Wouldn't it be more fair if the bitcoins were shared equally?

[xrzer04]

LOL Da, Comrade!

[RodeoX]

From what I can see, ...

Those are good points. I got my first bit-cents from Gavin's old bit faucet. I think it was like .05. it seemed like such a tiny amount. What is that, $2 this morning? Well worth the click in retrospect.

[xrzer04]

Yes indeedy. Can't wait for this wallet o' mine to complete its initial sync so I can play too!

[Walter Rothbard]

People who believe in initial distribution to all newcomers can start a charity that accepts donations from likeminded people and makes disbursements to new people entering the bitcoin community.  The charity can perform whatever checking (or no checking) it wants to avoid second trips, etc.  In fact, there could be multiple such charities, competing amongst each other for donors and recipients based on their identification policies.

In fact, such charities have already existed.

So this can be implemented on top of the existing bitcoin protocol.  The existing protocol is therefore "fair."

[RodeoX]

People who believe in initial distribution to all newcomers can start a charity that accepts donations from likeminded people and makes disbursements to new people entering the bitcoin community.  The charity can perform whatever checking (or no checking) it wants to avoid second trips, etc.  In fact, there could be multiple such charities, competing amongst each other for donors and recipients based on their identification policies.

In fact, such charities have already existed.

So this can be implemented on top of the existing bitcoin protocol.  The existing protocol is therefore "fair."

One could for example collect a small amount of BTC from each sale at a special "fair" exchange. This bitcoin could be used to fund a program that hand delivers bitcoins to disadvantaged women between the ages of 18 and 20ish. I would even volunteer to fly to Scandinavia and look for these women.

[TheDerrickJ]

This is such a joke. "Why don't you give me some of what you have? That would be fair because you have some and I have none!"

[xrzer04]

Heh. Reminds me of the homeless guy scene in the movie 'Falling Down'.

[Beepbop]

Is this a "don't just throw me a Bone, I want a Steak!" kind of thing,

It's more of a "no I won't pay you 40 dollars for the right to play air guitar" thing. I'd really recommend reading the thread before replying to it.

In fact, such charities have already existed.

Maybe because it's also a good marketing move by big holders of Bitcoin.

So this can be implemented on top of the existing bitcoin protocol.  The existing protocol is therefore "fair."

The fact that you can subvert the protocol through social or political action, doesn't make fairness an inherent quality of the protocol. If communists took over, they could likewise force everyone to give all their Bitcoins to the State; the protocol supports it, but that doesn't make the existing Bitcoin protocol "communist". Would you like to try again?

[xrzer04]

It's more of a "no I won't pay you 40 dollars for the right to play air guitar" thing. I'd really recommend reading the thread before replying to it.

Well, I'm not going to Give you forty dollars to play air guitar, either. I might flip you four cents to watch, though, for my own entertainment, but I don't think you're worth much more, and since it's MY $40, I get to decide.

Comrade.

[JoelKatz]

A crypto-currency where currency could only be created by a fixed amount being issued to each unique individual upon attaining the age of legal majority is an interesting sci-fi concept. It might even be interesting from a practical standpoint if there was any secure way to implement it. One key question -- could you get such a thing adopted other than by forcing people to adopt it? And would it remain "fair" over time?

[PimpBot5000]

between all the people?
I don't see the reason why a few people who were the first could gain a big share of the coins and people who want to buy coins now have to pay for them. and why would people will cooperate with such system.
I mean I only heard about this today, I would participate earlier if I knew about it.

What exactly would you propose people do? If competition for Bitcoins wasn't a motivating factor then the BTC economy would be a lot less robust. The people who found BTCs first were the ones who helped Bitcoin grow in the first place. It's also not like they "stole" anything or ripped anyone off by being the first to mine Bitcoin.

[taltamir]

Of for... I can't believe this is still being argued.

look, bitcoin is for free market capitalists. if you are a communist there IS a crypto currency for you called: http://freico.in/
Its exactly like bitcoin except:
1. Built in penalty on being rich (its like a tax except its not collected by anyone, the richer you are the more of your money just evaporates every month).
2. Built it tax for redistribution.

[memvola]

One key question -- could you get such a thing adopted other than by forcing people to adopt it?

