Bitcoin Forum

...and over half the Bitcoins that will ever exist are already in the hands of such a small amount of people (let's say 1 million?), what would be the repercussions?

As it stands today, a huge chunk of people are left out.

Those who:

- don't have any money to 'invest'
- are without a computer or internet connection
- don't know about Bitcoin
- can, but are unwilling to buy into Bitcoin for any given reason
- are incarcerated, sick, comatose, etc.

The rich can still buy, so they'll never be out of the loop. Besides, they hold value elsewhere which they can always sell for whatever the currency will be.

Forgetting the madness of speculative greed, and just concentrating on those who believe that Bitcoin can one day be the reserve world currency/money-- do you believe that such a disproportion in future wealth is something that's going to be good for humanity?

I always thought that one of the ideas behind Bitcoin would be to somehow 'stick it' to the rich/banks/governments. However, if the best case scenario (or one of them) becomes a reality, the thought of the future disparity makes my stomach turn. As it stands, 1/7000th of the world population already owns 50-60% of the total sum of the future 'money', and most of them are hording.

The possibility of this outcome alone makes Bitcoin the ultimate divider of people and predestines it for failure. The failure can, and most likely will, see it become what it once was-- a niche for a specific type of transaction or completely disappearing, or it will be a failure of humanity on an epic scale.

i'm glad you have brought up a question that hasn't been discussed to death. please explain how the current system is anything but making you sick to your stomach then we'll discuss bitcoins

As soon as i read this, i know its another rambling about...."wealth distribution"

I dont know about you guys but i'm sick of newbies who spent literally 5 mins thinking and then post up.... a "flaw" they just find.


EDIT:
I think we should vote for having Newbie section to up their logged in time requirement to 100hrs.

If cryptocurrency succeeds as a major financial innovation, bitcoin won't be the only one. In fact, some altcoins with superior features could take over most of the cryptocurrency market in as soon as a year or two. Things move fast, and we're still in the early phases of the rise of cryptocurrency. Ordinary people probably still have plenty of time to get into these investments and grow their wealth.

I haven't discussed it to death with anyone. If you already have, why are you joining another discussion about it?

Bitcoin will never be the sole currency just like the internet is not the sole source for news, phones are not the sole way to communicate etc...

This isn't a flaw I just found. I think it's a potentially fundamental flaw. Stop acting like you own the place.

Ordinary people in the 3rd world? If cryptocurrencies are dependent on technological innovation, the people that are behind, are only going to be left further behind.

because this topic has been discussed to death and that's why there is a search feature.

regardless, at least make at attempt to answer my question to you. otherwise it looks like someone is paying you to talk nonsense

How about cryptocurrencies in general? Anything that requires some kind of prior knowledge, 'luck', pre-existing wealth, technological capability etc. will eventually run into the same problem.

Yes, sadly the people who are being left behind in the 21st century economy will likely fall further and further behind. It's not because of bitcoin, it's because of automation, robotics and AI replacing the need for most human labor.

If you care about someone, plead with them to buy these rapidly growing store-of-value assets such as cryptocurrencies. Many people are going to have to live off of their investments when most jobs will be eliminated in the next few decades. Cryptocurrencies may in fact be the last chance for middle class people to gain enough wealth so that they can survive when automation really starts destroying the job market by making most jobs unnecessary.

Of course, what I'm describing could also cause a collapse of the current economic system. But who knows what would replace it. Things could get tragic for people with no savings or assets to fall back on, during a global depression.

What kind of problem? It's not a problem if it doesn't become the sole currency. I don't think anyone hoped for something like that anyway.

Bitcoin will never stand on its own. There can and will be many other competing cryptocurrencies. In any one cryptocurrency there can be a small number of large owners. However across many cryptocurrencies the value is much more spread out.

The current system has been making me sick to my stomach for quite some time. You are making assumptions that have no basis in reality. The very point of this thread is that the problems that we are currently facing will only (possibly) get worse. My numbers might be off, but even if today 1% (or 70 million) of the world population owns 90% of the money, that is still a better scenario than 1 million owning 60% of it.

