Bitcoin Forum

This thread is not intended to bash (or spread fear about) the next generation of elite humans who will (probably) attain staggering wealth with their pile of Bitcoins:
Did Satoshi make public comments about the initial distribution of Bitcoins? I am curious if he addressed the subject, and I know we have some great historians and "Satoshi experts" around here. Also, If there are any quotes, please feel free to discuss the content.

Edit: To be more specific:
I'm not asking if Satoshi gave technical mining tips.
Did he discuss the fact that some early users would become "elite" with large amounts of Bitcoins and the affects that could have later?

He did made many posts , starting with the very first post and thread(public) on this very forum
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5.0

continued with many which mostly discussed the bugs and more and more about bitcoin.
The shit is so technical , am not understanding anything.  :-\
He told about Bitcoin difficulty (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=43.msg5990#msg5990)
And some more technical thing over stealing coins (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=571.msg5778#msg5778)


Would like to quote the words of Hal Finney here

Isn't the distribution made through the mining process, isn't that the purpose of mining, or one of the purposes?

Thanks for the quick answers. I edited my OP to be more clear.

I'm not asking if Satoshi gave technical mining tips, or other related info.
Did he discuss the fact that some early users would become "elite" with large amounts of Bitcoins and the affects that could have later?

Dude! he was a man like you and me , not some guy like Oracle as in movies .
He didn't knew himself that this would get this bug , am sure he surely had good expectation of Bitcoin but saying such a thing that he announced it as free pass to Richieland isn't right.
Though he did said something in a Thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1735.msg26999#msg26999)



So you see it's quite the opposite of what you think

maybe he never thought that BTC would reach hundreds of dollars each one day in such short time period?

I don't remember any comment directly about it

He had a lot to say about the imbalance of wealth. He said it with the bitcoin protocol. There is no imbalance of wealth in BTC. The poorest or wealthiest people in the world are free to jump in. Being rich gives you no advantage the way it does with fiat.

Yes, one of the best thing about Bitcoin is that you can start faster and easier than getting a new bank account.  :)


Agreed that it is different than fiat, but being rich certainly has some huge advantages, like (for example) funding your own projects and hiring the best people, etc.

Given that bitcoins were worthless when he started and worth about $0.20 when he left, and that the future of Bitcoin was (and still is) anything but certain, I don't see how anyone at that time could anticipate becoming super wealthy just by holding bitcoins.

I think he didn't know that all these things would be happened and at the end the poor rest poor and the rich become more rich. Only a few person are really interested in bitcoin the other only want to convert them in dollars and after buy again , again and make again this thing.

I remember reading one of his messages saying that it's good idea to mine a lot at early stages because bitcoins may become pretty valuable in future, if I'm correct it was on crypto mailing list. I think this message + block reward schedule shows that he intended to make early adopters rich, but maybe not that rich -> without first bubble bursting btc distribution would be much more equal.

if satoshi gave a shit about any sort of fair distribution of bitcoin he wouldn't have singlehandedly mined 1,000,000 of the existing 14,000,000 / 21,000,000 eventual supply ... or setup the payout schedule to be so utterly rapid in the early stages where millions upon millions of coins were able to be mined by a couple dozen to a few hundred individuals before public awareness would have reasonably been possible or expected to occur ... he would have set the payout schedule at a lower rate and increased it over time (reverse equation payout schedule of how it is setup) , as opposed to having it payout huge in the beginning and decreasing over time ... which , obviously , would have been more fair for everyone ... since it would allow for greater supply to be produced as more people became aware of it , rather than less and less supply available vs. the early days ... essentially bitcoin payout was designed to be as unfair as possible in terms of imbalance ...

Im also interested on this. Did Satoshi ever mention price predictions? I guess he never imagined 1 BTC reaching 1K 4 years later, like not even considered it.

