Bitcoin Forum

I think, there is another big thing why BTC is so treated hostile. Banks have their own interest. But many rich people are very addicted to FIAT connotations and the structure of cryptocurrency may change the general structure of possession.
This may build a thesis that:
- crypto currencies are pumped to give a strike in a moment to 'alienate the fashion' to BTC and show how 'BTC and crypto' is bad for the economic system
- or they are locking into positions to make is centralized through smooth control of the course of crypto
- or it is just a sheep run pump, as it goes.

I would like to open a discussion on that. What do you think?

It might change which people represent the 1% but if you check the top bitcoin addresses you will see all the money is concentrated at the top as well.

I also disagree that bitcoin is treated hostile, I have found rich people overwhelmingly like the idea of bitcoin, even banks do. I think why people mistakenly think the establishment is hostile against bitcoin is due to the lack of regulation on this new type of currency/asset. That is quickly changing though and both countries and banks are lining up to accept it in a more regulated manner.

There are also a lot of people in the 1% already that have big bitcoin holdings and many more that have diversified at least small portions of their portfolio into it. There is a reason why the notion of an ETF would bring so much money into bitcoin, because even pension funds would be able to invest in it.

I am bullish on the prospects for bitcoin but for different reasons than you, I think it has been accepted by the establishment so that's why I think it will continue to grow.

I think the current pump is a natural reaction to what I mentioned above and the real bubble is yet to come.

I think that it is going to be regulated, but only because of the reason that any regulation brings limitations (licenses). The newest EU resolutions brings cryptocurrencies into the process of KYC/AML verification, as well as trade mechanisms like exchanges are going to be forced to have trade licenses. I'm not saying it is totally bad - contrary - it brings safety. The main thing is that this regulations are often not adapted to the essential idea of BTC and decentralization. It is forced for BTC to be centralized somehow. Any structure bringing the ability to speculate over course (i.e. like banks now do with relation EUR to other currencies being in EWG but not havinh EUR) brings closer to centralization. Why? Because it is speculated. Not by the community, but by singularities.

It is good question but there are several answer for this.

To be honest i dont now how would be effect and how would all be, but if we look on everything we have some people so rich, that the effort involved in making new type of investment in Bitcoin, can in the end vastly outweighs the effect that this investment could possibly have on their lives.

Other are trying to get rich quick with bitcoin (so many of them), will it be just buying and holding or it will be investment in altcoin.

But some bottom line is that bitcoin network is more popular than ever and Bitcoin is higher than ever.

Old analysis but showing that 1% of population may hold ~50% of all money: http://www.bbc.com/news/business-30875633

I wonder what are the statistics of BTC and currencies. If it reaches over 51%, there is real possibility for BTC to be controlled by 1%. This is something like centralization for me.

There will never be total equality in this world. The rich always becomes richer because they end up joining forces with other rich people. Meanwhile, the poor and the common man continue to struggle with his daily life, trying to make ends meet, some living from paycheck to paycheck. That’s the harsh reality of life when it comes to wealth distribution. The gap between the rich and the poor has never been wider, and I don’t think bitcoin or any other currency can really tilt the balance in favor of the less privileged ones.

You might be right though the people that make money through Altcoin trading and became an expert in making money doing it can get really rich since millions of dollars is flowing through it everyday. Just because someone is rich does not mean that they will be able to pump coins and get their money out of it.

This is a wrong thesis for pretty obvious reasons

Money is not wealth, and rich people are rich not because they are sitting on piles of cash (as many erroneously think), but because they own huge businesses and corporations which can indeed be priced or valued in fiat terms (e.g. Apple costs 800 billion dollars) but they don't represent fiat or money as such (what you term as "holding fiat capital", which is not fiat). They represent what is called real wealth. So these superrich people like Bill Gates are mostly Bitcoin agnostic, i.e. they don't really care about it as long as it doesn't interfere with their business empires in general and daily operations in particular

No, no and no...
BTC cannot prevent the concentration of income in top bracket or we say top 1% rich club. Generally we consider those to be rich who have large amount of fiat wealth, etc. So now if we consider dominance of BTC over fiat nothing would change as there are enough holders in case of BTC with numerous amount and people who enter market now will hardly able to hold BTC as equal to earlier adopters. This will make the wedge in case of BTC too as similar to fiat.