Not if the cryptocurrencies are dependent on technological progress/know-how. It still leads to the same scenario.

If cryptocurrencies become the only currencies, doesn't that still leave a shitload of people behind?

Isn't every single speculator, consciously or not, hoping for that?

Personally, I would rather have a bunch of geeks own most of the money than a bunch of corrupt banks and the governments they buy off.

Why the fck you think you can have a "discussion" on "fundamental flaw" in a Speculation forum?

Idiot, go do a search, and if you're genuinely interested you will find the discussion and read over all the points that were brought up.

What a lame attempt, troll.
 

I just want to point out that it hasn't even fulfilled that niche yet. Bitcoin as a niche financial instrument is useful for making money transfers between people and businesses in different countries, to avoid bank wire transfer fees, Western Union fees, PayPal fees, etc. Most of the people and businesses who could save money by using bitcoin for this purpose aren't even using it yet.

Any proportion of any group will structure itself in the same way. You will still have greedy geeks-- or are they somehow immune to human nature?

Revolutionaries become tyrants, it has always happened throughout history.

Regardless, the proportions would remain the same. Would these geeks one day, in a moment of mass enlightenment, redistribute the wealth?

And one more point-- it is no longer the just geeks, but rather geeky speculators and speculators alone who are driven by greed that are buying up the most coin and form the the majority of cryptocurrency holders.

I think it's a totally valid question; don't mind all the others giving you a hard time, they're just butt hurt and in a bad mood today for obvious reasons.

You drooling buffoon, I am speculating on the future of Bitcoin.

If it matters to you so much, find the threads, and point me in the right direction. It would be so much more useful and you would make your point with one goddamn post. You would help cleanse this forum (apparently it matter to you that much!), and I would ask a moderator to close and move this thread.

Instead, like the useless waste of disgusting flesh that you are, you resort to insults and stupidity.

 

The philosophical issue you keep coming back to is your opposition to an unequal distribution of wealth. The problem is, in a free market economy, wealth naturally accumulates in fewer and fewer hands. Eventually, the poor overthrow the rich through a violent revolution. Then some of the poor revolutionaries become tyrants, as you pointed out. The cycle repeats.

I don't know if there is any permanent escape from this cycle. It seems to be a consistent feature of human history.

What I do know is that for reasons of personal survival, it would be very smart for the average person with a low net worth to be accumulating cryptocurrency right now. Because I certainly don't think the economy is going to be improving anytime soon. All around the world, there is chronic structural unemployment, governments deep in debt and in some cases practically owned by for-profit banks, and a lack of money velocity in the economy because more and more money is being concentrated in the hands of a few people who have so much that they don't need to spend it.

The only people who are truly free are those who have enough assets to live off of their wealth (passive income) rather than needing traditional employment. Cryptocurrencies offer ordinary people a chance to reach that level as this technology explodes over the next few years. I suggest that anyone who can do so, take that chance while it still exists.

P.S. I certainly hope that people who become wealthy from investing in bitcoin will share their newfound wealth with needy people and worthy causes. It would be great to see more philanthropy by bitcoiners.

It's not so much my opposition to wealth disparity in general, but my concern with how Bitcoin (cryptos) can potentially make the extreme disparity we have today look a lot less extreme in the future.

You say anyone should take the chance, but my point is that not just anyone can take the chance, nor will they.

I appreciate you actually engaging in a discussion. With that said, I think your position can be questioned. You say that this is a chance for ordinary people to get a fairer share, but if self-limited cryptos are the way of the future, then aren't a very small amount of early adopters and/or the ones with enough money to invest, going to always form a very small and highly disproportionate amount of wealth holders-- as is already the case today?

Like I said, a tiny amount of the population already holds over half the total amount of Bitcoin. I'm pretty sure the disproportion in other alt-currencies is even more pronounced because they are even less known. And if the amount of potential new currencies is unlimited, then wouldn't it make their very reason for existence pointless?

