Bitcoin Forum

http://blockexplorer.com/tx/3387418aaddb4927209c5032f515aa442a6587d6e54677f08a03b8fa7789e688#o1

(This looks like change from a send from an active address being sent to the address which was paid by the genesis block)

Did older client software not generate random addresses to receive change and instead pick a random address in the wallet?

Somebody sent satoshi a tip...

I wonder if he will ever notice.

Is anyone else concerned about Satoshi (or whomever was in the original group) having control of almost 20% of the btc economy?  This isn't the perfect place to post this question, but it was something that got me thinking.  The original group is estimated to have about 20% of the current currency in circulation.  For me this raises many questions about what could happen with so much power in such a anonymous (read NOT transparent) group.

If they have it and they're not spending it, it's not in circulation.

Do we know he's got that much? There isn't a single other person I'd rather have that much, anyway.

My guess is that Satoshi existed on a virtual machine (possibly inside another virtual machine), and the whole disk was scrubbed once he decided to move on.

The problem (or possible risk) is that this can't be proven.  If I'm going to invest in this currency I need to know there is some security (read predictability) with 20% of the total value.  Let's say that the original group is composed of two dorky guys out of Seattle, and if some major govt. gets to them (which they will if this is ultimately successful) what could happen with 20% of the total btc economy?  There are many other scenarios to think of with one secret entity having 20% of the economy.

Think of it.  If btc becomes something large there is a anonymous, hidden, secret group that controls 20% of it.  That does not play out well with large organizations trying to gauge risk <-- which will be one of the biggest foundations to grow btc.

Even if someone did dump a massive amount of coins into the market, it's just a chance to get cheap coins. The price would adjust but overall things would continue as is.

A major government already controls 100% (and more!) of the world's primary reserve currency.  Lose any sleep over that recently?

yes, but the current structure has served me well.  I work hard, pay my taxes, and expanding my family.

The current system provides much maturity and predictability.  The current system doesn't provide a reasonable possibility of some unknown entity with no transparency holding 20% of the market.

btc has documented prof of almost 20% of the early generated btc being held by a hidden entity (Satoshi or whatever it is)

This mandates this currency to an amount of unpredictability that many people will not buy into.  People may ask for a schism of the block over this.

there isn't any danger about how have that 20% of BTCs, what is your point exactly? :-|

I'm not too worried of someone hurting the market by dumping all of their holdings (the market would shift (I'd buy a shit ton of btc at a low price) and we would recover).  I actually think this may be the best possible thing for the future of btc.  If the original holders used their btc to invest heavily in the community (dump their holdings in 24 months) then this would solve the problem.

Until then, a market that has 20% of it's value in a underworld-crypto unknown, will pay a heavy price to insure (READ PREDICTABILITY), which could negatively effect an adoption of btc for anything of large value.

I can't think of a better definition of the US Congress than "some unknown entity with no transparency".  At least the holder of 20% of the early bitcoins can only spend them once.  Congress has been inflating away 20% of our currency every few years.

I wish the dollar was unpredictable.  Always going down is very easy to predict.  However, it isn't desirable or useful.

Satoshi once said, why would anyone ever delete a wallet? I doubt he'd delete the genesis keys, there are too many cases where that'd be useful to have.

Besides, I doubt his identity is that bulletproof. In the early days Bitcoin didn't work over Tor at all. By the definition of a P2P network the first node has to be able to receive connections. So whilst he always sent email over Tor I guess at some point he must have been exposing at least one IP address linkable to him.

Who knows. Maybe one day when the whole thing is over and the world has moved on, he will pop up, sign a message with the genesis key and say, here I am. Thanks for taking part everyone.

In 18 months time, that'll be less than 12.5% of the economy and decreasing ... assuming that they don't spend any of it into "circulation".

Edit: I think that was me who sent a hat-tip 0.01 to satoshi's genesis block address but I can't remember for sure if I actually did it ... thought it would be neat thing to point at in block chain ... there's my bitcoin sitting in the first ever address ... can't see that he will ever move it ... or will he? :)

Edit2: Nup, wasn't me, weird someone had exactly the same idea and actually did it ...