As far as i know, those bitcoins that belong to satoshi are unused, so maybe he kept them just in case something like world adoption happens, as a fail safe to what op is talking about, to stop elite from manipulating the very system created to give you freedom and protect you.
He had many chances for cashout, he obviously doesnt care about fiat money, and why would he?

cheers

You have to remember that initially, all those bitcoins satoshi mined had NO value in fiat terms! And for quite some time after that, 1 BTC was valued in cents, not dollars.

And anyway, why would Satoshi be concerned about crypto wealth disparity when fiat wealth distribution is already this bad:

http://thesocietypages.org/graphicsociology/files/2009/05/conley_champagne_distribution.png

im sure theymos s some what connected, probably gives satoshi from advertising funds

if he wanted to actually create an egalitarian currency of the people and wanted it to be as widely distributed and as fairly distributed as possible ... it would have been possible to ... for example ... just using a simplified number ... make the initial blocks worth 1 btc per 10 minute block and have that double , rather than halve , every 2 years until reaching a certain cutoff point to accomplish the same number of total coins and assuring a much fairer distribution in the process ... with this example this would have allowed for 6 coins per hour , 144 coins per day , and 52,560 coins per year produced for a total of 105,120 in the first 2 years , 210,240 produced in the next 2 years , 420,480 produced in the next 2 years , etc etc ... that would have allowed for today there be less than 1 million coins in existence with the remaining 20 million still yet to be mined and at a predictable rate and with the same total number of coins (more or less , depending on the cutoff point chosen and programmed into the software) ... it would also allowed for all of the coins to be created a helluva lot sooner than 2140 or whatever it's supposed to be for all of them to come into existence as in within our lifetimes ... how it was setup was instead 300 coins per hour , 7200 coins per day , 2,628,000 coins per year at the start ... which seems like a fair distribution method allowing for public awareness and evenly distributed coins ? ... 52,560 produced at the start per year or 2,628,000 produced at the start per year ? ... he knew exactly what he was doing in terms of assuring imbalance ... and since it was supposedly an experiment and they were valued so low / at zero value , what would have been the harm doing it that fairer way ? ... initial value argument is irrelevant flawed logic in terms of distribution imbalance ...

This. People was free to buy bitcoins if they wanted to. The price it's a result of free market, people has decided the price is what it is. No one here is getting scammed fundamentally, the blockchain is fair, fiat systems ARENT.

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL. So much entitlement.

do you even know what the word entitlement means retard ? stating it's an unbalanced distribution having a "currency" produce 1/4 of the supply and held by what amounts to a handful of individuals prior to any possibility of general public awareness of said currency is not entitlement ... it's called having even a remote sense of fairness and understanding of math ... but whatever ... this world has 1% of the population (70 million people / 7 billion people) with 1/2 of the wealth , so why would it be an unfair distribution for 1000 people to have 1/4 of all the bitcoins ever produced ? ... that's only 35000X worse wealth distribution than our already "unfair" fiat system in terms of wealth disparity ...

Other than the distribution for Bitcoins being far, far worse than fiat is distributed?

We're forgetting that that is a distribution of income, not fiat.

I bet the distribution of 'fiat' is actually quite "fair", since most people with a lot of wealth will buy assets such as real estate and stocks, instead of keeping fiat.

And getting better by the day, while fiat wealth distribution is getting worse by the day (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM).

You don't have to "bet" anything, because this information is freely available at your fingertips. And no, it's most definitely NOT getting better.

Sooner or later the whales sell and spread their stash among the little guys.

oh bbbbut ... bitcoin ... global currency ... yeah ... 1000 people with 1/4 of all wealth makes a lot better sense than 70,000,000 people with 1/2 of all wealth ... bitcoin is literally , and i mean math literally , 35000X worse distributed than current global fiat wealth in terms of earth's population ... 35000X worse than the "unfair" disparity that already exists between the world's wealthy and all those rest of the peoples of earth ... it seems totally right to me that the wealthy elite multibillionaires of this world should instead be 35000X more wealthy than they already are vs starving people ... sign me up ... global adoption here we come !