The best case scenario would be the creation of a new altcoin, with superior features to bitcoin, and its creators to be humanitarian type of people who would market the new coin as much as possible to ordinary people, so that there would be (1) more early adopters, and (2) more diversity among the early adopters rather than only geeks. It would have to be a project in which developers would work together with philosophical, socially conscious type of people to achieve a common goal of a "people's currency" that spreads wealth around rather than concentrating it.

My honest opinion is that bitcoin itself is going to become the cryptocurrency for the financial establishment. It's already starting to be embraced by hedge funds, and sooner or later it will be traded as an ETF on the stock market, and within a few years it will be playing a store-of-value role similar to gold in billion-dollar investment portfolios.

I will continue to own bitcoin, because it's a good way to make money and it's a useful tool for sending money abroad without incurring large fees. But I don't believe it's going to fundamentally transfer power to the common folks or anything like that.


True. But that, alas, may be part of the human condition. The smart and the lucky have advantages. It is what it is.


There is nothing actually stopping ordinary people from buying bitcoin. They just need to be made aware of it, and they need to be persuaded that it's worth the risk. Even somebody who buys a few hundred bucks worth of it today, could still make thousands of dollars from it within a few years.

When i 'm talking about bitcoins i 'm talking about cryptos in general. And no speculators don't hope for that. They just want as many options as possible in order to speculate  :P

The smart would look at this as nothing more than a speculative bubble-- everything about it is a classic bubble. If they are smart, they will probably stay away. There is a difference between smart and informed. So the informed might say this isn't a bubble at all, but they will have an extremely hard time justifying that to someone who is rightfully skeptical and using their smarts.

The ordinary might only need to be made aware, but since they're already relatively late to the game, their success will depend on the people that come after them. If there are none, they will fail. The people that got in early, or have already cashed out are the only winners so far. Time will tell if anyone buying in now will profit, but the fact remains that they will drive the price up most for those who got in early. So the later they get on board the less of a potential payout exists, not only because they're late to the party, but because the more people that buy in, the less potential there is for every new 'investor'. That will make it harder to get any ordinary, smart, or even extraordinary folks to buy in.

The singularity is near.   Some may be left behind :(.   Good news is that there are some signs that many are connecting and integrating.   Mobile technology in third world countries with things like M-PESA and such.

So , should I stop washing myself because on other part of the globe people don't have drinking water?
Should we stop having big tv's or powerfull appliances because people on other side of the globe don't have electricity?
Should I refuse 90% of my wage because in Somalia they earn 10% of what i'm earning?
Should I stop using google because some people don't have a clue what internet is?

So you say smart people dont see how usefull Bitcoin is ? You should maybe invest some time how is Bitcoin used, and not just look at price market...

Care to explain that singularity riddle? Also m-pesa, africa and bitcoins failed to create any hype so far although it shows potential for the currency.

You should treat water as the precious and very limited resource that it is. You should do your moral part as someone who lucked out in the lottery of life and try not only to not be wasteful of water, but to help those without it. Naturally you don't, you're a self-righteous scumbag who feels entitled to things simply because of a luck of the draw.


You realize the energy it takes to power your high-tech toys is taken from other parts of the world? Do you realize that people are being killed every single day, and worse yet, live horrific daily lives, because people like you feel justified in their greed by their arrogant sense of entitlement ?

If you do, you're just another asshole. If you don't, you're an idiot. I don't know which is worse.

I'm also pretty sure that you are unaware of the fact that this brand of ultra consumerism is unsustainable, and sooner or later, we'll all be fucked.


In Somalia, they probably earn 1% of what you're earning. 10% of your wage going to them would automatically increase their wealth by 1000%, while decreasing yours by 10%. So maybe you shouldn't refuse your wage, but you could put it to a use that is something other than simply hoarding for yourself? You know, like helping others. Sure, I understand that charity can be a corrupt business, and that it's sometimes better to give a fishing pole, than actual fish, but we could so much more-- instead of being so damn blind to what is happening around the world.

In relation to Somalia, one of the stated reasons by the pirates for their illegal activities is the illegal dumping of toxic waste by western nations off of their shore. The waste is a direct bi-product of western consumerism.


