Bitcoin Forum

I've been off of the forum for some time, and I was just wondering if the btc distribution of wealth (very few people owning a lot of coins, opposite to a lot of people with poor accounts) has changed, considering the " bubble" , gox etc. I'm not able to analyze the blockchain by myself. Someone can help me satisfying my curiosity?

I think is same. top100 holders matter all the rest are peanuts.

If any of top100 holders fart, bitcoin price collapse.

Bad. I hoped more than some whale had cashed out during the " falling"  of price...
I think that unfair distribution of wealth is the biggest flaw of btc design.

The bitcoin wealth distribution is very uneven. A user who holds tens of thousands of btc who sells most of his/her holdings may likely drive the price down, which is not good for those die-hard bitcoin holders out there.

Exactly the problem with all currencies, the 1% that control the most wealth.  Looks like bitcoin is no different  :-\

First of all: no. The btc distribution, if unchanged, is bad even if compared to usd or eur (ok, probably Zimbabwe dollar is even more unfair, but that should be not our target).

Second: btc need to be adopted by a large mass of people in order to sucess, it's not supported by banks or governemnts like fiat, it's supported only by trust (trust that some1 will accept my btc for something valueable, even if no government force him to do so).

Reason why they will not do something stupid and harm their own financial interest.

Exactly.  One nice thing about whales is it's not easy for them to get out without destroying the market causing their own investments to be with less and less.  Whales need to be smart and patient when selling otherwise they hurt themselves just as much as everyone else. 

A disciplined investor will sell over a LONG period of time in small increments to not make waves and collapse the system.  Unlike what I believe happened with that $8mil sell wall that up for a few days, that's just manipulation keeping the price down so they can acquire more at the price they want.

Rich gets richer, poor gets poorer. Unfortunately, this is how the world works, and believe me, it will only get worse with time.

One of the reasons the BTC price is very volatile is because of it's distribution and the ability of large holders to easily affect the price due to their actions. They don't necessarily have to destroy the market by their actions, as one user noted above, but the volatility that comes with a few users controlling most of the coins is definitely not good for you average Joe who may be looking to purchase a coin or two and then losing most of the value in a short period of time.

This is the fundamental for any economic system including Bitcoin. We are all just helping whales continue living like kinds while the rest of us have hopes of Bitcoin ever being high enough to at least retire us from the health destruction that is going to work. Let's all hope together.

I don't think the distributions is "unfair" nor is it a matter of "design".  It's quite fair as anyone who solves a block gets a substantial amount of btc no matter who that person is.  The fact that early adopters have more is an accident of history, not the design of the btc.

I think the distribution of bitcoin far is less prevalent, just focus on one of the big collectors only, while the collector who received less small role in the distribution of bitcoin, bitcoin major collectors have a large number of bitcoin is not distributed properly, so that the capitalist bitcoin ensued, collecting besarpun monopoly on the case, so there is no difference between cryptocurrency currency with fiat currency of a country ... hopefully that bitcoin there can now be distributed properly ..  :o

Even if you had given all the people in this world 0.001 BTC on day 1, after a period of time the distribution of bitcoins would change and become 'unfair'.

It satisfies a power law distribution.

yeah...when you see a list of big stake holders then there is always fear that someone might decide to dump it for fiat.

This is not about BTC design, but about the very nature of money and capitalism. Even if the initial distribution was made in such a way that everyone started with the same amount, it would eventually return back to a few people.

Right, the capital distribution in the world is only slightly different because of government control, so that the poor are not too poor. But since there is no control for the bitcoin world, the poor will be extremely poor, and the rich will be extremely rich.

Are you saying that thanks to the government, we're not that poor? That's an odd point of view, considering at least the poverty of my own country, Mexico (home of the richest person in the world).

I don't know the situation in Mexico. But for China, even thought it's still a developing country, it still supports people who do not have a job or have really low income.

Every government in the world have some form of welfare, payed by taxes proportioned to wealth/income. That should be why btc distribution is bad even if compared to usd or eur.

If it was distributed fairly along the world, who knows? Surely every money (crypto of fiat) NEED a change in its distribution in order to work (people who pay, people who gain), and in an unfair world that would lead to an unfair distribution, but i think you would need ages for a filth like this to " naturally"  happens.

I am surely a supporter of btc, but becausr i'm a supporter of a FREE ECONOMY. As now, btc is not an economy, it seems more a manipulated commodity.. it's lIke the 1% of people owned 50% of gold before a gold economy was even established ... There was maybe a btc economy linked to the black market, but as far as I know it's very tiny now.

