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

[niko]

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

You obviously have no idea about the design of Bitcoin, nor about communism.

[1714484903]

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[Frost]

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.

I do think it is fair because I expect 1 bc to be worth more then 1.000.000 € in the future. I today bought 0,12 bc to be sure that my life is ok if the case comes true.

[Anon136]

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

You obviously have no idea about the design of Bitcoin, nor about communism.

seriously... a communists here... and with 1500 posts. You do realize bitcoin is a purely free market phenomena.

[BlackSheep]

I find it funny that this technology has attracted anti-capitalists.

They have always wanted to abolish money.

"...houses, fields, and factories will no longer be private property, and that they will belong to the commune or the nation and money, wages, and trade would be abolished."

— Peter Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread

4. The End of the Money Trick
Two features of capitalism are essential to its existence—the wages system and a thorough and all-reaching system of money relationships. Unfortunately men are now so used to living by money that they find it difficult to imagine life without it. Yet it should be obvious that no libertarian and equalitarian society could make use of money. Syndicalism, as well as ending the wages system, also aims at the destruction of money relationships.

WAGES. The abolition of all wages and the establishment of the principle of equal income for all. What that income would be cannot be expressed in money terms, the only terms known to capitalist society, but it should certainly be more than double the present average wage.

EDUCATION. Education will be free to all able to benefit from it and wishing to enjoy it, free from kindergarten to university. Classes would be smaller, equipment improved and new schools built. The recent trend of education from coercion and terrorism to freedom and co-operation of teacher and scholar would be accelerated.

MEDICINE. Medical treatment would be free—medicine, attendance, clinics and hospitals. But the new society would increase the health of all, not by a new flood of physic, but, in main, by a better diet, right working and living conditions and the end of industrial fatigue.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:b3QPiFzdlAcJ:libcom.org/library/principles-of-syndicalism-tom-brown+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a

Karl Marx hypothesized that, as the productive forces and technology continued to advance, socialism would eventually give way to a communist stage of social development. Communism would be a classless, stateless, moneyless society based on common ownership and the principle of "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism

It is embarrassing that someone in the 21st century can hold these views.

[herzmeister]

From each according to his brain wallet, to each according to his performance. 

[herzmeister]

srsly though, I think Marxists may see Bitcoin as transitional, mainly because it's immaterial.

There presumably won't ever be state enforcement behind it (see pirateat40).

In that sense, Bitcoin might just be a distributed, better reputation system.

[johnniewalker]

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.

For real? What are you doing here? You literally sound like a communist, which is about 100% against what Bitcoins are all about LOL.

[zendantom]

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.

I do think it is fair because I expect 1 bc to be worth more then 1.000.000 € in the future. I today bought 0,12 bc to be sure that my life is ok if the case comes true.

I see it as very likely, but 120.000 € in the future may be average monthly wage 

[Watermellon]

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.

bitcoins will rise in price for 100 years

as long as there are people who don't use bitcoins, you are one of the "first"

7 billion people on the planet, maybe a few million know

[ArmoredDragon]

It's rather shocking how little people understand about money and the distribution thereof. I remember reading not long ago about how some organization (one with socialist roots, by the way) claimed that the worlds wealthiest people could end poverty 4 times over...it's simply not true - not even close.

The thing is, anything other than a fiat currency is a resource that is available in finite supply. Taking from the rich and giving to the poor doesn't solve that problem. In addition, the more money that one has, the less they actually value it. Compare somebody who makes $30,000 a year to say Bill Gates.

The $30k guy will probably balk at paying $3 for a 16 ounce soda in a movie theater and probably prefer to either sneak one in or just go without. Bill Gates on the other hand wouldn't really care; he's got so much money that the $3 doesn't really mean anything to him. To him it's worth the convenience of buying it there rather than sneaking it in.

Another way to look at it is if you compare your currency to a material good. I tried to explain this to a socialist guy who likes his nokia lumia 920. I asked him if owning a second lumia 920 would be every bit as valuable to him as the first one he owns. Of course not. The more he owns, the less he values them. He'd be more willing to trade one away for something else than to just keep it - even if that something else is worth less on the open market than what he gave them.

It's for this reason that if you just play Robin Hood with available supply money, all you end up doing is causing inflation. Inflation is generally defined by people valuing their money less, which leads to a general rise in prices. Giving people more money does exactly that. While they may have more cash, their purchasing power has not increased. The scarcity of goods remains the same. Poverty isn't defined by how much money one has, but by how much wealth they have. Note the distinction between wealth and money. Money can buy wealth, but if you reduce the value of money in the process of redistributing it, then money can't buy as much wealth, so you haven't done anything to end poverty.