If he wanted to be careful he could have used a public WiFi or some such.

I've heard the the singularity disparagingly called "nerd rapture", though I quite like the term.

I hereby proclaim the prophecy of the Mikehearn to be "crypto-rapture", and I eagerly await the return of satoshi, the One True Hacker.

Does Satoshi still have the capability to send an alert out to clients to shut them down in case of a network emergency? Or have clients changed that?

I think I saw Bitcoin connect to tor nodes even in the early days.

There's alert code still in Bitcoin, though I can't find any source that does anything other than print the alert message on screen.

I believe Gavin has the alert key now.

(Assuming you're from the USA)... uh did you not see two years ago when the Fed refused to release the records of where two hundred billion dollars went???  And when it finally was, most of it was redacted...

the point is that the fed while doing this (I believe it was a mistake) was acting in a way to perpetuate the current financial system (as much as we may not like it).  We all have a certain amount of confidence (predictability) that the US gov, and the fed will server to keep the system working mostly as is (don't read this as me endorsing this).  This allows me to plan financially for the long haul (even if I don't like the way the system is working).

With btc we have no idea how this %20 could come out.  What if the original group has a political ideology that we'll call polX

for people on the right polX == communist, redistribution, maoist philosophy
for people on the left polX == neo con, big business, racist, stomp the little man

If the original group decided to leverage 20% of the economy to server polX agenda we could be setting ourselves up to being slaves to a more terrible master then the current system.

Can you show us your proof that Satoshi (or anyone else) controls 20% of all BTC?

There is no proof, except I believe Gavin himself in an interview said that btc was running for a year in a private network with just a few people involved, so we are left with conjecture and innuendo.  I believe he said this on that web show he did, or maybe it was that presentation.

One of the things that 20% of bitcoins could be used for is to help dampen the price swings.  You wouldn't want to try and control the long term trajectory of bitcoin prices (the 20% would rapidly become 0% if you tried that), but you could smooth out a lot of the volatility.  You could make it trying and hug the 30 day moving average for example (while also adjusting for significant events that cause a radical and permanent departure from the moving average).

In any case, the points you are contemplating are a legitimate concern and something everyone should consider IMO.  That is a large percentage of bitcoins and is a significant concentration of power (within the bitcoin economy and if things go well for bitcoin, a large amount of power in an absolute sense).  And I think large concentrations of power are a thing that many here seek to avoid by using bitcoins.  So, people should certainly factor this into their assessment of the value of bitcoins (just as you are doing).

You can see the historical hash rate/difficulty here: http://bitcoin.sipa.be/speed-ever.png

Let's assume that satoshi was the only one generating between 2009-01-03 (the genesis block) and ~2009-12-30 (first difficulty increase), which I think is doubtful considering that he announced (http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg10152.html) Bitcoin to the world 8 days after genesis. Let's also assume that he generated 1 block every 10 minutes, which as you can see from the dip in hash rate isn't the case.

That means he generated 51984 blocks, or 2,599,200 BTC, which is about 12% of the 21 million total.

Keep in mind that this scenario is very unlikely, I'm fairly certain there were others mining during that time period, and that a block was not created every 10 minutes during this period.

Not only that, but history is littered with examples of people who came across vast sums of wealth quickly, and subsequently blew it.

Even if the first few people had 20% of the wealth, it will surely end up filtered through the hands of hookers and dealers at some point.

Just like many lottery winners end up broke after a few years.

True. It's also assuming that those who had accumulated it early didn't blow it all on 10,000 BTC pizzas or cash out when it hit the ridiculous high of $0.40.

