumulation phase. Shorts are down by 25k on bitfinex, I wonder why they aren't reaccumulating for double digits! :)

Wider ownership of bitcoin is easy to envision, but lending for production is more difficult.
Maybe we would need to have some derivative for lending as interest rates on bitcoin would be a double whammy if bitcoin would be appreciating at the same time.
In other words, why would someone lend bitcoin if they don't collect interest rates?
However, if you borrow in bitcoin and it is appreciating, you most likely will not be able to pay it back as increasing interest payments will crush you.

strong accumulation seems ended while we were stuck in 220-250 low range, now that we are moving up we can expect a less accumulation and more redistribution

you can see that the occasional slippage/shorting of the price is due to accumulation

I am thinking this is the beginning of accumulation leading into the next halving...  as the supply runs dry we will begin to see the price become temporarily parabolic again.

Regardless if there was a reditrubution or not, its going to be used constantly for gambling casino site w. and without bitcoin sites.

Its a money transmitter, that fact alone is enough for me to continue holding like how ATT&T bought out all the towers before taking over western union. But in this case, you get a piece of the pie. It may not make sense now, but if a company like amazon decides to buy a good amount and setup something similar prepare to get a amazon check for getting bought out.

You don't get wealthy doing nothing. There is always the "smart money". Free of politics, superstition, wacko conspiracy theories; people who look at math rather than opinion. When the price goes up I'm sure they will all be accused of cheating somehow.  In reality they outplay the competition.   

Nothing is maybe a strong word, but contemporary history is showing that is not always is the case: check the wikis for Severin, Moskowitz, Sean Parker etc in conjunction with Facebook. They were there in the beginning or close, did not do much later, but are currently worth at least $4-5 bil each.
Bitcoin is similar: those who were there/mined first have lots of coins, and later contributors have progressively less.
We already have 99/1 bitcoin distribution. I don't see how and why it would change.

Anyone thinking that doing nothing to get rich needs a reality check lol.

Input = Output

Which is the basics of anything on how the individuals should look at. You`ll smart money comes in different forms as well, like how a gambling site can say fair play, but its how they cheat you out without you noticing which is obviously "increasing decks" or something else that puts them win situation all the time.

People say the grass is greener on the other side.

The reality is that the grass is greener where you water it.

the distribution of the base of the people who are accumulating Bitcoin is becoming much much broader
This is Bulls and a diversified base of new buyers coming in.