[Hypothetical] What if Bitcoin were to restart tomorrow?

[DamienBlack]

First: "Upward mobility is one of the most important thing for a government to provide." What do you mean by upward mobility? Why would a government provide it? Why should providing it be reserved to the government?

I don't think providing it should be reserved to the government, just that it is an important government role. Providing means of upward mobility -- education, training, healthcare and support -- is often not well suited for the free market. The free market often caters to those who can pay. People that need the most help attaining upward mobility are often people who cannot pay.

Second: "I think we can all support the goal of a true meritocracy, and that simply requires us to provide lower class citizens with more opportunities to attain upward mobility." First, what is an opportunity to provide upward mobility? Who are the "us" who are required to provide it? How are those people going to be compelled to do so? (Or, who shoots "us" if "we" don't?)

A meritocracy is a theoretical concept where everyone gets exactly what they deserve, based on merit alone. Currently, many do not get what they deserve because they find themselves in situations outside their control that limit their ability to move up the social ladder. Someone could be a genius music composer, but have a costly sickness that has him stuck in a few low paying jobs just to pay the med bills. Someone else might be very intelligent and mathematically inclined, but coming from a poor family does not have the opportunity to go to college. Most people would consider these situations a failure of a true meritocracy. On the other hand, many people have inherited wealth, or just come from wealthy families that can pay for a fancy diploma, and so find themselves in lucrative jobs despite not being all that skilled.

I think that providing upward mobility, and limiting the consolidation of wealth is a useful task for a government. I can see you have some anarchist/libertarian leaning beliefs, and I respect that. But I think that large governments can accomplish things that smaller groups can't. In my perfect world, taxes would be heavy, and they would fund social programs in education, healthcare and other social nets. I know some people find taxes distasteful, but I often find that that is because they believe things already are, more or less, already a meritocracy. I don't subscribe to this point of view. It seems clear to me that a persons social status is mostly inherited. I find that more distasteful than taxes.

So the 'us' is the general public, through taxes. And I believe it would be the government that shoots you if you fail to comply (or more likely imprison you). I will always trust the government long before I trust corporations. But I admit, is isn't a good idea to trust either very far.

[1714175066]

1714175066

[DamienBlack]

Why is this topic so taboo that it can't be discussed even hypothetically?  What I'm trying to say is if you believe in Bitcoin as a viable long-term P2P currency then you need to identify the inherent risks to its longevity.  Shouldn't the fact that a very small portion of the overall community having the ability to bring BTC to its knees be at least something to discuss?

I don't understand why early-adopters need to be treated as gods and any sort of topic that comes up is automatically met with, "oh yeah just another guy trying to get rich off them."  As if my ONE thread can somehow re-write history...

I am confused by everyone's assumption that the 'early adopters' took a risk...pennies worth of electricity is not a risk on generating thousands of worthless bitcoins is not a gamble. If anything, they gambled their brain power on something they saw as immensely useful. Those that propped up the system and invested in BTC for cash and began to offer goods and services for bitcoin are the ones bearing a risk...basically everyone that came in after the 'earliest adopters'.

The entrants into the current market are the ones bearing the greatest risk. Buying in at $14/per is a lot different than buying in for pennies...

Pennies of electricity is a risk. A very small one, but a risk nonetheless. Many people may have quit in the early days because it was 'raising their electricity bill for no good reason'. And in those early days, the chance of bitcoin becoming big was miniscule. Very tiny investment, very tiny chance of success.

[cypherdoc]

Bitcoin community is roughly 5,000 to date.

i think its much higher than this.

The reason I ask is because the MtGox hack essentially showed that a small (~8%) portion of outstanding Bitcoins can unstabilize the market so greatly to the point where it reduced the price to $0.01.

this is not even close to being correct.  there was no market during those 30 min. i witnessed the entire crash firsthand and all new buyers, except for Kevin Day, could not log on which would have blunted the fall.  i believe the hacker blocked all access to prevent this.  and how does the creation of 500K fake BTC represent a market event?