This is actually something we need to spend a few cycles thinking about.  I think one of the biggest risks to btc is the fact that founders are playing this bullshit anonymous thing.  These people are not anonymous.  A govt. if they wanted to could uncover them rapidly, and they will once the value of btc becomes high enough.  The problem here is that these people will be gotten to eventually.  They can eather open themselves up to the community and be transparent on their holdings and the intentions of these holdings, or we can wait until a special forces group under the cover of night grabs them and then 20% of the btc economy is now in the hands of that group.  Which option to you prefer?

I think that it's none of my business, yours, nor that of anyone else. I'm not sure how you think it's inevitable that the magical government agents will unmask satoshi, but I'm pretty sure he's counting on it not happening.

Please see my above post and revise your "20%" claim, it is overstated. Please list out the threat scenarios to you or current bitcoin holders of a single unknown individual having a MAXIMUM of 12% of total bitcoins. Please make them specific so they can be refuted if possible.

Scenarios (assuming btc takes off big time)

1 - btc originators method of staying anonymous wasn't as good as thought.  Secret ops team from a fringe political group acquires 12% of world economy (possibly creating a more terrible master then our current state)
2 - btc originators have their own crazy ideas on how the world should run (use that polX from earlier post), and use 12% of the economy to make it happen (possibly creating a more terrible master then our current state)
3 - I'm a major company considering leveraging btc for a multi-billion dollar insurance binder.... of wait we can't.... some crazy dudes who hang out in teh shadows and possibly have crazy political ideology (or some weird god complex) hold 12% of the currency, therefore too much risk
4 - Give me more time and I'll dream up more of these.


You're right.  It isn't ANY of MY business.  What is my business is possibly using this to generate a ground swell to restart the block.  I know this is a radical departure, but I ultimately want to see btc succeed in a massive way.  I don't see it succeeding with 24% now, 12% in 2045 (or whenever the block stops rewarding coins (non-fee ones)) of the currency being in a state of complete unknown.

my 00.02 btc

Rather than trying to restart the block chain, why not just create a fork instead? It has the same overall effect, plus you can set your own rules rather than limit the supply to 21 million. As a benefit, you don't have to convince anyone of anything, except to use your currency rather than Bitcoin, and you don't piss off a bunch of early adopters.

do you even have 0.02btc ?

you come across sounding a little unhinged ... and from me, that is saying something ... no offence intended, truly.

I do have 00.02btc (I was a very early miner), but what does that have to do with my argument?

I was asked earlier to provide specif examples of scenarios that could be a problem for the currency, so they could be addressed (supposedly in this forum).  I did as asked.

I don't believe one is, "unhinged," if they point out the substantial risk of having 25% (at this time) of the currency in an anonymous state.  Again I'm not worried about someone using it to buy or sell on the market, I'm more worried about the political power/corruption associated with that much concentration of money (as a share of the btc economy).

Which of my scenarios is the, "craziest," or the one that would best illustrate that this author is, "unhinged?"

I agree with syn.  The questionable status of the early blocks weighs on the value of BTC in my mind.  If enough people feel the same way (especially in the example scenario of a Satoshi character wielding BTC for evil) then a competing chain could quickly arise and sap BTC's exchange value.  I might be willing to hash on one and/or sell some BTC to buy the new currency even now, because of the aforementioned weight of uncertainty.

By the way, 2009-12-30 was at block 32300, according to BE: http://blockexplorer.com/b/32300

BE shows (as of a few weeks ago when I checked) a lot of early coins not yet redeemed, and many others simply aggregated to 1000, 10000, 50000 BTC coins.  There was once a 400000: http://blockexplorer.com/t/6SRV1apueQ

-John

Hasn't the project been open source since before the genesis block?

According to this timeline, the code was released November 2008:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/History

If people got in early, and the project subsequently gets big, it's fair that they profit big. They took the risk of investing time into something that had no certainty of becoming valuable and they were the ones lucky and smart enough to find the project first.

As far as early users using their bitcoins for ill, given there will always be people who are far wealthier than them, I don't think that's something we really need to worry about. Do you stay up all night thinking of all the things the oil sheiks in the Middle East can do when you buy gasoline?