You're not getting my point. Bill Gates can donate away all his fiat money except a $100 dollar bill. He will be fiat poor, but he's still wealthy because most of his money is in microsoft stocks and such, NOT in fiat.

A person can own 1 dollar and be worth more than someone with 1000 dollars. If we're comparing bitcoin to fiat, then bringing in the total WEALTH distribution is a logical fallacy that makes the comparison meaningless. You're comparing apples to poker cards.

Show me this "freely available info" of how much fiat currency Bill Gates or Warren buffet or the top 1% holds.

Theoretically even with an extremely uneven distribution of fiat or bitcoin, the total wealth distribution can still be fair, given that bitcoin-rich people are asset poor, and bitcoin-poor people are all asset rich. Yes, this is obviously not the case and won't be, it's simply to illustrate that you can't compare bitcoins to total wealth.

You can also have every single person in the worth having the exact same amount of fiat and bitcoins, and the wealth distribution can still be incredibly skewed because some people are asset rich some are asset poor.

Besides, your idea of "better" isn't necessarily the objective truth. Your idea of better isn't necessarily what everyone else wants.

comparing btc distribution to global wealth distribution is a valid perspective if we're talking global population and mass adoption percentages ... and by what you're saying it would actually be *even worse* in terms of disparity since fiat wealth only makes up a fraction of total worth held by the wealthy 1% of humanity ... it'd therefore render the distribution of bitcoin vs fiat currency distribution far far worse than 35000X less equitably distributed ! ... it could be even worse by an additional factor of 10x to 100x ! (if you ignore physical assets and only count liquid currency of the world's wealthy) ...

yeah, it's valid in some context, but it's not valid comparing btc distribution and fiat distribution, and then using stats for the total wealth distribution as the stats for fiat distribution. Also, comparison btc distribution and saying it creates more wealth disparity isn't necessary correct, because bitcoins are a part of total wealth distribution.

I'm not making a comment on the conclusion of these comparisons, it might be correct, it might be not, but either way, the logic to compare it is flawed.

You're so angry.

Asside from that don't you think they way you want change things would have other consequences?

One of the top of my head is that we would not have had this sudden increase in mining securing the network, what is the point in mining now if in a few years the same amount of work will reap more rewards?  There are other repercussions that come to mind.  I really don't think you have thought it through.

What can YOU do about it? Is Bitcoin a magical solution to the world's problems? Should Satoshi sprinkle his wizard dust across the globe like a "More You Know" commercial and cure the world of suffering? The people who created and invested in Bitcoin deserve to get rich because it's their idea and money. But in the big picture, Bitcoin doesn't put a dent into the world's money and politics anyway. Money doesn't solve everything.

assuming that the world's wealthy hold most , let's say 90%+ of their "wealth" in physical assets such as real estate office buildings %s of companies represented as stocks private jets and rare cars , and the world's rest of the population is at best 1/2 and 1/2 between assets and currency held ... it's very clear that the distribution of btc the currency vs distribution of fiat currencies is actually even far worse than distribution of btc currency vs global wealth , percentage wise ... i tried looking online for the percentages of currency held by people but can only find it stated in terms of wealth , which of course includes physical assets ... but let's just use 1/2 currency 1/2 asset for the bulk of the global population who hold half of the worlds wealth and 10:1 as the ratio for currency held vs assets of the world's wealthy elite who have the other half ... then you can multiply the disparity in the btc system vs the disparity of the global fiat currency system as not 35000X worse (which would include all physical assets) ... but instead multiply that by what ? 5X even worse ... so btc is *175,000X worse distributed than the fiat currency of the earth's population ? (not counting physical assets) ... my god ...

Now say that with paragraphs.

no logical argument in rebuttal to my words , so criticize grammar structure ... good one ... my sentences were too long / improperly hammered out ? aww ... is this better ?

