Scaling bitcoin to world economy is unrealistic.

[Kitemike]

So bitcoin will not solve our global social problem of skewed economic relations, it will accumulate even more wealth in an even smaller number of pockets.

Isn't that they way it's always been ever since the first caveman used a weapon to bring down dinner or picked all the berries in an area, but only shared them in exchange for services.  Technology is not going to supercede our nature.

[mobodick]

So, if history repeats itself, bitcoins and bitcoin transactions will go the way of gold and at some point become merely a very valuable curiosity vaulted away till needed.  At that time the size of the block chain and relative value of individual coins will become unimportant.

Gold did not go away because the US government said it should. It went away as a means of trade because its a bitch to carry around or send across the world.

Gold is however STILL used as a store of wealth and is STILL traded among big central banks and goldbugs. If the US announced tomorrow that all their gold in fort knox was gone, the dollar would likely drop a little.

Bitcoin does not have the problems of golds bulkiness and will become the new "easy" currency - except it is also BETTER, not "just" easier than fiat.

Yeah, but in the same 'technical' way fiat can also be kept alive...

Fiat could be very strong in the hands of a trustworthy government - however with all the temptation in the world to print and no reasons NOT too the incentive model of fiat is flawed.
The incentive model of something might not be technical, but it cannot be changed and is fundamental - and for fiat heavily flawed.

Bitcoin also could be very strong in the hands of a trustworthy government.
But:
1) show me a completely trustworthy government, or to put it differently, how many completely trustworthy people are there in the world.
2) The temptation of governments would be not to print but to 'save' (not invest in the world but hoard and not spend). So with all this temptation to not make the world go round the incentive of bitcoin is flawed.

So bitcoin will not solve our global social problem of skewed economic relations, it will accumulate even more wealth in an even smaller number of pockets.

But:
1. Poor people can save up in Bitcoin while in fiat they would loose on inflation (and since they are poor, they have very few other options).

Poor people can save all they want but they will be left behind by rich people that have the ability to save at a much faster (absolute) pace. So when (and this is just for illustration) a poor person saves 2 bitcoins a rich person can save 2000 bitcoins.
Relatively poor people would always be able to save less than relatively rich people.
The poor are screwed and the rich get richer.
If anything it would lead to an even bigger divide between rich and poor.

2. The elite cannot print bitcoin and so hoard less.

Whaa..?
If they cannot print and lend then the only way left for them to get more is by hoarding.
This point of yours makes no sense whatsoever.

Given these two facts, I would say Bitcoin is MORE fair and will over time lead to a BETTER distribution of wealth.

Those are hardly facts and so your conclusion is shaky at best and a complete fantasy at worst.

[mobodick]

So bitcoin will not solve our global social problem of skewed economic relations, it will accumulate even more wealth in an even smaller number of pockets.

Isn't that they way it's always been ever since the first caveman used a weapon to bring down dinner or picked all the berries in an area, but only shared them in exchange for services.  Technology is not going to supercede our nature.

Yes, and that's why i'm against all this idealistic bullshit people spew.
It's an idealized, sterile and abstract way of thinking about how the world should fuction.
It has little bearings to how the actual real world functions of could function.
 

[mobodick]

Bitcoin will scale and become the world economy because God says so: "the geek shall inherit the earth"

(ok, weak argument but it worked for the dollar )

Aah, the technocrat argument

[cbeast]

I kind of agree that having the top 1% owning almost all the wealth makes me lose faith in the currency. That's why the USD will fail and Bitcoin will prosper.

[mobodick]

I kind of agree that having the top 1% owning almost all the wealth makes me lose faith in the currency. That's why the USD will fail and Bitcoin will prosper.

In bitcoinland a few thousand people out of 7 bilion people already own half the possible amount currency.
That puts half the possible wealth is in hands of 0.0001% of the people.
The current situation in bitcoinland is much much worse than in fiat so..