Exactly. If twenty percent of the bitcoins in existence are controlled by a very few people, that's actually a very equitable distribution, a good and just start for the economy.

Globally, the top two percent of wealthy people control 50% of the world's riches. Bitcoin is a communist dream compared to the real world.

+1 ... take a look around, wise up, the evil elite are already in control.

And the percentage of bitcoins owned by the very early adopters will go down to seven percent as the total number of bitcoins reaches 20 million. Furthermore, the vast majority of the wealth in the world is in non-currency assets. It's control of TRADE that gives one a monopoly over the economy, not control of a fixed sum of currency.

I think you're all missing the point.  There hasn't been this lopsided holding of equity since kings.  2% holding 50% of the wealth is far more desirable than 0.00000002% holding 25%.  I know you can all do the math.

This situation is a despot megalomaniacs wet dream.  Never in the history of human kind has one person controlled 25% of the economy.

I think we all WANT to believe that Satoshi is some humble quite person who only wants his bitcoins to go to helping poor kids down on their luck, but maybe, just maybe Satoshi gets corrupted (power corrupts), the point being is that there is tremendous amounts of risk piled into this one person.

I do think early adopters should be rewarded and this isn't some sort of jealousy thing.

Think of it this way.  If you want to believe that one day btc could represent the financial foundation of the world economy, then be VERY afraid of the person who controls 25% of it.

They don't control 25% of the economy. They own 25% of the currency currently in existence. The value of currency relative to all wealth is probably less than 1:50. As an example, the total value of assets in the world is estimated to be 30X global GDP, so ~2,000 trillion dollars. In comparison, the value of all the major world currencies is estimated to be $40 trillion. Wealth != just currency.

Personally, I find this more worrying. One person has access to a kill switch, huh? Was that in the wiki?

Talk about a central point of failure.

Maybe this could be arranged so that 4 or 5 people need to push the button simultaneously .... not that I doubt Gavin's integrity but evil forces know exactly where to apply pressure, and it ain't by building massive hashing machines.

What kill switch?

mcdett, I share your concern.  I don't think most posters here have thought it through, or their world view clouds their perception of the risk.

But I don't take you to mean that the bitcoin concept is flawed.  It seems reasonable that the first block chain (BTC) should acquire a sort of "beta" status, and now that the concept is (somewhat) proven, it is time to prepare the "production" currency with a high starting difficulty, perhaps 5% of the BTC difficulty.

To achieve a high initial hash rate, we could distribute and promote a policy (in the form of mining front-end software) that tries to create a genesis block for a new chain (call it "BC2") and, if it succeeds or receives such a block, keeps devoting X% (configurable, e.g., 25%) of mining power to the BC2 chain as long as the BC2 network hash rate exceeds Y% (e.g., 5%) of BTC's hash rate.  An attempt to start BC2 would occur after BTC block N (to be determined by agreement or by algorithm), and the validity of a BC2 genesis block would depend on its coinbase script containing the BTC Block N hash.

To determine N, one could simply coordinate with miners or, perhaps, establish a convention whereby a certain proportion (e.g., 5%) of a sequence of, say, 2016 consecutive blocks' coinbase output would have to go to addresses ending in the characters "BC2" to signal the start.  We have all seen "vanity" Bitcoin addresses that contain a few letters of someone's name.  This technique could be used to poll the mining community.  This sort of polling could go on indefinitely as support for the idea builds or wanes.

For ease of adoption and coexistence with BTC, BC2 could use the same network connections and protocols as BTC but a different magic number.  Nodes could query each other for BC2 support before block N.  (I don't know exactly how yet, but it seems like an easy problem.)  BC2 supporters could prefer to peer with other BC2 supporters or at least try to be connected to a few at N.

BC2's success wouldn't exactly wipe out BTC early adopters, provided that they pay attention to developments and trade some BTC for BC2 and/or BC2 mining shares early on.  But I think BC2 would be better positioned to take over world finance than BTC.