Assuming that the world's wealthy hold most , let's say 90%+ of their "wealth" in physical assets such as real estate , office buildings , %s of companies represented as stocks , private jets , and rare cars , and the world's rest of the population is at best 1/2 and 1/2 between assets and currency held it's very clear that the distribution of btc the currency vs distribution of fiat currencies is actually even far worse than distribution of btc currency vs global wealth , percentage wise.

I tried looking online for the percentages of currency held by people but can only find it stated in terms of wealth , which of course includes physical assets.

But let's just use 1/2 currency 1/2 asset for the bulk of the global population who hold half of the world's wealth and 10:1 as the ratio for currency held vs assets of the world's wealthy elite who have the other half.

Then you can multiply the disparity in the btc system vs the disparity of the global fiat currency system as not 35000X worse (which would include all physical assets) , but instead multiply that by what ?

By 5X even worse.

So btc is *175,000X worse distributed than the fiat currency of the earth's population (not counting physical assets).

My god.

Much, if you are trying to get a point across at least do the decency of not making it appear like a childish angry rant.  You should really try to to better.


You are almost certainly right to a degree, you're exaggeration and hyperbole don't add much to your argument though, if you feel this strongly about it you should get some actual numbers instead of doing wild guesses.

That said, probably less that 1,000,000 people have bitcoin at all.  Add that to the fact that there will only ever be 21 million of them you can say with some degree of certainty that less than 4-5 million people will own over 1 bitcoin. 

Where will it go?  Who knows (you certainly dont) we are very early in the development of bitcoin, we have not even had a "Global Money/Debt Crisis" yet.

If bitcoins were distributed equally and fairly to everyone in the world (the ideal, right?), then each person would get about 0.003 BTC, worth about $0.83. In other words, a fair distribution of bitcoins would do nothing.

In fact, if you are complaining about the unfair distribution of bitcoins and you own more than 0.003 BTC, then you are a hypocrite.

Honestly I'm not trying to come across as angry if it seems that way , but when trying to make a point I will be as forceful as possible.

It is possible for anyone to get frustrated when explaining basic math principles and concepts.

I type quickly and carelessly as the thoughts flow.

People need to understand what exactly it is that they're supporting when they're supporting bitcoin: a "currency" system that is orders of magnitude worse than the already extreme wealth disparity on earth.

It's a currency system that , with *conservative* estimates I made , is 35000X less egalitarian than the existing global wealth disparity , and 175000X less egalitarian than the existing global fiat currency distribution.

I do not see how anyone can ethically support such a thing.

I absolutely do stand to benefit from an increased price of bitcoin , as I do hold a quantity of them , and far greater than 0.003 , and have profited from the existence of bitcoin.

Does this make me a hypocrite? Perhaps. Does it make me unethical as well? You bet.

Does humanity need a system orders of magnitude worse than the current system and do I deserve to be massively benefited from it? I don't think so.

And I don't think pointing out the extreme disparity of distribution in bitcoin vs existing wealth structures is wrong - it's honest.

I think you're putting to much thought into it, you're worried how it will all work out 50 years from now IF bitcoin becomes a global currency.

Your *conservative* estimates are for today (and are really more opinion than estimate) and there is an ocean of water that needs to go under the bridge before we get to anywhere near to where we may have an actual problem.  

If bitcoin has taught me anything it is that predicting the future is a game for fool's (myself included whenever I try).  You are probably right though, bitcoin is not going to address global inequity but you can't really blame bitcoin for that, if anything, bitcoin addressing the issue that 2-3 billion people in the world cannot access the financial systems may help.

But yeah, bitcoin is probably not going to fix it.

bitcoin will definitely not "fix" inequality (although whether that's something that needs fixing is another topic).

But I don't think bitcoin will contribute to more inequality, at least not by much. With every new technology or paradigm shift, there is always people who are minted as the new elite, and as time passes, they or their descendants will eventually be incompetent and lose most or all of their wealth. This cycle has been going on forever, and I don't think it'll stop any time soon. Perhaps it will in the far future when we have true abundance, but not now.