While on paper the worlds wealthiest people may have enough *money* to end poverty four times over, they really can't do anything about the scarcity of goods. That study should look at whether they have enough wealth to end poverty, rather than enough money. They'll probably end up with a much different conclusion. And even then, their figures won't account for things like a large yacht being given away. This is the kind of thing that, while worth a lot to somebody who is wealthy, isn't really worth anything to say a guy who has a regular 9 to 5 job that can't be done while at sea, and if its a big enough yacht, he probably can't afford to hire a crew either.

[herzmeister]

It's for this reason that if you just play Robin Hood with available supply money, all you end up doing is causing inflation. Inflation is generally defined by people valuing their money less, which leads to a general rise in prices. Giving people more money does exactly that. While they may have more cash, their purchasing power has not increased. The scarcity of goods remains the same. Poverty isn't defined by how much money one has, but by how much wealth they have. Note the distinction between wealth and money. Money can buy wealth, but if you reduce the value of money in the process of redistributing it, then money can't buy as much wealth, so you haven't done anything to end poverty.

True. Examples of ways to end poverty are these:

• Cut out middle-men and those who are in the way of innovation and progress, by holding monopolies on territory, patents, currency, and tariffs. States, banks, big oil, big corporations must be circumvented.
• Spread cheap (or free and open source) technologies: Hydro- and aquaponics, 3D printing, solar power (underlies Moore's Law!), industrial hemp. Self-sufficient individuals will be less corruptible to do things that are morally wrong (like joining the army), strengthen the establishment and perpetuate the status quo.
• Give a fish vs Teach how to fish: Go to poor areas and look for the reason why developments don't happen. What keeps them from helping themselves and self-realization? Ask them what they want; donate basic necessities, infrastructure and education (without making them dependent on Monsanto like today).

[Gator-hex]

Litecoin. (No FPGAs, No ASICs) 

[winterduitser]

Litecoin. (No FPGAs, No ASICs) 

next risk

[ZephramC]

It's rather shocking how little people understand about money and the distribution thereof. I remember reading not long ago about how some organization (one with socialist roots, by the way) claimed that the worlds wealthiest people could end poverty 4 times over...it's simply not true - not even close.

The thing is, anything other than a fiat currency is a resource that is available in finite supply. Taking from the rich and giving to the poor doesn't solve that problem. In addition, the more money that one has, the less they actually value it. Compare somebody who makes $30,000 a year to say Bill Gates.

The $30k guy will probably balk at paying $3 for a 16 ounce soda in a movie theater and probably prefer to either sneak one in or just go without. Bill Gates on the other hand wouldn't really care; he's got so much money that the $3 doesn't really mean anything to him. To him it's worth the convenience of buying it there rather than sneaking it in.

Another way to look at it is if you compare your currency to a material good. I tried to explain this to a socialist guy who likes his nokia lumia 920. I asked him if owning a second lumia 920 would be every bit as valuable to him as the first one he owns. Of course not. The more he owns, the less he values them. He'd be more willing to trade one away for something else than to just keep it - even if that something else is worth less on the open market than what he gave them.

It's for this reason that if you just play Robin Hood with available supply money, all you end up doing is causing inflation. Inflation is generally defined by people valuing their money less, which leads to a general rise in prices. Giving people more money does exactly that. While they may have more cash, their purchasing power has not increased. The scarcity of goods remains the same. Poverty isn't defined by how much money one has, but by how much wealth they have. Note the distinction between wealth and money. Money can buy wealth, but if you reduce the value of money in the process of redistributing it, then money can't buy as much wealth, so you haven't done anything to end poverty.

While on paper the worlds wealthiest people may have enough *money* to end poverty four times over, they really can't do anything about the scarcity of goods. That study should look at whether they have enough wealth to end poverty, rather than enough money. They'll probably end up with a much different conclusion. And even then, their figures won't account for things like a large yacht being given away. This is the kind of thing that, while worth a lot to somebody who is wealthy, isn't really worth anything to say a guy who has a regular 9 to 5 job that can't be done while at sea, and if its a big enough yacht, he probably can't afford to hire a crew either.

