Scaling bitcoin to world economy is unrealistic.

[mobodick]

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.

Because noone can steal your wallet. Right? Right? Am i right?
If you replace 'bitcoin wallet' with 'your gold cache' you'll see that what you think is propably not going to work.
Owning bitcoin still requires something physical and that can be taken from you and you lose control over your coins.

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[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).

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.

If Bitcoin crashes and burns it would be equally idiotic to have the potential to sell 1M BTC at an average price of $50 ea and you didn't.  You pretend the rise from $0.001 per BTC to $3M is guaranteed and without any risk and then also pretend it is impossible and that even a rise in hundreds of dollars (PayPal scale) would be very unlikely.  If it is impossible/unlikely the best thing would be to sell not hold.

Likewise by your logic it is idiotic for anyone to spend any money on anything but the most basic needs for survival and put everything cent they have left into wealth producing assets (stocks, bonds, real estate, equity).  Of course the real world DOESN'T work that way.  People spend lots of money on lots of things they don't need.  You can't take your money with you when you die.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Because noone can steal your wallet. Right? Right? Am i right?
If you replace 'bitcoin wallet' with 'your gold cache' you'll see that what you think is propably not going to work.
Owning bitcoin still requires something physical and that can be taken from you and you lose control over your coins.

What wallet officer?

Owning bitcoins doesn't require anything physical.  Brainwallet is one example.

Try plausible deniability with $10M worth of gold sitting in your house.

Brainwallets
Encrypted plausible deniability truecrypt partitions
Backups (possibly to cloud services accessible from any internet enabled computer in the world).
instawallet/blockchain.info like services
n of m keysharing

None of those are possible with gold or any other asset.

[imanikin]

I just had a thought.
The crazy thing about it is i have never heared anyone actually talking about something similar.
...

The crazy thing is actually that in a year since you've register on this forum, you haven't yet learned to search it.

This amazing and original "thought" you "just had" has been discussed here before over and over to the point that it and similar recurring revelations have become just annoying noise some time ago.

So many substantive discussions get lost here among an avalanche of genius revelations like yours... 

It is a great way to become a "Sr. Member" though.  Fortunately,  we have a way to click ignore on Sr. Noisemakers like you. Happy thinking! 

[mobodick]

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)?

Well, now i can still mine for a good profit.
Also, the value of bitcoin is still so low compared to what it needs to be to replace large parts of world economy that people do not mind spending it frivolously. Heck, most people here treat it as experimental monopoly money.

Once all coins are there there will be no intrinsic way of getting money from mining and it will be unattractive to join such a skewed system.

The more value bitcoin gains the more problematic joining will become as anyone joining later will be able to gain, on average, less coin at the value everybody in the system already has.

[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.

Because noone can steal your wallet. Right? Right? Am i right?
If you replace 'bitcoin wallet' with 'your gold cache' you'll see that what you think is propably not going to work.
Owning bitcoin still requires something physical and that can be taken from you and you lose control over your coins.

Why, that argument is as sound as a dollar!  

[Realpra]

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...

Bitcoin also could be very strong in the hands of a trustworthy government.
But:
1) show me a completely trustworthy government

Okay gahd; you JUST said that fiat and Bitcoin are equal on the technical side, I am trying to argue that in fact fiat is flawed relying on perfect government and then you attack me for believing in perfect government....... DUDE YOUR ARGUMENT WAS THAT FIAT IS SOUND TECHNICALLY, it's NOT MY argument.

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.

There is no such thing as "saving at a faster pace". You can EARN at a faster pace, but this requires creating wealth (or printing money).

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.

Again you cannot make money by looking at the money you already have... I honestly don't what you are thinking here.

This point of yours makes no sense whatsoever.

Makes perfect sense; today crony politicians print money and give to their donor companies. These companies are run by the crony elite and as such they get to own a greater percentage of the money supply while the poor just had their pensions inflated to oblivion.

Without the elite having the ability to print, the poor have a chance at saving and the elites can't get free money which makes them much less "elite" in the free market.

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

1. Was inflation eats pensions and 2. was that bitcoins cannot be printed.... which one is NOT a fact?

If BTC was at 0% inflation/deflation then a poor dad saving up a steady amount for 10 years for his kids' college would be able to afford an exactly 11.7% more expensive education compared to same scenario with just 2% inflation.

Maybe you just don't understand how (any school of) economics works. "Hoarding at a faster pace", LOL.

Bitcoin is for the PEOPLE. Go away with your crazy theories about the early adopters - its nothing compared to Ben Bernankes 20% stake in the entire world economy.

[mobodick]

Because noone can steal your wallet. Right? Right? Am i right?
If you replace 'bitcoin wallet' with 'your gold cache' you'll see that what you think is propably not going to work.
Owning bitcoin still requires something physical and that can be taken from you and you lose control over your coins.

What wallet officer?

Owning bitcoins doesn't require anything physical.  Brainwallet is one example.