Bitcoin is just a new thing that will make some people rich, but it's not going to change the overall distribution landscape by that much. After all, whether fiat money or bitcoins, they're just a very small portion of the world's total wealth. With or without bitcoins, some people will earn money, other people will lose money.



@12345mm:

One mistake you are making is taking a snapshot of an ever changing distribution. Because fiat has been around for a long time, it is stable, relatively speaking. Bitcoin is not.

If you take a look at the blockchain in 2008, you could say bitcoin is a lot fairer than fiat, since everyone has the same amount (0). You could also take a look at when the first few blocks were mined, and see that all the bitcoins were owned by one person. It has infinite inequality.

But we see that the distribution of bitcoins is very different now than it was in 2008 and 2009, and it will continue to change significantly. Taking a simple snap shot of the current distribution is not necessarily indicative of the future distribution.

If every person on earth received 0.00300000 btc , and presuming it were accepted as a global currency as the result of this , then that would represent a "reset" of currency distribution with each and every man woman and child on earth getting a usable value of 3,000 to 300,000 current usd in spending power , depending on what you wanted to value a single satoshi at (pennies or dollars) , not 83 cents.

I'll be alive 50 years from now to see how it all turns out (barring an early grave from cancer, heart attack, bear attack, etc) , so the future implications of this technology concern me greatly and I am extremely worried about the severity of unequal distribution. If I am effectively rendered a multi millionaire or god forbid a billionaire , I'll weep for I will have knowingly taken advantage of a flawed and wrongly distributed currency system that I will have benefited greatly from. I hope I would still value other human beings adequately to devote that wealth entirely to philanthropy.

I know and accept fully that I am currently unethically taking and have taken advantage of other people by mining , selling , and continuing to trade in bitcoin , knowing how utterly wrongly it was distributed and valuing and desiring a greater equality for humanity.

Clearly satoshi could have setup the software so that it would have more evenly distributed bitcoin to the people of earth - be that with low values increasing over time as would have been best in my opinion and example i provided , or even with merely a low set constant value which also would have been better in terms of fairer distribution. He chose not to , opting instead for a distribution pattern that was quite the opposite of what would be considered fair or egalitarian to most people , to the potential extreme detriment of society.

Not to my knowledge.  It seems to me that he intentionally avoided the subject.  The closest example I have is:


As he was defending his newly published whitepaper to a critical James Donald and a supporting Hal Finney, Satoshi responded to many comments but chose to ignore this comment from Hal on 2009-01-11:

Curious.  Are you suggesting that if you had a terminal illness and knew you would perish in short order that you would not worry about future wealth inequality?  Why does your belief that you'll be alive long from now affect how you feel right now about the future relative prosperity of others?

I get where you are going but you may not have been in to bitcoin back in those dim dark ages but to get this whole ball rolling people needed to be motivated to mine at all.

With the benefit of hindsight it it seems bazaar now but people were reluctant to spend a couple of hundred dollars to make a bitcoin or two a month (that were worth 20 cents).  If it were stacked in such a way that you would spend your cash and get .02 bitcoin we may never have got to where we are today.

Good point , I guess. Pending mortality in a short time frame vs likely continued longevity shouldn't effect people's views on the future prosperity of humanity , though knowing I'm likely to see and experience first hand the consequences of this little experiment that is bitcoin gives me a greater sense of responsibility than if I knew I'd be gone tomorrow. I assume I would not care about anything if I were dead.

In the early days of bitcoin 7200 were produced per day for a couple dollars in electricity on basic cpus on household computers by a few dozen individuals - it certainly did not cost hundreds to produce a coin or two per month - it was not until years later that such a ratio was reached , at which time millions upon millions were already produced for next to nothing.

It's woefully obvious to me it was created with the express intent of extreme distribution inequality as opposed to egalitarian distribution. What else could be the result of having so few people involved in the beginning combined with such a high initial payout and complete lack of public awareness ?