Right, the capital distribution in the world is only slightly different because of government control, so that the poor are not too poor. But since there is no control for the bitcoin world, the poor will be extremely poor, and the rich will be extremely rich.
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I am sure implementation of tax laws with respect to bitcoin will get stringent very soon.

I am sure implementation of tax laws with respect to bitcoin will get stringent very soon.

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That's possible. But the government needs a better way to track the transactions.

Though I agree that the distribution of bitcoins will eventually mirror the distribution of wealth, I don't believe that the current distribution has anything to do with it.

The people that currently have the most bitcoins are risk takers, entrepreneurs, visionaries, and nerds. The characteristic they have most in common is access to information and technology.

I also don't think the distribution of bticoins is unfair. Everyone that owns them paid for them with money or effort.

Bitcoin is a currency, it is not about distribution or fairness. The distorted distribution is caused by capitalism, not by bitcoin itself.

I agree but is it necessary/a must? I mean capitalism, is it helpful for bitcoin too?

Are you suggesting that wealth is a zero-sum game?

Wealth could be not a zero-sum game if we consider the time variant, but sure it is during a single point in time: x resources for n people.
During a short time a large amount of bitcoin was distributed to satoshi and a few thousand first-world well-educated tech-saviours " visionaries"  who knows about, for the cost of some hours of a standard pc work or, rarely, a few dollars.

Now the street man (not to mention the poors) have only the option to buy btc for hard-owned fiat, and he's constantly exposed to price manipulation by the " visionary" whales.

How can I consider btc a currency and not an investment if it vary its value of 10% overnight?

Bitcoin distribution is not fair at all  :(
A lot people have less than 1 BTC, while some people have huge amount of BTC

But, i think it's right.
Because they have a lot of bitcoin with hard work, not stealing


That's right

I can't stop to think an inequality like that is not good, not inevitable, and not necessary at all...

researchers from the International Monetary Fund published work which indicated that income equality increased the duration of countries' economic growth spells more than free trade, low government corruption, foreign investment, or low foreign debt.[4]
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_inequality

BTC is not the only asset class. A street man doesn't have to buy btc. He can live without it.

I don't follow you at all.

Let's suppose we have another cryptocurrency called "faircoin".  Initially, everyone in the world gets 100 faircoins.

Let's suppose you want to go to the airport and I offer to take you and your luggage in my car for 5 faircoins.  You agree.  I take you, you catch your flight and are satisfied.  I now have 105 faircoins and you have only 95 faircoins.

Now that I am rich and you are poor is this unfair?  Is this the naturally occurring "filth" which you refer too?  Should I be forced to give the 5 faircoins back now to make things fair again?

As I said, every coin need a change in its distribution in order to word. But if you start fairly, who knows?

I have paid you 5 fair coins,  but after that I could sell my services too, in order to regain them back.

Now we're in a whole different situation: " you"  have a billion of unfaircoins (because you started early, not 'cos you sold your services), and you can buy my services for " a fraction of the cost , if I accept unfaircoin. Why is that supposed to be better than fair distribution?

Aha, now we're getting somewhere.  You perceive that early adopters have a disproportionate advantage over late users.  I assume that you see that these early adopters have input work and taken on risk that latecomers have not but still feel that this does not adequately justify their resultant wealth.

I feel that it does.  There are two factors which are quite easily overlooked or underestimated.

Firstly, an early adopter that still has thousands of bitcoins today has taken on a huge amount of risk.  Each day they hold a lot of wealth in Bitcoin and choose to continue holding.  A person which buys a million dollars worth of bitcoin and holds them for a month before selling has taken on significantly less risk than a long-term holder has in total.

The second factor is even more subtle, that these early adopters have done something highly valuable.  The first few 1000 people that supported the project may well have done something extremely valuable for mankind.  The free market does not assign wages to such people arbitrarily, they reap benefits based purely on voluntary exchange, based purely on the fact that Bitcoin is being used by over a million people worldwide and many people are freely willing to part with things of great value for these bitcoins.

Of course, part of this free-market way of rewarding the early adopters comes quite rightly from critics such as yourself.  You're certainly under no obligation to support Bitcoin.  There are altcoins which attempt a "fairer" initial distribution and I honestly encourage you to seek them out and lend them your support.  If none of them are satisfactory and you have an idea for something better then you might consider building or commissioning a "fairest of them all" cryptocurrency.