Would such a development allay your fear?  Do you see anything wrong with the plan I have outlined?

Only Satoshi has an alert key.

Are you joking me. You're worried about some dude with virtual play money having too much of it when there are a LOT more people in this world that have Billions upon billions of dollars - way more than Satoshi can ever hope to gain in a lifetime. 

This is like saying that you refuse to use the US dollar because there may be some unknown multi billionaire out there that you don't know about.

C'mon people grow up out of this jealousy of other people's wealth phase.

See here: http://forum.bitcoin.org/?topic=898.0

I don't know what state it currently is in (whether it prints a message or shuts off the RPC interface).

As I already said, I just looked at the source code, and all I see is "print a message".

So not a "kill switch" ... what does it do exactly? (not being a programmer recently)

Edit: don't answer ..... thanks "doublec", just saw your link to the alert key actions now ....
Edit2: okay, it is a beta safety switch ... when does it get removed ... at the Jan 03 2013 party?

It only prints a message. It used to shut off RPC, but this was removed. (IMO, it should have been left in as an opt-in feature.)

Agreed. Of course, it should be voluntary, but it can come in handy in case things really get out of hand with the network for some reason, or an exploit is found in bitcoind.

What economy? Despot megalomaniacs wet dream aside, there isn't a "situation;" there actually isn't much of anything.

If you think the current distribution of bitcoins is a problem, you have three choices - buy more, mine more, convince the rest of the world to stop using them. Start btc2, bitcoins are no longer your problem! Brilliant.


I'll admit, my worldview has been carefully constructed to isolate me from realistic risks. I rarely think about the possibility that our solar system exists in a false vacuum, that a dormant megavolcano could go off suddenly, that kind of thing. Sometimes I even think about the small stuff, like bitcoin. So I'm interested: what specifically are the risks that you refer to?

I think YOU'RE missing the point.

Tell me, what sinister things can he do with this 20% of bitcoins?  They don't grant power over your money.  They don't grant super powers.  Bitcoins, in and of themselves, are absolutely useless.  I could control 99.9999% of the economy, and they themselves would be useless.  I can't use them to alter the block-chain.  I can't use them to kill your unborn children or force you into slavery.  The worst I can do with them is spend them on some commodity, (and it's not like there are bitcoin-hitmen out there) or exchange them for another currency, which is limited by peoples willingness to do so.

kjj, shackra, minute_of_angle, amincd, Shortline, allinvain, Quantumplation,

I don't feel the need to show each of you the risk that mcdett, syn, and I seem to agree about.  I accept that people have different world views, and diversity is great.  Of course, I do enjoy meeting someone who thinks like me.  If that's not you, no problem!  Maybe we have something else in common, like biking or chocolate!  Maybe not!

In brief: BTC has value, as judged by the market.  Some of its value derives from some people's belief that BTC may one day dominate world trade, largely replacing USD and the rest.  Some of us (apparently a minority--but that's okay!) value BTC less than if those early blocks had been generated at higher difficulty and/or appeared to be in circulation.  In our global, industrial culture, money can be leveraged into power (and often back into more money).  Some of us might want to implement the bitcoin concept with a chain other than BTC and see that chain compete with BTC.  I see no principled objection to this.  You are all free to ignore us if we actually do it.

Or if you alternate BTC is gonna be really great I'll be buying with both fists .... I don't see what this big objection to the "early adopters" is all about. The forum archives are full of all the evidence you need that this wasn't some masterful conspiracy to accumulate great wealth and power .... basically nobody wanted the stuff 18 months ago and before that hardly anybody had heard about it, let alone assumed it was a road to riches ... go read the posts for yourself ... begin with the 10,000 BTC for 2 pizzas. How's that for a conspiratorial early adopter?

I'm pretty sure this is what we have been telling you to do. If you don't like the Bitcoin blockchain for whatever reason, feel free to start your own block chain. Just don't try to make us change ours.