It's not obvious. It was created that way, because ... how else can such a protocol and currency work ?
If Bitcoin had some kind of egalitarian distribution, it wouldn't be Bitcoin anymore. It means, having some control over who gets coins and when.

I don't see it happening in a decentralized way, as Bitcoin is intended to be.

Your saying all this with the benefit of hindsight.  Back then would you have mined for something that had absolutely no value whatsoever?

The chances that bitcoin has got to where it is today is INCREDIBLY slim we needed those guys to take the long chance.  Back then if the plan was you made a fraction of what you would make today do you really think anyone would have even bothered?  Bitcoin needed those early gamblers and speculators to fill out the ranks of us geeks to get things going, without them we would not be having this conversation.

I dont think he had much choice but to design it in a way that the earliest adpotors got a nice % vs later.  This distribution of coin is just an honest reflection of where we are currently at.  People needed incentives to get maximum interest in bitcoin its impossible to just run on... lets change the world ideals alone.

Since these things were initially assumed to have a price of $0 and all involved mining were doing so out of supposed intellectual interest and support of the project anyway then would it not have made sense to pay out 1 unit worth nothing as opposed to 50 units worth nothing every ten minutes ?

Or even 5 units worth nothing instead of 50 units worth nothing every ten minutes ?

Could have easily been just as much decentralized structurally , paid out early participants , and been far more widely distributed using either a 1 coin per block doubling every 2 or 4 years , or using a 5 coins per block with constant payout and no halving or doubling , with same or similar results of total eventual supply.

Result would have been a much much more widely distributed payout schedule , rather than extreme concentration of distribution in the hands of a few.

Additionally , it's obvious they considered the implications of what it would mean for bitcoin to be adopted as a global currency prior to the inception of it , yet opted for a payout schedule that created more than 1/4 of the coins ever to be produced in the first 2 years of a 140 year timeline.

They could have set it up to produce 0.5% of the coins ever to be produced in the first 2 years.

They knew what they were doing.

I suppose it could have been worse and they could have flash mined 95% of them in the first year?

That wouldn't be wrong either huh?

Your second guessing everything, maybe this maybe that.  Who actually knows, the only thing we know fore sure is that bitcoin had one chance and that was it.  (Probably a one in a million or more chance at that).

I get it, you are unhappy with the inequity in the world and bitcoin probably won't fix that.  Perhaps you should look for another vehicle to work on to fix that but I would ask you to leave bitcoin alone, it has a lot of other fishes to fry and it may actually do those ;) .

My personal peeve with the world is debt and money printing (a great source of the inequity by the way) and bitcoin may actually do something about those.  It may not fix everything, but it may fix some things.

It won't "not fix it" - it has added to it already and with every greater success continues to add to the inequity of the world.

If it replaces global fiat currencies , we'll have near total wealth inequity among mankind , orders of magnitude worse than already exists.

When considering the creation of a potentially globally adopted e-currency , and taking into consideration the potential future value of it , which they obviously considered , you don't produce 1/4 of it with you and your buddies if you want to improve the world - you do that if you want to own / rule it.

It could have been made in such a way so as to be distributed with the benefit of humanity in mind as the primary goal - it was created with the opposite intent - personal greed and potential for profit.

I'll leave you all be now as asked. I've said everything I care to on the subject.

The block reward halving is easiest way how to finally have certain amount of coins and slowly prepare miners for no block rewards after this event, so more and more tansaction fees become necessary to keep mining possible. With other distribution methods you need cut the block rewards dramatically when you reach certain amount of coins, which does not prepare miners for what is to be next.

The bitcoin was worth very little initially. So the actual worth of the distributed coins increases with time. In your example, 210,240 produced in the next 2 years is more than double the value of the first 105,120 in the first 2 years if the price of bticoin increases.