What was your argument again?

[cbeast]

I kind of agree that having the top 1% owning almost all the wealth makes me lose faith in the currency. That's why the USD will fail and Bitcoin will prosper.

In bitcoinland a few thousand people out of 7 bilion people already own half the possible amount currency.
That puts half the possible wealth is in hands of 0.0001% of the people.
The current situation in bitcoinland is much much worse than in fiat so..

What was your argument again?

over 50% of the Bitcoin is not in anyone's hands yet. Come get some.

[mobodick]

I kind of agree that having the top 1% owning almost all the wealth makes me lose faith in the currency. That's why the USD will fail and Bitcoin will prosper.

In bitcoinland a few thousand people out of 7 bilion people already own half the possible amount currency.
That puts half the possible wealth is in hands of 0.0001% of the people.
The current situation in bitcoinland is much much worse than in fiat so..

What was your argument again?

over 50% of the Bitcoin is not in anyone's hands yet. Come get some.

Sooo... you give an half-full glass to share amongst 99.9999% of the world population.
I like your bullish sentiment.

[cbeast]

I kind of agree that having the top 1% owning almost all the wealth makes me lose faith in the currency. That's why the USD will fail and Bitcoin will prosper.

In bitcoinland a few thousand people out of 7 bilion people already own half the possible amount currency.
That puts half the possible wealth is in hands of 0.0001% of the people.
The current situation in bitcoinland is much much worse than in fiat so..

What was your argument again?

over 50% of the Bitcoin is not in anyone's hands yet. Come get some.

Sooo... you give an half-full glass to share amongst 99.9999% of the world population.
I like your bullish sentiment.

It's a lot better than what we have now. At least the Bitcoin elite do not have the authority to maintain their elite status through control of the money creation process. Eventually things will even out. Fiat currency based capitalism has no such option.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Your assumption is that the value switches overnight.  By your logic Bitcoin shouldn't even be functioning at all.  For the first year or so Bitcoin was mined collectively at less than 5 MH/s.  At most that was a dozen nodes.  Those dozen users accumulates as many coins as the thousands of users who joined in the next year.  The "thousands" should have said "wait those early dozen already accumulated ~10% of all the coins.  We shouldn't join now we should build our own currency".   Likewise the tens of thousands in the third and fourth years were at a time/opportunity disadvantage to the thousands in the second year and the dozens in the first year.

My guess is that most bitcoin holders are not looking for $3M per BTC before they sell a single coin.  The base can keep growing while the price keeps rising.   The idea that 100 years or 200 years from now 50% of the coins are still owned by users (or their direct decendants) who joined the network prior to 2013 is just laughably silly.

I don't think Bitcoin will be a one global currency but your reasons for why are just silly.   Personally if Bitcoin grows to a network that rivals say PayPal (~$100B in transactions annually among millions of users) that would be a major accomplishment.

[DeathAndTaxes]

I kind of agree that having the top 1% owning almost all the wealth makes me lose faith in the currency. That's why the USD will fail and Bitcoin will prosper.

In bitcoinland a few thousand people out of 7 bilion people already own half the possible amount currency.
That puts half the possible wealth is in hands of 0.0001% of the people.
The current situation in bitcoinland is much much worse than in fiat so..

What was your argument again?

So you think nobody who owns coins today will ever sell a single one to a "new users"?  If they will then it doesn't really matter what the value of Bitcoin is in some future date.  You can't look at the wealth distribution based on future prices and today's ownership. 

[mobodick]

I kind of agree that having the top 1% owning almost all the wealth makes me lose faith in the currency. That's why the USD will fail and Bitcoin will prosper.

In bitcoinland a few thousand people out of 7 bilion people already own half the possible amount currency.
That puts half the possible wealth is in hands of 0.0001% of the people.
The current situation in bitcoinland is much much worse than in fiat so..

What was your argument again?

over 50% of the Bitcoin is not in anyone's hands yet. Come get some.