How about using google for something more than Bitcoin speculation and porn?

I think a flaw in your argument is that you are speculating about the future of bitcoin, but applying the current day bitcoin wealth distribution.  As if as we go from here to sole reserve currency, it won't change dramatically.

First attempt to prove that after bitcoins grow to the point of being sole reserve currency half the bitcoins ever created will still be in their current owners hands.  I think it's possible that there would be enough distribution of coins along the path that at the end of the road the concentration aren't in higher ratios than with our current system.

What the hell you can use google for anything other that those two?

The usage of Bitcoin, on a world scale, and relative to everything else is minimal. It has for most of its history been used for 'off the books' transactions. These transactions were often made to purchase illegal goods. Sure more people are adopting it, but mostly they are doing so to profit somehow from the Bitcoin phenomenon, not because of some profound philosophy or practical future implications. And whatever the tiny % of businesses that have adopted it is, they do not justify the attributed 'value' of any cryptocurrency, because nothing justifies a pricetag (based on fiat, btw) on what is supposed to be a method of exchange. The pricetag is nothing more than speculation.

I think that is being extremely optimistic, but even if your scenario were to prove true-- nothing in the world would change at all, so what would the point of the currency be? Maybe I'm asking too much, but in other words-- what would be so revolutionary about it?

Yeah, that's why it's still a good buy. Because the usage isn't going to be minimal for much longer. It's a very useful technology.

Did the smart also stay away from buying stock in Microsoft or Apple, pre-IPO?

Bitcoin is currently like a pre-IPO tech stock. You can't even buy it in your online brokerage account yet. And, like tech stocks, it is based on a specific technological innovation. People who are buying bitcoin are betting that the innovation of cryptocurrency is going to catch on and be used much more widely. I think that's a smart position, and I don't think there's any reason to believe that bitcoin's current valuation is just a bubble.

I think you're underestimating the utility of being able to transfer money across international borders nearly instantaneously and without paying fees to a financial institution.

Bitcoin doesn't have to solve the socioeconomic problems of the world to be a big deal. It just has to provide a useful service that people will want to use.

I share your idealistic desire for a more egalitarian distribution of wealth. However, I don't see bitcoin as the solution to that social issue. I just see it as a useful technology that can enable people to transfer money through the internet without a middleman.

there are like 9 million coins left to mine,,, everyone has there chance.... people are going to learn how to be different. savers instead of spenders. its a needed flush of the system. Yes of course 20% going to own 80% thats nature... research 20-80 rule... its universal you cant change it. Best thing to do is protect your coins and protect your family and blood line... Why do you think the rich are so strick on who they associate with and they push out trash... they dont wanna be infected!

Newsflash for noobs, bitcoin isn't about fulfilling your socialist fever dreams of "wealth distribution". It never will be, and we don't care. Nor do we think wealth distribution the way you are talking about it is a particularly good idea.

Bitcoin = GO BIG or GO HOME

I don't think anybody should have any delusions that bitcoin "solves" disparities in wealth.  There will always be wealth disparities, that is just a reality.  If the only value bitcoin was touted to bring to the world was no more wealth disparity than your point is valid and bitcoin will be pointless.

The world can change dramatically and still have rich and poor people, not sure why you would think otherwise.

If anything I think bitcoin can bring somewhat reduced unfairness in wealth distribution long term.  Sure there will be some wealth concentrations around the smart and business saavy, around the ruthless and psychopathic, and around some due to early adoption for awhile.  However this is true with our current system, and with bitcoin you get the benefit of not allowing the rich and powerful to crony up to the money printers and get first dibs like you see with most fiat.

So my prediction would be somewhat more fair wealth distribution, as well as all the other advatages that comes with sound AND programmable money.  Sounds pretty good to me.

Edit: My personal belief is that current wealth distribution is not 100% "fair" but that neither is !00% uniform distribution of wealth.

You're sooo wrong.
Somebody  cursed me and called me a non - believer (not the actual word he used) , because I said that bitcoin won't solve the problems of poverty and hunger in Africa.

