FORGET All of Your Early Adopter Worries/Hatred/Fears/Jealousness!!!

[gigabytecoin]

Honestly guys... how greedy can you be?!

So a few people have a massive hoard of bitcoins, so what? Unless your name is Carlos Slim, there will always be somebody "richer" than you on this planet.

If Bitcoins actually take off... "Satoshi" and all of the early adopters deserve to be billionaires, too. Much more so than Carlos Slim "deserves" to be a billionaire imho... (by monopolizing telephone lines and then charging poor civilians out the ass for it, selling cigarettes by the trillions, etc, etc...)

A new block chain would accomplish little at this point anyways in terms of distributing the wealth... There are already solo miners out there with 50Ghps+ rooms ready to rape a new difficulty level and quickly gain 10k+ "new bitcoins" in a few short days.

Full disclosure: I only found out about "Bitcoin" ~3 months ago. The second I discovered it I could not stop reading/thinking/gaining-interest in the topic. I have acquired ~100 BTC in that time mainly by getting lucky once finding a block and participating in a few different pools thereafter.

[casascius]

I wouldn't say greed, Bitcoin is promoted as a more fair store of wealth than the USD?  If something appears to threaten that, should we be ashamed to point that out?  Am I greedy for worrying that my buying power could potentially lose a third of its value on the whim of any of ten people or so?  Calling me greedy for this sounds as silly as a Federal Reserve claim that "hey, we deserve the interest we charge you as compensation for all the years of "stability" we brought".  It's ironic that I can be sitting here saying I have gained a huge sum I feel I don't deserve, and wouldn't be bothered to sacrifice if it took away a certain unfairness for everybody, and yet be called greedy at the same time.

[BitterTea]

I wouldn't say greed, Bitcoin is promoted as a more fair store of wealth than the USD?  If something appears to threaten that, should we be ashamed to point that out?  Am I greedy for worrying that my buying power could potentially lose a third of its value on the whim of any of ten people or so?  Calling me greedy for this sounds as silly as a Federal Reserve claim that "hey, we deserve the interest we charge you as compensation for all the years of "stability" we brought".  It's ironic that I can be sitting here saying I have gained a huge sum I feel I don't deserve, and wouldn't be bothered to sacrifice if it took away a certain unfairness for everybody, and yet be called greedy at the same time.

So then why don't you donate 10,000 BTC to the faucet then, to more fairly distribute your unearned wealth?

Or perhaps set up a trust, such that if a person can prove their identity to a reasonable degree (to minimize fraud), they will receive 1 BTC from you?

Or pay a developer to start a new block chain?

Seriously, there are so many things you could do rather than bitch about how unfair it is that the early adopters were able to make boatloads of bitcoin.

Have you considered that if Bitcoin seriously takes off, buying at $9 could be considered an early adopter in the future? Oh my god, people were able to afford HUNDREDS of bitcoins! The distribution of wealth is soooo unfair!

[qikaifu]

I wouldn't say greed, Bitcoin is promoted as a more fair store of wealth than the USD?  If something appears to threaten that, should we be ashamed to point that out?  Am I greedy for worrying that my buying power could potentially lose a third of its value on the whim of any of ten people or so?  Calling me greedy for this sounds as silly as a Federal Reserve claim that "hey, we deserve the interest we charge you as compensation for all the years of "stability" we brought".  It's ironic that I can be sitting here saying I have gained a huge sum I feel I don't deserve, and wouldn't be bothered to sacrifice if it took away a certain unfairness for everybody, and yet be called greedy at the same time.

So then why don't you donate 10,000 BTC to the faucet then, to more fairly distribute your unearned wealth?

Or perhaps set up a trust, such that if a person can prove their identity to a reasonable degree (to minimize fraud), they will receive 1 BTC from you?

Or pay a developer to start a new block chain?

Seriously, there are so many things you could do rather than bitch about how unfair it is that the early adopters were able to make boatloads of bitcoin.

Have you considered that if Bitcoin seriously takes off, buying at $9 could be considered an early adopter in the future? Oh my god, people were able to afford HUNDREDS of bitcoins! The distribution of wealth is soooo unfair!

Some how ponzi, the last paragraph.

[BitterTea]

No, it's nothing like a ponzi scheme. When the very last bitcoin is mined and sold, people can still trade all of the bitcoins in existence.

[jerfelix]

I don't see Ponzi at all.

Here's a question for you.  What are the odds that Bitcoin after ten years will be "as successful" as Paypal was after its first ten years?

Say the odds are 10% that Bitcoin will have as many users after a decade as Paypal did.  Pick any number that you want.  I'll use 10% chance.

And say that each user holds on average, a small amount of money in Bitcoin - some amount that they can conduct business, but not so much that they would have fit if they lost it.  I'll say $10 worth, on average.  You use whatever number you want.

OK, Paypal had 150 Million users after its first decade, according to this NY Times article:  http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/19/technology/19ecom.html  (combined with the Wikipedia article that said that Paypal was founded in 1998, meaning nearly ten years old at the time of the NY Times article.)