So jontobey253 outlines a way of "rebooting" the currency. Fortunately, people supporting this move can already achieve the same effect unilaterally using transaction "shunning" as outlined in http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=3441.msg50075#msg50075

If you think that people who were mining when the difficulty was low have unfairly acquired their bitcoins and you wish to take them out of the economy for some reason you could check that any payments you and your supporters accept (and obviously make) have never used any of the coins mined during the "too easy" period. If someone tries to pay you using these old coins or any transaction which was derived from the old coins then you return them and explain why they are not acceptable.

If sufficient people agree with you to shun certain coins then they are effectively unspendable and are removed from the economy even more effectively than if the associated private keys had been lost.

ByteCoin

So if I end up with 50 BTC that satoshi generated, I will be unable to spend it? Fuck that (http://i54.tinypic.com/f3zxxu.jpg)!

I think it's hilarious that these guys are worried about early adopters, rather than the huge conglomerations of power and wealth that exist in the real world. The only way this viewpoint makes any sense to me is if you are one of the following:

• a concern troll
• economically ignorant
• jealous

You need to give those items the proper weighting:

• a concern troll
• economically ignorant
• jealous

sending .01BTC to satoshi is the new sending .02USD to kidpoker on pokerstars (when that was legal).

As far as the bitter people, i mean 'make bitcoin more fair people' - please start your own blockchain. When others who share your view join, and accept the new coins for goods and services, and it becomes stronger than the original bitcoin chain - I will be the first to congratulate you. Seriously.

BitterTea, on this we are in violent agreement.  http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=violent%20agreement (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=violent%20agreement)

If you suggest, further, that this forum is inappropriate for seeking interest and discussing how to go about starting it, well, I would like to hear about that from a moderator.  Perhaps a new topic or section, once it becomes more than an idea.

You're being overly paranoid IMO. In any speculative venture, there are always early adopters that are rewarded big for their initiative. The early adopters not only discovered it, but in the case of Satoshi, created the technology. It's fair that they are rewarded.

I think you also have an economic misconception that a sum of money equals permanent control of a percentage of the economy denominated in that currency equal to the percentage of the currency someone holds, in perpetuity. In reality, each dollar or bitcoin is traded numerous times. Having a certain percentage of currency at any given time only gives one a tiny slice of all wealth over a long time frame.

Also, the 20% that the early adopters have now will only be 7% once bitcoin has expanded to 20 million. They can only spend it once. After they've spent it, it will be spent over and over again by others.

Thanks!


I don't like this idea for three reasons.  One, the difficulty of choosing a set of coins that enough people would agree on.  Two, headache in demultiplexing messages about the two chains.  Three, Bitcoin address overlap.  A new chain would have a different network identifier and, hence, addresses beginning in a character other than '1', and could coexist with BTC on the current network.

I was responding to the idea (not necessarily yours) that BTC is "unfair" and should be changed to suit those who did not or could not enter the market until now. Since nobody is forced to use it, I don't see how it could possibly be unfair, and those that think so should start their own block chain. Your post seemed to imply that early adopters think that alternate block chains should be repressed, but I think you will find the truth to be the exact opposite. It is entirely possibly I read too much into your post, but it seems to be a common belief, becoming more common as the USD/BTC exchange rate rises.

I don't think discussion of alternate block chains should be banned in any way. I do think it is disingenous and bordering on fraudulent to make claims that the bitcoin economy is controlled by a small number of participants, to the detriment of all the rest. In fact, it is because of the early adopters that bitcoin has such value today.

Minute, I think you get me wrong.  I don't think the early adopters with lots of BTC aspire to huge wealth and power.  I think he/she/they did it for reasons that I would approve of.  I wouldn't be at all surprised if Satoshi himself would like to see a new chain outcompete BTC.

But I do not know these things with enough certainty for comfort.

There *are* other block chains. Go hunt them down and maybe even set up more exchanges between them all so they can more readily reach their relative market values.

It would be fun to have an exchange featuring hundreds of them a like a penny stock stockmarket game kind of thing in effect.

-MarkM-