If you can find a good unique identifier per individual (e.g. DNA) and a practical way to pass the money to them (e.g. giving an address in exchange for a blood sample given in person), they can claim it whenever they want to use it. Since it's scarce, there is an incentive for adoption, like Bitcoin. It would be very similar to Bitcoin actually, replace mining with buying others' fair money. Why wouldn't you adopt if someone is willing to give you something for it?

In summary, you still need early adopters to take the risk if you are not going to force adoption.

And would it remain "fair" over time?

As I said earlier, the distribution would become heterogeneous very rapidly. I think this sort of heterogeneity is a requirement for adoption anyway, otherwise no one would have enough incentive to develop services for it. You could try making it legal tender instead, but since it doesn't have any value, stronger hands will still accumulate them until they have enough to work on making it useful. It will be completely "unfair", as these people will make a huge profit out of it by selling these back to the people they bought from.

[bubblesort]

The OP might be absurd, but if you think about it this is something that somebody is going to probably try at some point.  We don't have to detach all virtual cryptocurrencies from governments.  We can attach a cryptocurrency to any structure we can dream up.  It might not be successful, but we can try it.

If I were a mad scientist I could create a currency with a central bank that sells bonds every time it rains in Lake Titikaka on a Tuesday and I could sell bonds every time the Steelers win a football game by more than 6 points.

By the same reasoning, if I were into monarchy I can create a currency that runs based on my whim, because I declared myself the emperor of the local sushi bar.

If I were into Athenian style direct democracy I could make monetary decisions based on the votes of the currency holders, with each unit of currency being worth one vote (this doesn't seem like a completely horrible idea to me, in theory).

By the same reasoning, it would make sense for Marxists to try to create a cryptocurrency based on their political beliefs.

In all the above situations, on a certain level, we are starting to create the basis for governments that people can join and leave voluntarily, regardless of geography.  Easy entry and exit to a marketplace could make government more efficient by introducing competition to government.  Right now if I don't like the US government that's too bad, I'm stuck with it unless I want to move.  If I don't like how bitcoin is going, though, I can just drop my BTCs and buy BTC Lite or Liberty Reserve or in the future I might be able to buy MarxCoins from the OP or Democracy Coins from somebody else or Mad Scientist coins from somebody else. 

Changing currencies would change who I can conduct business with.  I can't buy a loaf of bread from the BTC only supermarket, but I might be able to buy a loaf of bread from the Marx Coin bakery on the next block if I change to Marx Coins.  Hell, if the bread is good enough I might change over just to get some of that delicious Marx Coin bakery bread.  This creates a network effect.  The currency I exit has less people working in their currency and whatever currency I move to has more people working in their currency, which increases the attractiveness of the currency I move to for other people.  In this way, all currencies are strengthened because they are all competing for my business.

Of course, the best way to handle a complex situation like that would be to diversify, but even then I would probably hold less of a currency I don't like and more of a currency I do like, which would have kind of the same network effect.

[np]

Not only it depends on the meaning of fairness, but it also raises a bunch of questions/challenges on its own:

* How would you implement such a distribution?
* How to claim, through Internet that you are a different person?
* How to do this universally?
* How to avoid identity thief or coercing people to claim their share for you?

People verifying the authenticity of other people therefor get a form of control/power on them. This is against one of the core principle behind Bitcoin, namely decentralization.

[memvola]

We don't have to detach all virtual cryptocurrencies from governments.

Why would you need a distributed crypto-currency if you have central authority? Everything the network does is redundant; you inherit all of the downsides of a distributed network with no gain at all. If the concern is resilience, you could achieve it much better using redundant storage, forward error correction, encryption, distributed authorities and whatnot. (Also, if you are open to competition, you can allow free exchanges between your centralized currency and decentralized currencies.)

[pokerman]

Bitcoins are not supposed to redistribute wealth evenly nor are they designed for a communist regime.

[nwbitcoin]

I guess the OP is quickly learning about the political divides of the world!

It might feel that it would be good to share the coins out equally, but as a late arrival, you do get more than the first miners got.

They started with nothing, and had to build their wealth from some useless files with no financial wealth associated to them. 

A few years later, you don't start with nothing, you have a free infrastructure where you can spend coins, people know what you are talking about, and the coins have a real value.