+1

[Beepbop]

It could be argued economy-philosophicaly whether the unequal distribution (http://eprint.iacr.org/2012/584.pdf) of economical power creates a risk for a system which is grows and get ever pathological as that unequality passes a critical threshold.

If the money ends up in the hands of a few, there is indeed a risk of some sort of social revolution to change the system, or just a rejection of the currency.

For example, if you paid an enormous princess' ransom to some evil dragon in your own fiat currency, you could just replace your currency after the princess was released and safe back home. Of course it shows bad faith, but so does kidnapping princesses.

Another example: Let's say a few captains of industry got huge piles of money by offering much needed commodities or services to a population; if the people could choose to devalue their currency by hyperinflation after those services were offered, that would in effect be a case of the incompetent masses screwing over the captains of industry, so said captains are left with a pile of worthless money afterwards. The reverse of this is a small cabal of the president's buddies that pays the people for hard work and goods, and aquire property by going into debt; those oligarchs could screw over the people by causing hyperinflation of the currency so the people are rich in money but poor in wealth; the oligarcs owe the people money, but since the money is worth so little now they can easily pay the money back and be left with huge amounts of property; finally the people start a black market using USD (as in Zimbabwe).

The final example is a small cabal of nerds who define hashed bits as the new money. Since they provide no wealth, goods or services to the rest of the world, the systemic risk was realized from day one as the world rejects it as a currency. This might change if there are people out there who will provide a service or commodity exclusively in BTC, or cheaper in BTC than in other currencies. <- hint for those who want BTC to succeed as a currency and not just as a USD transfer system.

Giving people more money does exactly that. While they may have more cash, their purchasing power has not increased. The scarcity of goods remains the same.

Yes, this is what happens if you just give people money for nothing, or for useless proof of work. So that's why unfettered money redistribution is a terrible idea. However, after an initial distribution, the money will accumulate in the hands of those who perform useful work or sell desireable commodities over time. It doesn't mean that limited taxation, limited inflation or limited welfare is a bad idea.

I completely agree with your analysis as a critique of how if "the wealthiest just were forced to give their all their money away all at once would make everything better".

[jerkoff]

See http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/04/05/why-bitcoin-is-doomed-to-fail.aspx

Bitcoin will fail because a substantial number of hoarders control most of the supply
Blockchain.info, which claims to be Bitcoin's most popular wallet (every user needs a digital "wallet," which is something like an anonymous checking account, to transact Bitcoins), provides the following statistics on its userbase and on Bitcoin itself. I've rounded some numbers for convenience:

• Total wallet users: 180,400.
• Bitcoins created to date: 11,000,000.
• Bitcoin transaction volume (weekly moving average): 344,000.
• Wallet users engaging in transactions (weekly moving average): 10,000.
• Total Bitcoin exchange dollar volume (weekly moving average): $9,600,000.
• Estimated Bitcoins transacted on exchanges (at $135 price): 71,000.

According to these figures, only about 3% of all Bitcoins are in circulation at the moment, and less than 1% of all Bitcoins currently in existence are sold on the exchanges. With less than 10% of wallet users actually engaged in transacting their Bitcoins, it becomes easier to see why even a little bit of news can cause massive price swings.

The huge sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of the current bitcoin gamblers is that only maybe 1% of the coins is what is traded on exchanges right now.

Market cap of $1.6 billion is purely ficticious, if only 10.000 coins a day are traded. And those are coins that are used by a lot of speculators buying and selling or trading between BTC and LTC many times a day. You can estimate that maybe 2000 coins a day are truly bought.

An awful lot of coins is hold by early adopters, people with 10K-100K wallets that have been inactive. Remember the 10.000 coins for 2 pizza's worth $20 days ? Even if a few come to the market wanting to cash in, they could drop the price down to $10 just by offering 20.000 coins for sale since it would dwarf the real demand to buy cash for coins, which is tiny compared to the huge amount of bitcoins held by people whose only goal is to sell to suckers that think prices will go higher.

[log2exp]

If OP can read some posts on reddit.com/r/bitcoin, then you will notice many early adopters who are considered rich now are actually being very generous tipping other newbies. They took the risk and time to be the pioneer on something that they believed. This is fair to everyone.

[jerkoff]

If OP can read some posts on reddit.com/r/bitcoin, then you will notice many early adopters who are considered rich now are actually being very generous tipping other newbies. They took the risk and time to be the pioneer on something that they believed. This is fair to everyone.

Those days must be long gone, I can't find anyone willing to donate me even 0.01 mBTC.