At least the top 1% holders of fiat and top 1% of holders of bitcoin are different. Bitcoin may redistribute wealth, but it is possible that we would still have a standard 80-20 distribution curve, with a different set of people.
That isn't too bad, in my view.

The problem with crypto is that no matter how you distribute it whether through crowdfunding or in bitcoin as case, just letting it into the wild and wait for early adopters, there will always be a small portion of early adopters or early investors that hold most of the coins.

But yes, I think it really does change the fact that the top 1% of people all holding fiat. I've seen several pretty rich bitcoiners that have most of their capital in bitcoin and alts. But still the price has to increase a lot for anyone to make it into the top say, .0001%. But it will happen.

Nah. Cryptocurrencies would always end up at the hand of a small elite, just like fiat. Mostly early adopters would be those on the top but as in the case of bitcoin, the people rich in the traditional sense (plenty of liquid money) can simply afford to buy in as much as they want after they have weighed in on possible profits.


Only communists ever believed it'll be possible for people to be all the same. Some people would just be gutsier, luckier, smarter or more industrious. Just look at bitcoins. Those who bought $1000 of it on 2010 would already have $46M by now.  ;D

For me the ultimate goal is just to keep the gap as realistically small as possible and to allow enough social mobility so that it's possible for people to go up the ladder in less than 3 generations.

I think it is also element of being the early adopter - benefits are higher, however risk is higher too.

For example:

BTC - early adopters produced BTC, now professionals do, it is impossible to do single mining

altoins - the same scheme, now anyone can make an altcoin..

tokens - created are tools like waves that enable release of token in couple of seconds.

smart tokens - represented and covered in smart contracts (as basis)

I wonder what is the next derivative.

It will be a switch of elites... in money, there are always elites, so if you are hoping for BTC to be some sort of fair thing then you are dreaming.

We will go from fiat elite to BTC elite.

Of course, the good news is that we are ahead of the pack and we can still become elite. "1 million club" thing by holding 21 BTC is a good way to put yourself in a good long term position.

In 2010, the people's attitude towards bitcoin was much easier. I haven't heard any stories that someone kept their bitcoins and become a millionaire. Spent some of it at the first opportunity. We all remember the example with the pizza. Luck is in your hands and who knows, maybe you become someday a millionaire.

As to me, that's mostly bullshit

Or just severe misunderstanding what the elites are made of. In short, money cannot buy you a place there. Further, I don't think that having a few million dollar worth in bitcoins (or with just a few million dollars) are going to make you into "the neighborhood". Money is important, but wealth is certainly not about money as such. If you somehow have 100B dollars in cash (aliens print this money for you), you still won't be able to buy real wealth with it, e.g. businesses, power, influence, etc. Most likely, your fiat wealth will be quickly declared null and void as soon as authorities become aware of it

Though top level people will hold most of the bitcoin then also it doesn't mean they can control it. They might be able to control the pumps and dumps (which is rare) but they can't really regulate the bitcoin in their way for price speculation. The bitcoin is limited as we all know and only some percent of which is in circulation. The fiat connotation is completely different from the crypto world an decant not be compared with it. So though holding most of the bitcoin won't affect the bitcoin economic structure for sure.

AFAIK large banks typically hold trillions in derivatives exposure. The amount of balance sheet wealth banks have on paper literally rivals the GDP of nations. That's what bitcoin and crypto are up against if they hope to someday capture a significant proportion of the world's wealth--enough to make a difference.

The way things are now the combined market cap of crypto is like a grain of sand in comparison to the wealth of elites which is an entire beach.

That also doesn't take into account whether elites are buying GPU's & ASIC's en masse, otherwise taking steps to take control of crypto infrastructure and politics. Microsoft, JP morgan, banks, VISA are heavily invested in eth. They could create their own crypto and assimilate it.