You're right.
Distribution model seems fine, there is only one problem - no advertising.
You create new currency/ method of payment that you think will be revolutionary - why don't you create "killer app" that would make it more popular? I understand free market idea, but on the free market there is lot of advertising and bitcoin didn't had any in first 1-2 years of it's life.
For example, Satoshi paid for his domain name using cash sent by post, he knew there is need for anonymous domain registration service, if he would create one and take e.g. 50BTC per domain registration BTC would be much more popular instantly...

I am unsure if he did but I do not think the current wealth distribution model is that much of a problem especially when put into terms of fiat.

stoshi nakamoto clearly told that he have no connections with btc.he dont care about it

I don't think satoshi envisioned people spending so much money/energy on mining coins. In a rational world acquiring coins via mining would cost slightly less than acquiring them via exchanges/trading (due to the effort in getting and running a miner) and the cost of those would keep up with the price of coins, but greedy/stupid people spent too much on miners, and it's going to take a while to sort itself out.

Due to the fact that those early coins never moved and stored in tens of thousands of wallets, it is very likely they have lost (Satoshi never saved large amount of early experimental coins when they worth effectively nothing during 2009, but he might kept some other coins under his control during 2010)

And, considering that no one complains about continuous imbalance of fiat money ownership (central banks own every newly created fiat money, thus 100% of base money belongs to them originally), why should we care about bitcoin's small imbalance

Four years ago, $43 worth of bitcoins were distributed every 10 minutes. Currently, $7,000 worth of bitcoins are distributed every 10 minutes.

That seems extremely unfair to the "early" adopters.

he was quite happy with it as he told early members that they would all be rich

He did made many posts , starting with the very first post and thread(public) on this very forum
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5.0

[/quote]
[/quote]

Dude, the thread you link to, while historic, has about 3 posts after Satoshi started it and NONE of the replies or discussion beyond the OP are from Satoshi. Why do you think this offers any insight into what Satoshi thought about the prospective growth of bitcoin and how the potential for wealth inequality?

This doesn't make sense to me, perhaps you can explain. What's the volume of coins distributed every ten minutes? If it's not the same between the four years ago reference and the currently reference the comparison is meaningless....like comparing apples to horses.

When fiat was created there was no advantage to rich or poor. Now that fiat exists for hundreds of years and people have held onto that wealth and used it to make more wealth is not a feature unique to fiat currency, its a feature common among any capitalist society, therefore bitcoin will also have the same result.

There's nothing that keeps an imbalance of bitcoin wealth except for a government like intervention that siphons bitcoin from the wealthy to the poor. The poorest and the wealthiest people the US, Europe, and China are free to jump in to earn Dollars, Euros, or Yuan...

OP:


This is the closest I can find about the topic:

"In this sense, it's more typical of a precious metal. Instead of the supply changing to keep the value the same, the supply is predetermined and the value changes. As the number of users grows, the value per coin increases. It has the potential for a positive feedback loop; as users increase, the value goes up, which could attract more users to take advantage of the increasing value"

"So in other words, "the early adopter finds the worm" in this system"


They were talking about it here:


http://p2pfoundation.ning.com/forum/topics/bitcoin-open-source

Go create "Faircoin" then! It's that simple. The market will decide, but of course you know better than the market right?

The kicker is everyone goes on about how fair it is when you look more closely its just changing the bankers for the lucky early adopters which is a shame. Do not get me wrong i am in it either way as it is better than the old system but it is far from ideal

Well what would be "ideal"? There is no such thing I'm afraid.

You can't just disconnect money (a medium of exchange) with goods/services that it represents. Imagine a barter system, how would you prevent the motivated and business savvy from accumulating wealth? I think the answer is that you can't and that's perfectly ok. What is needed is take away the power of law to legally force a currency on people. That is what BTC represents, the decentralization of power, not the complete removal of wealth from those who are driven enough in life to accumulate it. You can be powerful by accumulating assets, but that is a huge difference from using state power in tandem with your wealth. Cronyism is what I'd like to see diminished.

