Bitcoin Forum

I've been studying about Bitcoin for the past few days. I've been wanting to get my feet wet all week but just buying a few mBTC with $20 or $30 USD, but after reading about all these stories of complications, delayed transactions, hacking scams going on BTCe, Mtgox, Coinbase, I'm really afraid to try now.

One thing that strikes me as strange is the whole start of Bitcoin by the person/group Satoshi Nakamoto; so Bitcoin was programmed so that there can only be 21 Million total, only a few diehard computer geeks knew about it in the beginning, mined a disproportionately large bulk when it was unknown and worthless, and then Bitcoin went semi-mainstream. The only problem is, with a so many people attempting to mine a fixed number of Bitcoins, everyone gets a smaller share, and only those who can afford large, commercial-grade mining setups can accrue decent amounts.

Why didn't the creators of Bitcoin just give everyone in the world 10 free BTC at the very start? They were worthless in the beginning, so it would have cost nothing. Why couldn't they set the max number of total BTC to maybe 50 or 100 Billion and just send 10 free BTC to every email or IP address in the world and let people decide if they wanted to keep them, throw them away, give them to someone else, trade them for something and so forth?

Please let us know , how the hell would have he been able to do this.

Satoshi can do anything, he is no mere mortal. You just have to believe!

Think about this for a while, and you'll realize why it wouldn't work. There's no true correlation between IP addresses, email addresses, and people. If you think it would work, I challenge you to do one of the following:

1) Send an email to every email address in the world.
2) Send a message to every IP address in the world.

Good luck!  :)

Perhaps once BTC reaches a significant presence in worldwide markets, Satoshi will distribute his fortune equally among all active BTC addresses. This means adopters in 3rd world will be given a great economic boost. If any man is in a position to dramatically transform the world economy it is Satoshi.

Read somewhere that he is holding some 950,000 BTC. Not enough to give one BTC to everyone who possess a wallet right now.

If there were a way to track active addresses I would bet the # of active addresses is significantly lower than 950,000

Why give when everyone posses the ability to mine one or more  for them selves?

Gold would not have had the same value, or the same impact on society and global economy if it was everywhere and everyone had access to it...

Enlighten me on this.
Nope , lots of people out there don't have the ability to mine one single BTC.

I thought we had all agreed mining for bitcoins is pretty much not an option at this stage without heavy duty hardware.

These few die hard computer geeks made Bitcoin software, and invested their time and it was not sure at all Bitcoin will be such success ;)

from looking at older topics here,I guess no one predicted it would be this big,I also saw posts about an old wallet used to give 50 btc's for entering captcha. even if satoshi decided to use that system years ago,and even if he got millions of e-mails it might be considered as spam.

There was many faucets giving away large quantities of bitcoins during the early days. Of course with the price over 1000$ thats not possible anymore.
Also if they started sending bitcoin in mail addresses those bitcoins would have been lost by now.

The two questions everyone has failed to answer:

- Why the hell would someone give $11000 USD to everyone in the world
- How?

OP, don't study bitcoins if you are coming up with these questions.

Not possible to give everyone part of total Bitcoin supply because new people are born every minute. The Bitcoin would be inflationary instead. So back to work to make living, no free lunch

Well , he said in the beginning and in the beginning 10 btc were't worth even a pizza package (wrecked one with two drops of ketchup).

If everyone was given free BTC, it would be like dirt and not gold.

The OP probably just wishes he was into BTC earlier, I have that same wish. :(

Enlighten me on this.
Nope , lots of people out there don't have the ability to mine one single BTC.
[/quote]

Everyone has the ability to go and buy hardware to mine. Whether they can afford to do it or have the funds to do it, is another story.

My point was just as I said. If you were given BTCs then the value would be less than if it had been accumulated by work.
BTC would then equal Copper not Gold.

And this bit about "Don't mine unless you have serious hardware" is a crap statement.
Why?
Well because look at it like gold. An ounce of gold = $1800
But you only have 1 Gram of gold it's still worth $39.37

So the price of gold goes up to $2000. Guess what happens to the gram? It doesn't lose value it goes up as well.

So even if you don't have a machine that mines at 4ghz, you are still mining, and it's still worth something.

Those guys who mine gold in the north. If you see what they pull out of the sluice box, it's flakes of gold, not whole nuggets.

Hehe, good answer. :)

Everyone has the ability to go and buy hardware to mine. Whether they can afford to do it or have the funds to do it, is another story.

My point was just as I said. If you were given BTCs then the value would be less than if it had been accumulated by work.
BTC would then equal Copper not Gold.
[/quote]


Another story?????
That's the point.

Don't go say anyone / everyone , when its is "some people".

You can still get free BTC from free faucets, not as much as in early days, but the dollar value is about the same  :)

You're better off with a minimum wage job

This seems like a truly egalitarian idea but will soon met with the harsh free market. You flood the market, things become worthless. Among other issues, one of the main principles of bitcoins is their rarity or limited availability. It would take too long for them to become worth something.

Distributing money equally at start to all seems like utopian socialist idea

Yes, the guy could have actually decided to distribute it via unique ip addresses which was already built into the client.

Sadly this was not on the agenda at the time.

The "network effect" of having people mine bitcoin was required so that a transactions confirmation network was in place and grew along with the supply of the bitcoin currency, and grew at the same rate that was needed for the amount of transactions that would occur.

Without the need to mine the bitcoin, there would be no people providing for the network transaction confirmation model.

Work needs to be done in order to create value for bitcoin. When a miner invests money in computer hardware, or uses existing computer resources, and electricity, to mine bitcoin they are doing real "work" that gives bitcoin value.

Many did receive free bitcoin in the early phases, and they installed the wallet of course, in order to maintain and receive that coin, and so they in turn could send others coin, and so they could use their coin to purchase things, or trade the coin for things.

A tree starts from a seed. The leaves spread, the leaves die and fall, and give nourishment to new trees that start as seeds and the forest grows, and a tall, strong tree stands in the forest and produces many seeds, and the solar system, and the galaxy, and the many galaxies and the universe and the many universes exist, and they all started from a seed.

With any digital currency, those who do the work initially--and there's a ton of work to be done--need to have an incentive to do so.  Any of us could have bought bitcoins when they were cheap, but we had yet to be convinced that it was worth doing.  Others who realized the true value of the Block Chain have been preaching the benefits for years, often proselytizing to deaf audiences.

Those setting up altcoins would do well to learn from the Bitcoin model.  I certainly don't agree with spending $150,000 a day on electricity--then demoralizing new investors with the ASIC miners that are delayed to the point that they cannot possibly make money.  Still, Bitcoiners have poured time, money, and effort into proof of work and marketing.  They've donating thousands of bitcoins, bought T-Shirts, set up demo tables, and busted their butts for what they have.

There really is no free lunch.