It depends on what they are up to

They likely don't need to have complete control over Bitcoin just like you don't always need to have a 50% plus 1 share stake to effectively control a company. Sometimes you can do almost anything with a lesser stake in it. With Bitcoin, it is essentially the same. You can just grab enough coins to beat it down to death, i.e. make it totally unusable by constantly crashing the prices and buying more and more cheap coins at lows. This is not always possible but, on the other hand, completely wiping the coin may not be the ultimate goal in the first place at all

Cryptocurrencies are extremely centralised in terms of holders.  You have people like Roger Ver who put his money less than ten years ago and is now extremely rich.

When the price goes up too dramatically, it naturally results in centralisation unless all of those early adopters sell along the way.

Not actually,
With Fiat, The government levies tax from the high earners and tries to redistribute it.
But with bitcoin, there is no such mechanism, so bitcoin will make the rich more richer.

You're basically agreeing with me, under the guise of not agreeing with me.

The current system of taxing higher earners is not working properly, because poorer people tend to spend a higher proportion of their income on static taxes e.g. VAT.  So fiat is naturally extremely uneven.

Bitcoin could naturally be similar to fiat, it's just a short term problem that dramatic surges in price have resulted in centralisation of Bitcoin holders.

Banks and governments love their fiat because they can steal form the people by simply printing more money, they do not have to find where your money is hidden they can steal your purchase power and they hate bitcoin because they cannot do that.

There is a chance that bitcoin will change this.

I would say that there are already billionaires made from cryptocurrencies. Satoshi probably has a few billion dollars which is definitely a nice chunk of coin, even though he might not spend it just yet.

I see a lot of people arguing about when bitcoin becomes widely adopted, there will still be the elite holding the majority of the coins. OF course, this is an issue. However, is there anything that can be done to change it? Besides, this discussion is about 1% rich people holding fiat, not how many bitcoins do the 1% elite hold.

I agree, in my opinion, the power on money is the only thing that governments are afraid to lose. Bitcoin as a way of storing money is exactly like fiat. If someone is rich and bitcoin becomes massively adopted they will simply change their cash for bitcoins. The price increase will only create a handful of new rich early adopters. A rich person will remain a rich person even if tomorrow gold or bananas are used to trade.

As to me, that's highly unlikely

A couple years ago there were a few threads discussing Bitcoin distribution and wealth inequality thereof, and the conclusion was not very promising overall. Bitcoin wealth distribution is as skewed as it could ever get. It was said that around 1,000 people hold (held back then) the total majority of all coins, so Bitcoin is not a lot better in this respect than fiat (in fact, it may be even badder). And what is even more discouraging, it is along the same lines with any valuable asset out there, and that seems to be sort of natural outcome even if there was an even distribution of that asset initially

Considering the continuous rise in Bitcoin value, I don't feel Bitcoin will be able to change this deadlock.
Alternatively, it will follow the similar pattern as FIAT does.
Suppose someone bought BTC for $400 three years ago, now in present he automatically becomes 7 times richer than those who will buy BTC with same amount of FIAT. As a result, when cryptocurrencies will become wide-spread to 20-30% of Population, early adopters will directly comes in top 1% bracket who bought BTC at low prices as compared to those who will buy at this time because supply remains constant.

Top holders are not early adopters for the most part

Indeed, some have been holding their coins since inception (e.g. Satoshi with his 1M stash of bitcoins), but their numbers are set to decrease with time, this is inevitable. Some of them are just passing away (like Hal Finney) and then their coins are either lost for good or just wasted (well, sold) by their inheritors and relatives. Some of them lost their coins in the Mt. Gox scam. Those who didn't likely sold the best part of their stashes anyway. The bottom line is that the top bracket almost always has a considerable part of nouveaux riches (so-called new money). It is the same with fiat, for example, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett make up new money (while Rothschilds and Rockefellers are old money)

Your point of view is one way to look at it but on the other hand, it worthy to note that the issue of bitcoin prices is actually dependent of the majority moving with the swings in terms of prices. Its possible we might not be able to separate the human artificial factor in the determination of prices, but at the same time, the majority give them the power to do so by falling in line as a result of panic buying or selling. But if we are to maintain our position, we then realize that the forces are just too minute to determine our direction.

Yes bitcoin is bad for economic system, it smells like sh*t better not to touch it, I'm talking to the 1% holding fiat rich people you hear me?
People now are using crypto currencies for 2 reasons:

1- To have the freedom over their money without any governmental intervention.
2- To earn pure profit by pump & dump.
I see no problem with that.