Sooo... you give an half-full glass to share amongst 99.9999% of the world population.
I like your bullish sentiment.

It's a lot better than what we have now. At least the Bitcoin elite do not have the authority to maintain their elite status through control of the money creation process. Eventually things will even out. Fiat currency based capitalism has no such option.

No, no it would not be better.
The bitcoin elite would not need to press money since they would already be top dog and there would be nothing in the world capable of contesting their position.
Things will not even out magically.
It will replace current elite with bitcoin elite and you're just happy that you're part of it.

[DeathAndTaxes]

No, no it would not be better.
The bitcoin elite would not need to press money since they would already be top dog and there would be nothing in the world capable of contesting their position.
Things will not even out magically.
It will replace current elite with bitcoin elite and you're just happy that you're part of it.

Once again this idoitically assumes the distribution of coins will not change as the value rises.  The value only rises as more people enter the system thus some of the "bitcoin elite" will sell of huge chunks of coins at say $20 per BTC, $100 per BTC, $1,000 per BTC, $5,000 per btc $25,000 per BTC, $100,000 per BTC etc, etc, etc.   The idea that someone dollar poor and BTC rich would refuse to sell off any coins as BTC rises from $2 to $3M just so they could own 1% of the worlds economy is just laughably stupid.  Of course they would sell.  

Money =/= wealth.  Money can be exchanged for wealth.  There is no reason to hold money except to store future purchasing power.  As the value of their currency holdings increase there will be a temptation to exchange it for goods and services (either directly or indirectly BTC->USD->goods).

[Domrada]

I kind of agree that having the top 1% owning almost all the wealth makes me lose faith in the currency. That's why the USD will fail and Bitcoin will prosper.

In bitcoinland a few thousand people out of 7 bilion people already own half the possible amount currency.
That puts half the possible wealth is in hands of 0.0001% of the people.
The current situation in bitcoinland is much much worse than in fiat so..

What was your argument again?

I'm still trying to wrap my head around what it is you find objectionable about an uneven distribution of wealth in general.  Please tell us, what is perfection for a currency in your mind? Should everyone have the same amount at all times? Or does everyone start with the same amount? By what standard would you consider this "flaw" resolved?

[DeathAndTaxes]

I'm still trying to wrap my head around what it is you find objectionable about an uneven distribution of wealth in general.  Please tell us, what is perfection for a currency in your mind? Should everyone have the same amount at all times? Or does everyone start with the same amount? By what standard would you consider this "flaw" resolved?

I would also point out that money is merely an accounting system.  Some people are not good at producing wealth.  They lack the skills, discipline, creativity, etc to accumulate significant wealth.  Hell many people even in developed nations have a negative net worth.   Bitcoin doesn't change that.  Lets ignore Bitcoin for a second.

Tomorrow you could do a global wealth reset.  Blam everyone in the world has exactly the same amount of wealth.  Within 10 years you would see the distribution pattern being reformed.  Within 2-3 generations it would look remarkably similar to the situation today. 

[mobodick]

I kind of agree that having the top 1% owning almost all the wealth makes me lose faith in the currency. That's why the USD will fail and Bitcoin will prosper.

In bitcoinland a few thousand people out of 7 bilion people already own half the possible amount currency.
That puts half the possible wealth is in hands of 0.0001% of the people.
The current situation in bitcoinland is much much worse than in fiat so..

What was your argument again?

So you think nobody who owns coins today will ever sell a single one to a "new users"?  If they will then it doesn't really matter what the value of Bitcoin is in some future date.  You can't look at the wealth distribution based on future prices and today's ownership. 

No, what i'm saying is that if bitcoin grows to globally significant proportions that it's value would be so incredibly astronomically high that anybody who now owns even a small amount of bitcoin could in the future spend only a very tiny fraction of their coin and buy themselfs anything.
So in that situation the 'early investors' (basically all of this community) will get to keep most of their 50% of coin and put it in action against 99.9999% of the rest of the world that will own the other 50%.

