I'm puzzled with most of your argument mainly because you are explaining why Bitcoin won't be accepted at the same time as evidence is pouring in that it is increasingly being accepted.
I'm seeing it being used for a few transactions that wouldn't really care if 1
BTC = 0.00001 USD or 1
BTC = 1,000,000 USD - and the rest being pure speculation.
how many of them do you think would even think of let alone be stopped by ideological ethical considerations?
I talked about how it would go against their self interest to adopt it as a replacement currency.
Some might be stopped by ethical considerations like opposition to illegal drugs for example, and I know some people who limit their use of cash on purpose, but that's not what I talked about.
Never in this thread did I tear down Bitcoin as a payment processor, where Bitcoins are a temporary intermediate that you don't have to hold for longer than the transaction takes.
But it would be a fundamental problem with getting people to adopt it as a currency. As in, pricing their goods in Bitcoin, keeping substantial savings in Bitcoin, etc.
However if Bitcoin does succeed the the long-term purposes for which it will be used will be as a store of wealth, a medium of exchange, a means of transferring money anywhere worldwide etc. How is this affected detrimentally by early-adopter hoarding?
My precise point is that early-adopter hoarding is a hindrance to its success for those uses, since it'll cause rejection by the "unwashed masses".
Since it's trivial to replace it with yet another fork, there's no incentive for users to reward early miners just for being early miners. Unlike real property, unreal property is potentially infinite. If 99.9% of BitEarth v.1 is owned by 999 early adopters, just make yourself BitEarth v.2 where you own a couple of continents for yourself.
There are already government and legal approaches to the land issue, as you've mentioned. For example, there's laws about adverse possession where squatters who actually use the land can take it over from an inactive property holder, land taxes that make it expensive to keep land unproductive, etc.
I'm puzzled by your perception of reality.
How do you give someone something and not have to tell them what it is?
How is Faircoin even valuable? It has zero value, like Bitcoin had. Am I missing a fundamental aspect of your design?
Why would it get any media attention? Why would it be pro-Faircoin?
It would first have to be be used by somebody for transactions. Then if people started actually paying USD for it, people who wanted to cash out on this would be joining, and this would create attention: Somebody created a cryptocurrency that has been handed out in a finite amount, and some people will actually pay you for them, or offer goods or services for them. That would cause word of mouth and media attention.
If you want me to understand your reasoning, tell me why this would be irrational somehow. You exchange something that has zero value with something that has value.
The Faircoin has two things going for it:
- It can be used to process transactions
- It has a known supply that's proportional to the world population, and everyone starts out with a certain amount.
If you want to throw that away that's fine. But if you believe that you'll need Faircoins in the future, you'd be better served to keep them and use them. Both are rational acts depending on whether you believe in the utility of the currency.
What if Faircoin fails miserably? The ones who accumulated it would lose a lot of money. That's why they have incentive to do something about it.
This sounds like throwing good money and time after a bad investment.
There is a heap paradox here. How will you decide when is early?
Every new person who comes in the door and wonders if this is something for them, would consider the people who came in as earlier than them. If you get handed a free "inheritance" and told "here's your Faircoins - you won't be given any more - spend them wisely" I would be more interested in that than a bunch of guys running around screaming about how their randomly generated bit strings are the currency of the future and please will you give me 35 USD for it.
Besides, the real world example to this is the almighty Bitcoin. Who even forked Bitcoin to get rid of early adopters, let alone succeeded? How is it any different. With your logic, Bitcoin is even worse, so such forks should happen all the time. Right?
It does.* And unfortunately the Faircoin would also suffer from the forking problem. While new adopters might be attracted to Faircoin, the people who sold off their Faircoin v.1 holdings in a fit of greed might be pushing for their Faircoin v.2 fork to be the new thing. That would be an interesting dynamic to study.
One interesting side effect, since Faircoins would be tied to a specific person, and transparent, could be that if people see that you've spent away your Faircoin v.1, they're not likely to trust you in Faircoin v.2 either. "Hey, you've already spent all your Faircoins - why are we to use your fork so you can double-spend?"
Maybe - just maybe - this might actually work? It would all rest on somebody starting actually using them for something useful.. Edit: Read: Something that you can pay for only with Faircoin, or more easily with Faircoin than anything else.
* While new forks happen all the time, the main competitor to the main Bitcoin fork is the "no thank you, keep your play money" fork.