In my country it is even worst about 20 families control more than 80% of the riches of the country, there is never going to be any kind of social mobility since they control everything in the country, bitcoin gives us chance to make money outside of fiat and all of their controls in the economy.

I think this is an interesting question, but we shouldn't analyze "wealth" in a static way. Wealth is often a dynamic process, where "money works" over time and feeds a certain class of people (those relying on profits inside the "financial system").

In this context I think Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies can definitively change something, because it provides an alternative to the banking system. "Crypto banking" is still not highly developed and it has a lot of problems, including the volatility of cryptocurrencies, but I see potential for it to replace the current banking system at some point in the future.

As Bitcoin is more transparent than the traditional banking system, there will be less chances for middlemen to "steal" money out of the system than it happens with the current banking system. That means that the cycle that feeds the elites that benefit from the financial system is weakened.

So Bitcoin could weaken the financial sector and instead boost the economic sector that produces "real world" economic goods and services. We'll have the "financial elite" then replaced by an "industrial elite" and a very small "Bitcoin elite".

There is no way to prevent uneven bitcoin distribution.

In the end when Bitcoin will turn out to be a legit, true and successful asset then rich FIAT holders simply liquidate their fiat positions in favour of BTC.
Nothing will really change, rich will be richer and poor wouldn't still be able to afford to buy enough BTC to change their life.
What bitcoin brought to the scene is more people, mainly early adopters, who will be extremely rich in the future.

If the rich people begin to convert their Fiat money into bitcoin will dramatically increase demand, and hence will raise the price. Everyone who has coins can win. I'll keep the coins and wait for this moment.

It's more likely that the government and banking industry would try to regulate cryptocurrencies. Money stored in it after all would be hard to tax (bad for government) and can't be lent out (bad for bankers).

As for bitcoin reducing the fiat of the rich, they are just exchanging it for bitcoins so they still have their asset. And assuming it keeps going on an upward trajectory, then the rich earn much more. And this is money they might not be taxed for. The rich become richer, always. Nothing, nothing ever changes.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/column-conquerors-inequality-four-horsemen-apocalypse/

Well it isn't much of a chance to change the 1%. More like it adds to the 1% if you think about it.

The 1% have only a few million dollars USD just so you are aware. And that is their networth, not how much is in a bank account. Networth includes your bank account + stocks +stock futures + your house + your car + your business.

A lot of small businses owners are in the 1% if their business survives for 5 to 10 years. Most people who put into their retirement fund when they retire have millions of dollars that is used for retirement.


For peope who didn't have a retirement fund like a Roth IRA or a 401k, their money was taxed while they worked for 40 to 50 years, that money is then given to them in social benefits. So they technically have millions of dollars of networth too that is paid out monthly over 20 to 30 years.

The 1% is more like the 70% in America, because a lot of Americans will get this money or have a retirement fund, the 1% is misleading because that is comparing it to the rest of the world.

As to me, this is an unlikely scenario

With Bitcoin we likely have a wave of new money coming in (the so-called nouveaux riches). Obviously, fiat deep pockets (those will represent old money) will be in a subdued position if we assume that they would ever want to switch to Bitcoin one day (they will be running after ever evading prices like a kitten trying to catch its tail). This is certainly not what they will like because they simply can't accept this state of affairs. So they will likely try to fight Bitcoin whenever it starts to threaten their financial hegemony

That might be the case when it comes to a smaller number of stubborn people, but everyone else with a decent level of economical understanding, will definitely not sit back and look how their fiat wealth is slimming down in value year after year. It doesn't mean they need to go all in, but it wouldn't hurt to convert around 25% of their fiat wealth to Bitcoin. If that's too risky for them, they could even go with 12.5% gold and 12.5% Bitcoin if that gives them a better feeling.