To put it short:
Replacing paypal? maybe, but the distribution of bitcoin is already sewed.
Replacing fiat? i don't think so.

[Domrada]

I'm still trying to wrap my head around what it is you find objectionable about an uneven distribution of wealth in general.  Please tell us, what is perfection for a currency in your mind? Should everyone have the same amount at all times? Or does everyone start with the same amount? By what standard would you consider this "flaw" resolved?

I would also point out that money is merely an accounting system.  Some people are not good at producing wealth.  They lack the skills, discipline, creativity, etc to accumulate significant wealth.  Hell many people even in developed nations have a negative net worth.   Bitcoin doesn't change that.  Lets ignore Bitcoin for a second.

Tomorrow you could do a global wealth reset.  Blam everyone in the world has exactly the same amount of wealth.  Within 10 years you would see the distribution pattern being reformed.  Within 2-3 generations it would look remarkably similar to the situation today.  

That's exactly right.  What Bitcoin changes about today's situation is that Bitcoins cannot be taken by force, whereas every other store of wealth can. That will shake up the power structure, so that the richest people in the bitcoin world will not have gotten that way by usurping their wealth at the point of a gun. Obviously, this is an immeasurable improvement.

[DeathAndTaxes]

The distribution will change over time.  Hell the distribution has already changed.  Why did you start using Bitcoin the distribution was even more uneven when you joined.  Why was it not a problem for you but it will be a problem for some future adopter (say the one coming tomorrow or next year)?  If it isn't a problem for the "next guy" tomorrow or next year why would it be a problem for the guy coming next decade (when the distribution will be more even)?

[matthewh3]

So bitcoin will not solve our global social problem of skewed economic relations, it will accumulate even more wealth in an even smaller number of pockets.

Isn't that they way it's always been ever since the first caveman used a weapon to bring down dinner or picked all the berries in an area, but only shared them in exchange for services.  Technology is not going to supercede our nature.

No it's from when mankind first started farming and ownership of land became important.  Before that as hunter-gathers your only possessions were what you could carry.  Mankind lived under a form of anarco-socialism for most of its history.  Mankind has only lived under capitalism for a blink of an eye and with the current credit-crunch and banking crises things may be changing again?

[mobodick]

No, no it would not be better.
The bitcoin elite would not need to press money since they would already be top dog and there would be nothing in the world capable of contesting their position.
Things will not even out magically.
It will replace current elite with bitcoin elite and you're just happy that you're part of it.

Once again this idoitically assumes the distribution of coins will not change as the value rises.  The value only rises as more people enter the system thus some of the "bitcoin elite" will sell of huge chunks of coins at say $20 per BTC, $100 per BTC, $1,000 per BTC, $5,000 per btc $25,000 per BTC, $100,000 per BTC etc, etc, etc.   The idea that someone dollar poor and BTC rich would refuse to sell off any coins as BTC rises from $2 to $3M just so they could own 1% of the worlds economy is just laughably stupid.  Of course they would sell.  

Money =/= wealth.  Money can be exchanged for wealth.  There is no reason to hold money except to store future purchasing power.  As the value of their currency holdings increase there will be a temptation to exchange it for goods and services (either directly or indirectly BTC->USD->goods).

If value rises, then it would be idiotic to spend it beyond nessesity.
Risky investments will be a lot less interesting and that is how money flows out of pockets.
Much much less coin will flow out of the pockets of the few into the pockets of the many than is currently happening.
The fact that value is a multiplication on the number of coins means that if value rises by one unit then someone with 10 BTC will get 10 times as much value as someone with 1 BTC.

The process of value growth of bitcoin intrinsically magnifies the difference of value per coin in an exponential way.
If you show this to be false then you may have a point.
Otherwise you're just having a fantasy.