Hi all,
I am new to bitcoin and the bitcoin forums so I hope you will take it easy on me if this has been asked or covered before or if I make any undue assumptions. I was unable to find an exact answer to this question on this forum or elsewhere so please forgive me in advance.
I am interested in both generating and using bitcoins however I am extremely curious where the first bitcoins are now. I see in the block chain that at least the first few thousand coins that were generated have never been used. (See
http://blockexplorer.com/b/0 and click next a few thousand times) Did the original creator of bitcoin generate a ton of coins for himself at the very beginning to establish a large pool to sell on the market later at inflated prices?
In the "canonical newbie friendly post" it clearly states there is "no man at the top" and "Neither is there any kind of scheme in BitCoin to harvest money off of unsuspecting people in complicated ways. " To me, if there is some small group that controls a massive amount of bitcoins right from the start before there was a widespread distribution of miners and that group is simply wait for enough unsuspecting buyers to come along and actually use the system as it was intended before dumping all their worthless coins on them IS a complicated way to harvest money off of unsuspecting people who have no idea how the software worked in the early days. I can only assume that is why the coin generation is being done like it is. By gradually increasing scarcity and significantly increasing difficulty they insure themselves a huge pay day. Am i wrong? Or is this just seen by the community as compensation for the hard work of setting up the system in the first place? I would think at least a FEW of the coins would have been used if this was not the plan all along. If it was the plan then that would in effect mean bitcoin itself IS a massive scheme to harvest money off unsuspecting people in complicated ways.
As I said at the start, I am sure I don't know all the facts.
Thanks!