Amen. The capitalization of the average 'rich' bitcoiner pales in comparison to the dynastic wealth of the truly rich, the actual 1%. Bitcoin would have to go to infinity to catch up with these guys,, there are folks on the Forbes list that are worth GDPs of small third world nations. Old money wouldn't have time for all the new, disruptive money running around, lobbying and whatnot and mucking up the general state of affairs.  And the government gets the most of its bread and butter from the top of the ladder. If bitcoin threatened the status quo, it will be regulated to a fine mist :)

This is something shocking a country whose 80% or more of the economy is when under the control of so called 20 families the people of that country must be facing too much hindrances in continuing the financial growth because almost everything and institution will be in their approach and they may not give a chance to others to grow financially and as well socially.

I feel pity for the people there. Bitcoin in such circumstances will be of a great help for the people there because it will not be in their control and so people can carry on working in bitcoin. 

You assume that Bitcoin will be a bullish asset for a long time, so people would benefit from converting fiat into BTC. But I predict that in about 10-15 years at most we will enter a new stage where the price increases of the Bitcoin unit will be much less than today - the "steady stage" or "final stage" of Bitcoin adoption. From this moment on it won't be attractive to use Bitcoin as a store of value, as it will be outgrown by other values like stocks and real estate. It will be used mainly as a currency.

That's why I think Bitcoin's main effect on wealth distribution will not be that it creates a new elite - it will create some rich individuals, but they are mostly holding Bitcoin already today. As I said before the disruptive potential of Bitcoin lays in the possibility that it will make obsolete a whole part of the financial industry and weaken the elite associated with that business.

This is just showing us that we live in reality and even if Bitcoin is representing some noble causes it is still subjected to the current environment we have. Since Bitcoin is also about value and price, it is naive to expect that the usual human nature as re[resented by greed would go away. Not so. We are still humans here and so we have our own interests to look up to.

I don't believe that there is a significant concerted effort from the so-called elites to maneuver Bitcoin...what we are seeing are people big and small who are already into cryptocurrency and they want to make their newfound power known to all...and this is quite normal in trading. The current of cryptocurrency is still nothing compared to the global economy.

Of course, there will always be resistance to something new and that is quite normal. But when those who are resisting would realize that they can't win they would eventually join. Now, the question is: Are we ready for the elites to join us in cryptocurrency? Maybe we are not since we are also resisting their influence.

Smart rich people invest in cryptocurrencies. It's naive to think there are tech billionaires out there who think that bitcoins are bad and fiat it good.

Money always flows up, those at the top expand and get more, rinse and repeat. It's not like it is anything different with whatever crypto you try to insert as a means of achieving some near-utopic system. Go and look at any crypto that has been accepted by merchants or is at least commonly used; the most values go upwards and into the hands of those running businesses. The overall goal in a proper capitalistic system is not to be a worker for your entire life and rather become a business owner as well, again assuming you didn't have to deal with the corporatism of today.

People are addicted to fiat currency because they have not yet been introduced to bitcoin. Bitcoin is the only crypto currency that free's us from this debt based system that the fiat currency that we all been using since the evil bankers. Bitcoin will force the monetary system to change it ways or be crashed by it repeatedly until they learn, this crypto currency will free us from oppression, exploitation and tyranny from bankers. A decentralized monetary system should how be our fiat currency just like bitcoin. That's people becoming popular.

Yes this is what currently is happening and will be happening, many of the rich community having fiat are more influential on their government because they pay high taxes to the government and hence can make the government agree with what they want.
The reason for why the governments are not legalizing bitcoin consists of this factor that the stock exchange doesn’t want them to accept bitcoin. This fight between the hard stuff believers and the soft technological believers will go on.

There will always be an uneven distribution of money and as robots and technologies that replace human labor become even more common then the gap between those that can get those machines and services and those that do not will only become bigger.

Capitalism follows the laws of the wild

The survival of the fittest and all that. The major difference, though, is that in nature all people and animals have approximately equal life spans (but even that may change in the future), but it is different with corporations. Sometimes, they kick the bucket too, go bust and bite the dust, but ultimately their life spans are not inherently limited (unlike human lives), so a generic human who is inherently mortal has to fight with inherently immortal corporations which become only stronger over time (on average)

I couldn't agree more, cryptocurrencies are actually for smart people and they are investing in it and so the smart rich people are likely to have some kind of investments in cryptocurrencies or Bitcoin just like genesis mine and even Microsoft who are into mining.