If Bitcoin has 150 million users after a decade, and each user holding (on average) $10 worth of Bitcoin, and, in January 2019 (its tenth anniversary), there will be 17 Million Bitcoins (a known value), then how much will each one be worth?  That's $1.5 Billion worth, divided by 17 Million.  That's $88/bit coin.  Simple math.

And if there's a 10% chance of that happening exactly, and a 90% chance of them being completely worthless, then today, each bitcoin is worth $8.80. Or even if the "midpoint" of the 10% probability is equal to Paypal's success, with some probability that it will do slightly better, and some equal probability that it will do slightly worse, but a 90% probability that all bitcoins will become worthless, then they are worth $8.80 today.

Now, as each day goes by, and the word spreads, the probability of such success may go up.  And that means that the value will go up.  If more people hear about bitcoins, then the likelihood of such success may jump to 20%.  And then their value should double as well, jumping to 20% of the $88/Bitcoin.  The value is proportional to the perceived likelihood of widespread use of Bitcoins.  And when there were just a few Bitcoin owners with little press, the likelihood of success was small, so the value was small.  With the recent press, the likelihood of success goes up, so naturally the value goes up.  And if there's some government crack-down or some flaw in the system, then the likelihood of success will go down and therefore the value will likely go down.


Naturally, their value is what someone else will pay you for them.  But as you can see in the above model, there's nothing to say that Bitcoins can't get to $88/coin by 2019.  


I'm calling this the "JerFelix Bitcoin Valuation Model", in case you want to refer to it later.  Learn it.  There will be a test!

[unk]

I'm calling this the "JerFelix Bitcoin Valuation Model", in case you want to refer to it later.  Learn it.  There will be a test!

the fatwallet analysts beat you to it: http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/finance/1090435/m15946753/#m15946753

i agree that this is a decent way to think about the fundamental, nonspeculative value of a bitcoin. but it requires that you get the odds of continuing rapid growth right. at the moment, saying that the current block chain has a 10% chance of storing $2 billion in fundamental value sounds unrealistically optimistic to me. it stores only a small fraction of the $55 million 'market capitalisation' figure right now.

[SgtSpike]

I'm calling this the "JerFelix Bitcoin Valuation Model", in case you want to refer to it later.  Learn it.  There will be a test!

the fatwallet analysts beat you to it: http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/finance/1090435/m15946753/#m15946753

i agree that this is a decent way to think about the fundamental, nonspeculative value of a bitcoin. but it requires that you get the odds of continuing rapid growth right. at the moment, saying that the current block chain has a 10% chance of storing $2 billion in fundamental value sounds unrealistically optimistic to me. it stores only a small fraction of the $55 million 'market capitalisation' figure right now.

It doesn't need to be fundamental value - it can be just as fake of a market cap as the current one is. 

[unk]

It doesn't need to be fundamental value - it can be just as fake of a market cap as the current one is. 

but then it's the very definition of a pyramid scheme!

[BitterTea]

A pyramid scheme requires an ever increasing number of investors to pay off the earlier investors. When there are no more investors, the scheme collapses as the latest groups of investors realize that there is no more money.

When the exchange rate of bitcoin stabilizes at is maximum value, all of the people who bought bitcoin at its highest price can still trade with bitcoins. How is this like a pyramid scheme?

[lemonginger]

I've only heard about bitcoins for a few days and I am already tired of this round and round discussion. There is no one stopping anyone from setting up BCP or any other block currency. In fact, i would expect that if bitcoin gained ANY traction at all that competitors would spring up. And it is likely that a competing currency will end up having more market share. So bring it on. Don't complain, just build something new. May the best currency win.

[skull88]

Have you considered that if Bitcoin seriously takes off, buying at $9 could be considered an early adopter in the future? Oh my god, people were able to afford HUNDREDS of bitcoins! The distribution of wealth is soooo unfair!

The funny thing is, when I started with bitcoin people already complained about early adopters I didn't complain and just bought them when they where between 0,07 and 0,4.

And in the whole period people kept on complaining about early investors, guess what, bitcoins is still very young and in it's nerdy start-up if you buy now you take the same risk as the earliest investors. When I bought coins at 0,4 I never thought they would hit the 9$ this year, I calculated in that they could easily go back to the 0,01 they came from (hell don't you think I just would get a loan to buy a lot of bitcoins if I knew back than what I know now). So if you buy them now for under the 10$, chances your coins will be much more worth within the year are just as high as they where back than. And if bitcoins fails it doesn't matter if you have 1000 worthless coins or only 100 coins, if it doesn't fail you look at profit. Profit you spend back in the bitcoin community I hope.

And for all the complainers, not all early adopters are millionaires now, most of us spended a lot of coins so we are at this point now, if nobody would spended a lot of our cheap buyed coins we wouldn't be were we are today. If you want bitcoins to succeed just save some, spend some. And stop complaining, we didn't start using bitcoins to get rich quick, but because we believed in bitcoins so stop the whole jealous you are all a bunch of ponzi like scammers.