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In general I like your thinking except in cases like this, where you either didn't read carefully or write without thinking. But I am in a good mood, so I will explain the obvious.
Whoaza!!!!!! Coming out hardball, but I am glad that you are still willing to play ball. Let's see how "obvious" is your explanation or my purported wrong thinking on the matter.
-If you sell your coins, you are not an owner anymore. You once were, but the statistics cover only the addresses with a positive balance NOW, amInotRite?
So far, so good. I am with you. I mean I agree.
-If you transfer most of your coins to an exchange but keep at least some dust in one of your addresses, then you are technically still an owner.
Yeah. You own what coins are in the dust address and you own the coins that you sent to the exchange - except the exchange has custody over those coins that you sent to them, but you are still the owner, whether you refer to it as technically or not. Of course, they have the private keys so you could end up getting fucked by giving them your private keys.
-If you transfer ALL of your coins to a personal address which is given by an exchange, you are technically not an owner, because there is a chance that the exchange or a hacker can scam you and you won't be able to withdraw it back.
I think that you lost me a bit here, but I believe that I still get your point that we are talking about coins that are on an exchange, and yeah if they screw up, you get hacked or they exit scam you, then you are fucked out of your coins. That is correct. You are not getting those coins back in those situations.
You heard about "Not your keys, not your coins" (MtGox hinted).
Now you are getting patronizing. Of course, I have heard about that. I referred to the concept in my earlier response.
BUT, I wasn't even talking about this case, because these addresses might be counted by this survey. I was referring to the last type:
Fair enough that some of the GOX coins might have been moved to individual addresses, but I doubt it. The GOX coins are just under higher level of scrutiny now, and they are still combined into a few addresses and held /managed and oversaw through a custodian who is also under court review.
-Finally, if you give ALL your coins to a friend, trust, OTC, whatever, and you don't have a personal address and ability to controll your bitcoins, then how the HELL you can claim you are an owner?!?
I still think that you are getting caught up on the fact that the custodian can fuck you over. Of course, they can, but if you are at a bar, and you ask a friend to hold your beer for a few minutes while you attempt to chat up the girl next to you, and when you come back you expect your friend to give you back your beer rather than to have drunk it. Yeah, he may have drunk it, but that surely was not part of the agreement, so you might punch him in the face or having buy you a new beer or just unfriend him, but it still was your beer, even though you gave custody over to him for a short period.
Yeah, maybe you are getting caught up on whether the agreement was clear about who owned the coins or the beer or whatever, but that is the technicality, not whether you actually owned the coins or the beer.
You are a seller who is in process of selling, or shorting, or trading or whatever. The same applies for non physical futures trading. Why should we count those people as Bitcoin investors?
We count them as bitcoin investors because they are bitcoin investors who have left their coins with a custodian. They may or may not get their coins back when they claim them, but they are still bitcoin investors for the purpose of counting, whether you want call it "technical" or not. Now, for the purpose of having securely ensured that they can get their coins, that is another issue, but the underlying account holders are still bitcoin investors even if their coins are co-mingled with thousands of other account holders.
They are like every other gambler who puts money on horses or whatever.
Of course, having your coins with a third party creates a variety of third party risks, but that does not take away from the fact that the underlying account holders are bitcoin owners. Whether they actually ever remove their coins from the exchange or choose to leave the coins there for years and years will affect the odds that something might happen to their coins to cause them to be removed from ownership.
No matter there might be millions of them.
That's right. There may be millions of them, and we can agree to disagree, and I am going to call your thinking fuzzy logic to the extent that you want to continue to insist that an exchange with one address of millions of account holders who have claims to the bitcoins within the address is just counted as one owner. That is just irrational principle and technical based bullshit, that does not align with the actual on the ground facts that the individual owners could chose to get their coins and to remove them from that address.. . maybe through proof of keys or whatever, and if the exchange does not give the coins or say that they were hacked or exits, then that is another story that may or may not result in the owners who thought that they have bitcoins ending up not having the bitcoins that they thought that they had.
The point of this survey is to show the number of addresses hence people behind them (as an estimate),
Yes there is an attempt to figure out how many actual people are in bitcoin and whether adoption is growing because addresses are growing.
who are involved in real possesion of BTC at this particular moment.
Yes, you are trying to read "real" possession as a requirement concerning whether someone actually qualifies as a bitcoin owner, and I disagree with you. Likely a lot of other peeps are going to disagree with you too, but whatever, we can agree to disagree and I can call you deluded in terms of your "technical" limitations that you want to impose onto bitcoin owners, and you can disagree with me too. Whatever.
And this number is shockingly low <<28 mil, which is a very good bullish sign, so let's not spoil it with nonsense verbiage anymore, mmmkey?
Again.. patronizing and you proved no point, except maybe reiterating and/or explaining your previously asserted beliefs, and I am surprised that you want to double down and go to town so strongly on this "technical" but seemingly inaccurate factual point.
The number of 28 million bitcoin addresses surely has a significance, but it is not exactly reflective of numbers of people involved in bitcoin or owners of bitcoin whether talking about on chain ownership or claims through various kinds of custodians or even lightning channels that are linked to addresses.
Anyhow, I doubt that we really need to go on about these foundational points and our disagreement on such foundational points. It is trite at best. In other words, I stand by the points of my previous post and any other subsequent explanation attempts that I have made in this post.
Poll