You idiot OF COURSE bitcoin will solve world hunger, world peace too, otherwise what's the point?!!?!

You have to add "Asic communist" so that I will feel really insulted :))))))

Oops sorry, you Asic communist.

Anybody can aquire bitcoins now, there is not lower limit. If you planned to go to the pub and buy a pint of beer, you could buy bitcoins for the corresponding amount. It is your choice. If you do, you might be able to buy a hundred pints later. Maybe. Anyway, even the very last adoptor of bitcoin will be able to reap the benefits. It is a money designed to not loose value, forchrissake.

Bitcoin is sound money. In a world with sound money, everybody will win. Some will be richer than the others, but so what? In case of no government intervention, the riches of any individual will depend only of his merit. If one individual is good at making money, it means prosperity to everyone, not only to the one earning the extra profits.

A prosperous societey means individual rights, private property AND the general understanding that being rich, not by being friend of the government types, but by the merit of making useful products or services for the consumer, is respectable and deserved.

This was the situation during the industrial revoulution in England. If there is a country or area that have this attitude towards the makers of wealth now, tell me, and I will move there.

if it ever comes that far, the current owners of bitcoin can only gain goods by spending their bitcoins.

unlike the current wealthy elite, they can not just print more money.

eventually even the richest bitcoiners will go broke if they keep spending their bitcoins.

True, but that still wouldn't change the fact that the richest Bitcoiners came upon an extreme amount of wealth and others did not. In fact, they came about the coins by attributing a value to them that literally comes from thin air, much in the same way as printed money.

No, see, you are missing some steps.  Bitcoin won't "become the sole reserve currency" with the current distribution.  The Federal Reserve, the ECB and the PBOC aren't going to put out press releases saying "We've adopted bitcoin as the reserve currency.  We don't have any.  Can you sell us some?"

The banks need to acquire them first.  That means buying them from people.  That means changing the bitcoin distribution.  In particular, the central banks would need to gather many, many bitcoins before they could consider using it as a reserve.

Your analysis is very static.  You don't see the system as being a living, moving thing.  But I figure your post is much more political than it is analytical.

If the banks had to buy them from people, you think they would buy them at whatever the speculative (out of thin air) value is? They would run it to the ground before they would 'buy' a single coin, and at that point it would be useless. The government and/or media can destroy Bitcoin at any time. They've never redistributed their wealth and they're not going to start now because of cryptos-- nothing will force them into that situation, they are the ones in charge and there is no way in hell they will allow competition-- for them, everything is at stake.

This is why I mentioned Bitcoins simply disappearing. My question is a hypothetical/philosophical one.

Most people with some ideals see Bitcoin as a way for the banks/govt to stay out of our pockets-- to not allow them to take more than they already have-- this is seen as unjust. Bitcoin is seen as revolutionary by these people because of its ability to accomplish this. I happen to think that these same people acquiring so much of something for pretty much next to nothing, is also inherently unfair to those that don't, and won't do anything to redistribute the wealth from the ultra rich to the ultra poor. It is a potential revolution for the 'haves' in denial but not for the 'have nots'. They will not actually be taking anything from the super rich, and the wealth (because of the very nature of 'wealth') has to come from somewhere or be in relation to something else. That relation will only cause the poor to become poorer because they didn't gain anything of value, even if they didn't actually 'lose' anything.

But you can't have it both ways. There is nothing I did that made me potentially deserve anything when I bought a bitcoin. I simply exchanged one method of storing value for another. Sure, bitcoin has some usefulness as a tool for barter, but why would we attribute a value to it, when bitcoins being traded for bitcoins is pointless. If there is only a finite amount of value just as there is a finite amount of resources and people, then where is that value coming from? 

Exactly! Bitcoin is like Napster. After Napster there was Morpheus, Grokster, Kazaa, Limewire, etc. etc. which were then supplanted by eDonkey and BitTorrent. It's never going to stop. People who think Bitcoin will remain the major cryptocurrency on the crypto markets are just naive. The use of technology on the Internet is rapidly evolving. eMunie is a highly advanced cryptocurrency and can be the next big thing.