We can fix the early adopter problem by allowing each person to create and mine their own alt coin. Everyone could be an early adopter and have millions of their coins. Then in five years or so, everyone would be millionaires. ;)

Yep, you got my point: too much advantage for early adopters, the vast majority of them didn't risk more than some hours of pc work or a few bucks.... now they speack about selling the coins to Africa. .. for some hundred dollars each.
I have supported some coins like auroracoin in the past, but they all turned out to be scams  :(

This is happening, just look at the alt coin section and see how many shitty atlcoins there are. People are creating a lot of alt coins that have no value and getting people to invest in their coin.

The only difference is that most altcoins will almost certainly end up having zero value while bitcoin will most likely continue to retain it's value

Excellent, I'm glad I understood you.

I'm sorry to hear that you've been burnt before by altcoins; please be careful.  There are many scams but there are also some genuine efforts.  I vaguely recall NEM (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=654845.0) which might be of interest to you (haven't done enough research to tell you whether or not it's a scam but it has been around for a year or so).  Here's a taster:

Good luck!

Is an egalitarian coin really a good investment, though?

What they got for their "hours of pc work or a few bucks" was worth a few bucks. Why does that seem unfair?

Suppose Auroracoin didn't fail and it was now worth $1000 each. Wouldn't that be unfair to the people that didn't get in early? How would you handle your guilt?

I'm not saying that early adopters need to feel " guilty" , i'm only stressing a point that, for me, could be an obstacle for the developing of a real btc economy. These " tokens"  seems just pricy compared to a couple of years ago, and so it is, because early adopter didn't spent them. A vast majority of btc are not circulating, that's why the price is high.
When I buyed auroracoin, I buyed some to support a project (a coin 50% premined to be distibuted equally along Island's citiziens). But this was never done, developers become rich and soon abandoned the project, smartest early adopters dump all coins for a 1000+% ROI, and who get involved later or continued to belive in the project only lost his coins. It seems to resemble what's happening with btc, only in a slower way.

DISCLAIMER: I buyed @ 1000 and I lost coins with alt and stock market, that should bé why i'm a little nervous about how much i've paid my very few coins and how much other paid. I've been trought probably the worst period for btc: the gox thing, price falling, scammish altcoins everyday...i've been trought 2 exchangers (ecrypto and cryptorush) who stole my money, I buyed a miner who now is worthless... I lost a lot of money with btc.
I got involved with true passion, I wanted to support projects who seemed great to me... you can say that I didn't do my homework, but now I feel scammed.

 
PS: NEMcoin seems interesting, but a little complicated. Thank you for the spoiler, I need to investigate it.

the point shouldn't be to wait until retirement, and sell all your btc, we are here for the tech also i think....

it seems that bitcoin is only seen as a quick rich scheme, personally i'll always hold a good amount of it

i want to use it, directly in the future even at supermarket

Well said! That's the point!
But don't you think that distribution is already too unfair to permit this to happen with bitcoin?
The street man need to buy a coin from an highly volatile, sometimes shady market, store them accurately, wait 30 min at best for a transation to be confirmed. .. and no development in that direction, only scams everywhere! Seems that everybody, EXPECIALLY the pioneers, want to get rich quickly... not to establish a crypto economy.

 

to big holders, should learn to donate, instead of just being more greedy

It doesn't 't seems like massive donations are on the way...only massive scams

I dont think screamers have much faith in BTC, the will mainly exchange in fiat fast.

Dear Newbie,

If you hold any amount of bitcoins, then you are an early adopter. A few years from now, people will whine about how you (an early adopter) were able to get millibitcoins with hardly any risk at all -- by mining, or by paying just few dollars. Please be patient and enjoy your status as an early adopter.

If you don't hold any bitcoins, then please don't complain about early adopters in the future.

Sincerely,

An Earlier Adopter

I've buyed my millibtcs @1 dollar each as I said, more of we consider scams... I doubt I will see any return.

BUT this is not about mé not making money, is about btc distribution and the perception of unfairness. Since btc is backed only by trust (trust that some1 will accept my btc for something valueable ), perceptions are important I think.

Many people are not buying btc because they think " it's too late", or invest in altcoins for the same reason.

When I buy an IPO, I suppose that the company will use my money for development: how are u using my money?

The reality is that, for most people, it's too early to get involved.  There's still much work to be done.

I could agree, but who is doing that work? Where are btc developers? Why early adopters are not using their billions of purchasing power for publicity?

Seems that everybody nowdays see btc as an investment, not as an opportunity to change our economic system.