Bitcoin Forum

When you think about who really has the most power and earn the most profit... it's the miners of a cryptocurrency. Assuming stable prices of course. lol

Is it fair to compare them to shareholders in a company, where the currency is the product?

no they aren't the share holders in such a model, first of all because they don't hold. ;D
I mean their role, is to ensure propagation of the coin network and they get a reward for it. So basically they are bank clercs.
They manipulate lots of coin, but don't keep them for them (well they have bill to pay)

wtf are you talking about.

I mine and hold the following.

BTC
LTC
RVN
BCI
DOGE

I sell some of the btc to pay all power bills and to expand gear.

But many of us miners mine and hold.

This question is hard to give a correct answer to.

Basically a currency doesn't really have shareholders. Usually shareholders hold shares to companies that produce a profit, a currency is not that. However Bitcoin is a very volatile currency which increases its value compared to the US dollar, so you can say its like a stock per say.

So in that case, every miner which mines a specific currency, earns a small % of that currency as a miner reward, so they in fact are holders of that currency.

However these days, most of the larger holders of BTC are not miners but early adopters which held their coins like Satoshi or the Gemini owner's.

Will a lot of miners retire/stop/give up after the halvening of Bitcoin in 2020? Or will it still be profitable for them? The war for blocks will be higher I imagine..

Crypto is a commodity like gold. Gold is both mineable and tradeable like a currency.
Gold mining adds new supply to the market just like crypto mining.
However, the gold market would not die if all mining stopped.

And another comparison, both gold and crypto mining are bad for the environment.

I guess they'll be a share holder if they will keep their rewards, not all miners have the mind of an investors, some just treat mining as business, so they just need to be profitable every month to continue their operation.

Those who hold bitcoin regardless on how they acquired it are considered a share holder for me.

Well first of all, this question makes no sense as currencies don't have shareholders.  A shareholder is like what the name suggests:  someone who owns shares of stock in a company.

I don't think its accurate at all to say miners have the most power and make the most profit.

Well honestly it is ok to compare the shareholders and the cryptominiers. They are both "holder" of the coin. Share holder buys the coin for them to hold and miners mined the coins for them to hold as well. Both of them are sharehilders of the coin, they can also sell the coins if they want .

Miners are shareholders if they mine as a seperate business and own a portion of the
business, otherwise the're just investors or speculators.