You are so confused that I'm not even sure where to start.

All value is "out of thin air", or really "in our minds".  If the banks want to buy bitcoins, they will do so at a price agreed to by the seller.  That's how markets work, the buyer and seller agree on a price.

I'm not sure how exactly "they would run it to the ground", or how they "can destroy Bitcoin at any time".

You also don't seem to understand the distinction between money and wealth.  To be clear, money is not wealth, it is what you use to purchase wealth.

The people using bitcoin today are not getting rich for "pretty much next to nothing".  Just because you can't see the value in what someone does, does not mean there isn't any.

And finally, bitcoin is an experiment in libertarian/Austrian money.  The goal was not social justice or wealth redistribution or any other left-wing nonsense.  If that was what you wanted, go check out the altcoin section of the forums.  I'm sure there are plenty of scamcoins there that aim to do what you want.

I have read your post and was thinking that you might be right and I might loose all sticking with Bitcoin... And went to eMunie http://emunie.com/how-it-works

LOL.

It's just another for-get-rich coin. Bring something better to the bitcoin protocol and I'll switch. Meanwhile, if people don't like, please don't use it.

In barter, you trade what you have for what you want.  Money is a way to abstract that transaction out.  You still trade what you have for what you want, but it doesn't need to be with the same person, or at the same time.  You complete your half, giving what you have, for an IOU.  Later, you redeem that IOU with someone else to get what you want.

By holding that IOU, you let society use your wealth, your capital.  You hope that you'll get back a value similar to what you traded first, plus the growth of the capital you let society use.

But money doesn't have a fixed or objective value.  It is subjective, just like everything else.  By holding that IOU, you are also taking the risk that you might not be able to trade it for what you initially gave up.  You might not be able to trade it at all.  Particularly with bitcoin.  By holding your IOU in the form of bitcoin, you are taking a huge risk.  There is also a huge potential upside, but that isn't at all a sure thing.

You don't think the the banks or government can manipulate the markets? Outlawing, extreme taxing, using the media as a tool for propaganda, etc. are just a few ways.


If Bitcoin is supposed to be money, why is one worth $700? Or anything at all?


If I bought BTC1000 for $1000 a couple of years ago I didn't do much to justify having $700,000, or the ability to suddenly buy a house and fancy car. Excuse me if I don't see much 'value' in what I did. The problem is our notion of what is valuable. Hard work or even smart work isn't valuable-- getting as much as possible for as little as possible is what passes as valuable nowadays and is precisely what gives value to Bitcoin.


There was a goal of social justice, just not for everyone-- you know, not having banks or governments controlling and taking our money-- remember that? By saying there wasn't means you are admitting that Bitcoin is nothing more than speculative greed driven 'value' quite literally based on nothing. What other usefulness does it have over classic 'money'?

And because you mentioned all the other altcoins-- wouldn't they make Bitcoin 'tech' seem redundant (if that were another aspect of its 'value')?

I think they can try.  You seem to assume that someone has a magic wand.  If they do, then the topic isn't interesting.  If they don't, then the topic is pointless.


Because someone else is willing to give you that much for one, or they are willing to sell you one at that price.


The good news is that the market doesn't give a fuck what you think.  The market thinks you did something good, and is rewarding you for it.


"Social justice" is one of those phrases that always means the opposite of what it means.  In general, people that are interested in actual justice don't use the phrase, and the people that do use the phrase really mean "theft".


Ever hear of the network effect?  If you created an altcoin that was exactly like bitcoin in every way, why would anyone switch to it?

Now if you create an altcoin with some differences, people will use it depending on the utility they see in those differences.  So far, it would appear that people want bitcoin more than they want the alternatives.  In the long run, we'll see who wins.

I don't think we are actually communicating here.  I'll see if I can try to find a better way to explain it to you.

Yes but the question is how big? And for how many people to become big  :P
Saying it that way makes it sound like a ponzi  :-[ :-[

You made a good investment. This isn't any different from people who happen to buy the right stock at the right time. Reality doesn't give a shit about what you "deserve", where did you get that idea from?