For $60, you get access to this world, and you won't even lose your money, because you can change from a bitcoin back to fiat any time you want.

Seems to me that is better than equal for you.

Maybe you should quit while you are ahead?

[bubblesort]

We don't have to detach all virtual cryptocurrencies from governments.

Why would you need a distributed crypto-currency if you have central authority? Everything the network does is redundant; you inherit all of the downsides of a distributed network with no gain at all. If the concern is resilience, you could achieve it much better using redundant storage, forward error correction, encryption, distributed authorities and whatnot. (Also, if you are open to competition, you can allow free exchanges between your centralized currency and decentralized currencies.)

I agree with you that there are very strong advantages to having no central authority, which is why I like bitcoin.  The problem is, there are perceived advantages to amassing more power, especially for the kinds of people who probably aren't on forums like this.

Let me illustrate with a more concrete example:

Lets say you are a religious nut with a big following.  Maybe you are a wealthy muslim imam from the middle east, or maybe you are a member of Christian Exodus or something like that.  You want to set up a theocracy.  You buy a couple thousand acres of land in some remote part of Montana and build a small town and bring your followers to live in it.  You set up your theocracy with contract law.  This would probably use precedents from neighborhood associations and sharia marriage contract laws that are currently in effect in the US.  Whatever scripture you happen to follow, you claim that it says that you, as the grand pumbah of Theocracy Land, have the sole authority to make monetary policy decisions, along with decisions regarding how everybody should live (going to church, the sex lives of your people, how many times a day they are to pray, what kinds of businesses they can work in, what technologies they are allowed to use and how, etc).

You set it up so that people must use your currency while in Theocracy Land.  You can't actually execute people without having the feds called in, but you can cut people out of the local economy by denying them the ability to use your currency, effectively exiling them.  You have just created a theocratic company town, like the mining towns we had in the 1800s.

I'm not saying that this is desirable for me, but there probably are a lot of crazy people who would want a system like that.  People are idiots.

Also, I could imagine a warlord taking over a small region of, say, Afghanistan, and requiring everybody to use their cryptocurrency.

Lets say I live in a town with Muslim theocracy land to the east and Christian theocracy land to the west.  Muslims have a comparative advantage on butter and Christians have a comparative advantage on guns, so I keep enough of each currency to meet my needs for butter and guns and then use bitcoin for things that are cheaper in bitcoin and USD for things that are cheaper in USD and things like that.  I might keep some Marx coins around if there is a Marx coin town somewhere that has a comparative advantage in bread.

There is nothing stopping people from using bitcoin technology to secure their own private currencies like this.  Maybe multiple systems like this would be a good thing, if it opened up competition in the market for currency.  As it is, we already have a certain amount of competition with all of the different flavors of bitcoin floating around.

[DeathAndTaxes]

His point was blockchain technology is expensive (in terms of never ending storage requirements, massive computing power, and eternal risk of 51% attack).  This isn't to say Bitcoin is "bad" but there is a cost.  The price for decentralization is the cost of the blockchain.  Remember the cost isn't just in the miners (proof of work).  All full nodes must not only store the blockchain, they must validate each transaction, each block.  No node accepts the "work" of another node ("trust me this block is legit") all the work is replicated all over again by every node.  All that cost is the price of decentralization.  Without a trusted central authority each node must operate on a trustless model (which is EXPENSIVE). 

Having a decentralized, centralized currency makes absolutely no sense.  You combine all the costs and limitations of a decentralized currency with all the costs and limitations of centralized one.  Don't feel bad it is a common noob mistake/assumption.

The blockchain isn't good because it is the end-all perfect method of processing transactions.  Hardly.  The blockchain is good because it is the best (only one proven so far) to process transactions without a trusted third party.

The ONLY advantage that Bitcoin has over a central authority is that it doesn't have a central authority.  Everything else could be done with a central authority (irreversible transactions, finite supply, psuedo anonymous transactions, contracts/multi-sig, etc).  Of course you have to trust the central authority ... implicitly.    The purpose of the blockchain is to eliminate the need for trusting a central authority implicitly.  If you don't trust the central authority the blockchain doesn't help you, and if you do trust the central authority then the cost of the blockchain is just wasted energy. Liberty Reserve for example would gain nothing by moving transaction processing to a blockchain.