I consider information to be a physical quantity.
Hence information needs the physical world to be effective.
You cannot transfer information without the physical world so information is something physical.
(if you think information is not physical then you'll need to explain why black holes have an event horizon, but that is another discussion)
Your brainwallet example just encodes some information in your brain and so your brain becomes a physical expression of that information. Destroy your brain and the coins are locked.

But let's scale this up to world proportions.
If people indeed would use braincrypt for everything then there would be, according to you, no way to prove scams as all transactions could be unprovable.
Now tell me, how many people in the world would be interested in a currency where scams can be done in stealth mode?

Try plausible deniability with $10M worth of gold sitting in your house.

Brainwallets
Encrypted plausible deniability truecrypt partitions
Backups (possibly to cloud services accessible from any internet enabled computer in the world).
instawallet/blockchain.info like services
n of m keysharing

None of those are possible with gold or any other asset.

That only means they can take it from you (take your ultraturboencrypted home computer) but cannot use the coins claimable by it.
Net effect is a general increase in value for the group of people still owning their coin and you not having a dime.

[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.

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?

Bullshit.
Mankind stems from monkeys and all monkeys (including humans) have a strong social hierarchy.
Strongest monkey gets the best food and fucks the most females.
There is nothing 'anarco' or 'socialistic' about the human situation.

If you want anarchy then look at how lions survive as family groups.
Humans don't work that way.

[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?

Bullshit.
Mankind stems from monkeys and all monkeys (including humans) have a strong social hierarchy.
Strongest monkey gets the best food and fucks the most females.
There is nothing 'anarco' or 'socialistic' about the human situation.

If you want anarchy then look at how lions survive as family groups.
Humans don't work that way.

Deny over 200,000 years of mankind living as hunter gathers then.  Anyway I don't think you really know what anarcho-socialism really means    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_anarchism

[Realpra]

I consider information to be a physical quantity.

I guess that's why you should be careful with your passwords around pickpockets right? /sarcasm (dripping)

[mobodick]

I just had a thought.
The crazy thing about it is i have never heared anyone actually talking about something similar.
...

The crazy thing is actually that in a year since you've register on this forum, you haven't yet learned to search it.

This amazing and original "thought" you "just had" has been discussed here before over and over to the point that it and similar recurring revelations have become just annoying noise some time ago.

So many substantive discussions get lost here among an avalanche of genius revelations like yours... 

It is a great way to become a "Sr. Member" though.  Fortunately,  we have a way to click ignore on Sr. Noisemakers like you. Happy thinking! 

Of course i knew this.
But for me it was a new thought.

And your point about discussions being snowed over is something that i feel confronted with all the time in these fora.
There is not enough structure to search through it effectively.
Usually i find that posts from people making my point are somewhere halfway a 150 page discussion...

[Etlase2]

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.

There is no point in arguing bitcoin economics with people like DeathAndTaxes, Realpra, or evoorhees. They are heavily invested in this system and it is in their best interests to make sure that the wool stays pulled down.

[cbeast]

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

[Adrian-x]

As price goes up, more people will sell/trade their bitcoins away. We can already see this by the super early adopters, they have kept some probaly, but one of the firsts as an example bought himself a new house. The higher the value, the more tempting it will be to buy something.

If for instance bitcoin went up to 1000 $ now, I would sell more then half my bitcoins and buy stuff or diversify my investments.

This I think is part of the process. And all those believers waiting on the side like me will jump in every time it drops (or be forced to earn there way in if the fiat BTC continues to rise.)

[Severian]

Owning bitcoin still requires something physical and that can be taken from you and you lose control over your coins.

Say WHAT?! The Feds still can't read minds. Two people that trust each other can still trade bitcoins by word of mouth.

[Realpra]

There is no point in arguing bitcoin economics with people like DeathAndTaxes, Realpra, or evoorhees. They are heavily invested in this system and it is in their best interests to make sure that the wool stays pulled down.

I have about 6.5K DKK in BTC (became worth 12K DKK), 14K DKK in a wind turbine and 5K DKK in a Singaporean fish farm.

You are lying about the heaviness of my investment. Further it would be in my self-interest to talk Bitcoin DOWN so that I could buy more cheaply.

Even if I stood to gain massively the facts and numbers don't lie; even the last adopter stands to gain here.

[cbeast]

For the next several hundred years, the new generations will complain about how cheaply their parents got *their* bitcoins.

[Etlase2]

You are lying about the heaviness of my investment. Further it would be in my self-interest to talk Bitcoin DOWN so that I could buy more cheaply.

I am only going by what you said:

All of this will be given to us by Bitcoin and Satoshi in time.

Since I realized the potential of Bitcoin I have been blessing my stars, not because I got to get in early and maybe will become wealthy, but because of what it will do to the world.

Just because you rationalize it doesn't mean you didn't say it.

Even if I stood to gain massively the facts and numbers don't lie; even the last adopter stands to gain here.

Right, "facts" being "what I and people who agree with me post on a message board backed by nothing but our own opinions".

[Severian]

There is no point in arguing bitcoin economics with people like DeathAndTaxes, Realpra, or evoorhees.

Add me to your list. That's good company.

The fact is, bitconomics makes far more sense than whatever is being peddled by Krugman and his ilk.