The value of bitcoin lies in the its technology, the existing network and userbase, the infrastructure, and the brand. The first is no longer unique, but the rest are, and they will be difficult to challenge at this point.

Does not make sence, Bitcoin market cap is too small and the Bitcoin infrastructure almost nonexistent to even think using Bitcoin as reserve currency.

The value is in Bitcoin the payment network.  Every time a new merchant adopts bitcoin or another service is created to be layered over the protocol or the current network attracts another hour of development time or dollar of venture capital the payment network of Bitcoin increases in value (both "real" and speculative since increased "real" value ought to beget more of the same due to the network effect and as such has an attached speculative value as well).

The bitcoin "coins" have a value because they are the only allowed units of account for this valuable payment network and they are predictably mathematically scarce.

It doesn't matter whether or not you see value in this network.  There are countless things in this world that I don't personally value at all, that if given I could sell and therefore have value regardless of my feelings or anything else.

This is why copying the source of Bitcoin as BitcoinClone won't immediately give a valuation of the BitcoinClone units of account the same value as those of Bitcoin even though the technology is identical.

Hopefully this gives you some insight as to why bitcoins have a value on the marketplace and why altcoins don't make Bitcoin completely "redundant".

Much of my verbiage has been stolen from Erik Voorhees.  I think his method of explanation for Bitcoin's value proposition is concise, effective and easily understood for those who don't see it for themselves at first.  For me the value of a widely established p2p decentralized digital payment network was obvious.

Here's an example of his explanation with more detail if interested:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1rxmk3/my_open_letter_to_peter_schiff_followup_from_the/

You deserve to have the value that you saved, in full, when you decide to consume. With bitcoin you will have more, for your knowledge and foresight. Or may be, in your case, you were just lucky. It happens.


The money's value is the sum of the value that all participants wants in reserve for the immediate future and for the long run. It is not a resource that you can consume, it's value for direct use is zero. The value comes from what you can exchange it for. There is no finite amount of value in money.

The thousands of nodes all over the world, the massive computing power that being used for mining and all those people working with one way or the other around bitcoin is a nonexistent infrastructure?  ::)

Yo dawg' looks like you confusin' sense of entitlement with acceptin' of dealt hand.

Why don't you toss around a few more insults, show us exactly how perfect *your* morality is...

dude, this is bang on. I bolded your stuff cuz this needs to be better understood.

Thanks man. I am fighting windmills.

No you are not, educating neophites and slow thinkers is an important part of acceptance.

I really don't understand the current invasion of socialists and communists on this forum.
Whats the hell is happening ?
I'm sure they only care about their personal wealth when they shout about distribution , but I see more and more posts every day.

there enough alts to go around for everyone, eg doge coin, and 100s of others....and they can be traded to BTC.

so this argument is just invalid

a more interesting question is will the alts cause a death of a thousand cuts to BTC, or make it stronger by competion, or replacement.....if the BTC are good but too slow they could loose market share.

One thing is for sure, alts have prised the private keys out of Bitcoin holders. Alts almost force a BTC holder and Fiat holder to divest.

<tinfoil hat on>
I thought at one point everything that produces heat will mine, but now its looking like everyone produces heat will mine their own alt.

70 Billion alts here we come.

The 51% attack may not eventuate even with low hash as the moment you don't guard you own chain, you get attacked....and you are forced to run multiple chains so that you can afford to loose some, like chafff....ok I got carried away here.......
</tinfoil hat off>

Say one altcoin, say litecoin, will compete well with bitcoin and be just as big as bitcoin. What is the effect on bitcoin? The last doubling of value before the end stabilization will not happen. Yes, we might have 20 doublings from now, the last one will not happen. Conclusion: Hold on to your bitcoins, fear nothing.

Well, 20 doublings is a bit of a stretch...

well no you buy assets where people pay you in BTC for them, BTC is not destroyed when you send it its just cycles through the system.

BTC can only be lost from the system due loss of private keys, or maybe dust issues, the latter may be soluble