I do understand that bt i was just stating what he posted if you see further you can see i have also posted


Which shows what Satoshi thought of Bitcoin

Four years ago, the subsidy was 50 BTC, worth only $0.86 each. Compare that to the present subsidy of 25 BTC, worth $280 each. The value of the distribution was nothing in the early days compared to how much it is now.

Source?

This is the major difference that some people in this thread seem to be missing. Tomorrow the FED could decide to print 100 million dollar bills and effectively rob the wealth of all holders of dollars worldwide via massive inflation of the supply of dollars.

Bitcoin makes that an impossibility,  it represents a true democratization of money,  and that property is extremely valuable - I would argue priceless - to every human being not in control of fiat printing press.

It's worth having a poorly distributed wealth concentration if it means we get A global money supply with democracy baked into the code as eternal law. We can and will solve the inequality problem later.  Got to cross that bridge when we come to it, mass global adoption.

There is no "imbalance" of Bitcoin wealth. Those who work hardest and risks the most first, generally reap (read: earn) the greatest rewards from their risk, investment and work, just like wealth creation and management outside of Bitcoin world. If you want the potential of increased Bitcoin wealth, work harder, risk more and invest more for it. People who talk about Bitcoin/wealth "imbalance" act like irrational, spoiled and entitled people. We are entitled to nothing, People using this language all to often are simply jealous because they failed to self start and lack drive, ambition, hard work ethic and are to fearful to dive into risky endeavors.

Your comment is insulting and stupid.

"Work hardest" .... HAW HAW HAW

Satoshi was no doubt a genius of moderm times, but even him couldn't predict Bitcoin's outcome, otherwise he would have thought about what the current to fork or not to fork problem for it to never arise.

There's no such thing as ideal distribution, unless you are a Communist...
What's needed is fair rules that cannot be bended and transparency on those. This is what the blockchain is. For the first time in history, a form of capitalism where insiders cannot change the rules behind the veil has been created: Bitcoin.

What kind of risk did the folks that mined tens of thousands of coins in the early days with CPU mining take?

Initially, they risked basically nothing.  The investment of time, effort, and electricity was done out of curiosity and/or to support a cool little project.  The bitcoins themselves were practically valueless.

However, an early user that held a stack of bitcoins for many years has absorbed a huge amount of investor risk.

Consider:
Amy, Wilson, and Daniel are bitcoiners:

• Amy mined 20 000 bitcoins in 2009 and held them until today.
• Wilson mined 20 000 bitcoins in 2009 and sold them 6 months ago.
• Daniel bought 20 000 bitcoins in the market 6 months ago and held them until today.

Which of Amy, Wilson, and Daniel has taken on the most risk?

From my POV, Daniel has taken the most risk, because he haid to invest the most (by miles).

But at the same time that Daniel invested in 20,000 bitcoins, Amy was also invested in 20,000 bitcoins. Their risk at that point is identical.

Some may argue that since Amy's risk is lower because she paid very little for those bitcoins many years ago. But if Daniel inherited the money that he used to buy the bitcoins, does that mean his risk is lower? After all, the bitcoin effectively cost him nothing.

But has not Amy taken on as much risk as Wilson and Daniel combined?  Does whether or not she mentally sold her 20 000 bitcoins to herself 6 months ago change anything?

Do you debate this additive property or do you claim perhaps that Wilson has taken on negative risk?  Or something else entirely?



Good point.  Perhaps "easy come, easy go" plays a part in this common disagreement.  Perhaps there's a feeling that Amy's 20 000 bitcoins weren't truly earned.

sorry i don't bookmark alot on mobile.  but as an example see above.
"So in other words, "the early adopter finds the worm" in this system"

Those were the words of one Sepp Hasslberger (http://p2pfoundation.ning.com/forum/topics/bitcoin-open-source?commentId=2003008%3AComment%3A9578), not Satoshi.