[thoughtfan]

See http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/04/05/why-bitcoin-is-doomed-to-fail.aspx

Bitcoin will fail because a substantial number of hoarders control most of the supply
Blockchain.info, which claims to be Bitcoin's most popular wallet (every user needs a digital "wallet," which is something like an anonymous checking account, to transact Bitcoins), provides the following statistics on its userbase and on Bitcoin itself. I've rounded some numbers for convenience:

• Total wallet users: 180,400.
• Bitcoins created to date: 11,000,000.
• Bitcoin transaction volume (weekly moving average): 344,000.
• Wallet users engaging in transactions (weekly moving average): 10,000.
• Total Bitcoin exchange dollar volume (weekly moving average): $9,600,000.
• Estimated Bitcoins transacted on exchanges (at $135 price): 71,000.

According to these figures, only about 3% of all Bitcoins are in circulation at the moment, and less than 1% of all Bitcoins currently in existence are sold on the exchanges. With less than 10% of wallet users actually engaged in transacting their Bitcoins, it becomes easier to see why even a little bit of news can cause massive price swings.

The huge sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of the current bitcoin gamblers is that only maybe 1% of the coins is what is traded on exchanges right now.

Market cap of $1.6 billion is purely ficticious, if only 10.000 coins a day are traded. And those are coins that are used by a lot of speculators buying and selling or trading between BTC and LTC many times a day. You can estimate that maybe 2000 coins a day are truly bought.

An awful lot of coins is hold by early adopters, people with 10K-100K wallets that have been inactive. Remember the 10.000 coins for 2 pizza's worth $20 days ? Even if a few come to the market wanting to cash in, they could drop the price down to $10 just by offering 20.000 coins for sale since it would dwarf the real demand to buy cash for coins, which is tiny compared to the huge amount of bitcoins held by people whose only goal is to sell to suckers that think prices will go higher.

Hi jerkoff and welcome to the forum

Just fyi there is generally a thread for the discussing of each news piece or notable blog that comes along which you'll find in the Press section.  For the one you're referring to here the discussion has been going on at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=168333.0

Whilst I'm here I will comment on a couple of the points you made:  Regarding your supposedly 'fictitious market cap' would you say the market cap of gold is 'fictitious' just because the vast majority of it hasn't been traded for some time?  In neither case does it need to have been traded for it to be providing value to its owners.  As for 20k BTC  crashing the market 'down to $10 I'm guessing you've not spent much time watching the size of the trades that go through even those markets we can see let alone many p2p ones we can't?  5k btc trades are pretty common and recently barely cause a blip in the charts.  10k trades are not that infrequent and 20k trades are not unknown either.  If you are really interested in researching how realistic your assumptions are there are those over in the Speculation subforum who are pretty adept at finding their way round the figures and could give you something more concrete on which to draw your conclusions.

[jerkoff]

Hi jerkoff and welcome to the forum

Just fyi there is generally a thread for the discussing of each news piece or notable blog that comes along which you'll find in the Press section.  For the one you're referring to here the discussion has been going on at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=168333.0

Whilst I'm here I will comment on a couple of the points you made:  Regarding your supposedly 'fictitious market cap' would you say the market cap of gold is 'fictitious' just because the vast majority of it hasn't been traded for some time?  In neither case does it need to have been traded for it to be providing value to its owners.  As for 20k BTC  crashing the market 'down to $10 I'm guessing you've not spent much time watching the size of the trades that go through even those markets we can see let alone many p2p ones we can't?  5k btc trades are pretty common and recently barely cause a blip in the charts.  10k trades are not that infrequent and 20k trades are not unknown either.  If you are really interested in researching how realistic your assumptions are there are those over in the Speculation subforum who are pretty adept at finding their way round the figures and could give you something more concrete on which to draw your conclusions.

I've read that thread now, and obviously it has a few negative replies. In a bubble, everyone has rose tinted glasses and is unable to see the risks.

Regarding gold, even though 99% of gold remains in vaults, last week gold dropped from $1600 to $1540 (and then rebounded to $1580 to close for the week). That's the danger, if a large majority of a commodity is held for keeps, the remainding few percent that speculators hold can fluctuate the price up and down a lot, causing the inactive stashes profits and losses way beyond the capital used for influencing those markets.

I am a stock investor, and I see the market that way. There is always risk. In a bubble, gamblers ignore that and only consider profit, yet in the end they're the ones suffering the losses.