[opticbit]

I believe a few thousand years ago there was a monitary reset every 50 years, and we're over do for one.

and for a BTC reset, done, its called Testnet.

[CurbsideProphet]

i think its much higher than this.

It was just an arbitrary number to use in the example.  You could be right.

this is not even close to being correct.  there was no market during those 30 min. i witnessed the entire crash firsthand and all new buyers, except for Kevin Day, could not log on which would have blunted the fall.  i believe the hacker blocked all access to prevent this.  and how does the creation of 500K fake BTC represent a market event?

I was not aware that the hackers prevented all access.  The 500k, fake or not, would be a market event in that it quantifies the amount of coin that it would take to move the price substantially.  However, if buyers were blocked by the hackers then obviously the data is corrupt.  But as I said, I wasn't aware of this, my understanding was they just flooded the market and ate up all the bids.

[amincd]

I am confused by everyone's assumption that the 'early adopters' took a risk...pennies worth of electricity is not a risk on generating thousands of worthless bitcoins is not a gamble.

I don't think it's just the risk they took that entitles them to the gains, but the contribution that early-adopters make to the economy.

As I've mentioned before, there is no easy way to KNOW what the market will demand, and contributing to something that eventually does become valuable is a valuable contribution to the economy and should be rewarded.

Being in a position to discover a project early-on that turns out to be immensely valuable means having access to information that is generally valuable for society. It encourages people to spend more time reading up on new technology, for example, rather than following sports news.

Likewise, taking the initiative to get involved in something that ends up becoming very valuable, that most people did not bother to get involved in when it first came to their attention, is also a valuable contribution to society.

Investment gains reward the skills, insights and initiatives that people have in direct proportion to how valuable they are to society.

A meritocracy is a theoretical concept where everyone gets exactly what they deserve, based on merit alone. Currently, many do not get what they deserve because they find themselves in situations outside their control that limit their ability to move up the social ladder.

Government is not omniscient and is not able to know what role irresponsibility played in a person's poor circumstances rather than bad luck. Providing for the unlucky also means providing for the irresponsible, and this reduces the incentive to behave responsibly, leading to less prosperity overall.

[cypherdoc]

Why is this topic so taboo that it can't be discussed even hypothetically?  What I'm trying to say is if you believe in Bitcoin as a viable long-term P2P currency then you need to identify the inherent risks to its longevity.  Shouldn't the fact that a very small portion of the overall community having the ability to bring BTC to its knees be at least something to discuss?

I don't understand why early-adopters need to be treated as gods and any sort of topic that comes up is automatically met with, "oh yeah just another guy trying to get rich off them."  As if my ONE thread can somehow re-write history...

I am confused by everyone's assumption that the 'early adopters' took a risk...pennies worth of electricity is not a risk on generating thousands of worthless bitcoins is not a gamble. If anything, they gambled their brain power on something they saw as immensely useful. Those that propped up the system and invested in BTC for cash and began to offer goods and services for bitcoin are the ones bearing a risk...basically everyone that came in after the 'earliest adopters'.

The entrants into the current market are the ones bearing the greatest risk. Buying in at $14/per is a lot different than buying in for pennies...

Some guy spent 10,000 BTC on two pizzas. He (and his counterparty) took more of a risk than any of us.

and its not even about risk.  Satoshi had a great idea that he released into the wild; early adopters saw the potential and jumped on it.  they had a "vision". 

i'm not an early adopter per se.   i read about btc about a year and a half ago and it just didn't click at the time.  only this year did i jump onboard and i don't begrudge early adopters at all b/c they were the ones who advanced the concept to its current point.

[cypherdoc]

Providing for the unlucky also means providing for the irresponsible, and this reduces the incentive to behave responsibly, leading to less prosperity overall.

and oh have we had way too much of that the last 3 yrs (thinking of Wall St)

[error]

and its not even about risk.  Satoshi had a great idea that he released into the wild; early adopters saw the potential and jumped on it.  they had a "vision".  

i'm not an early adopter per se.   i read about btc about a year and a half ago and it just didn't click at the time.  only this year did i jump onboard and i don't begrudge early adopters at all b/c they were the ones who advanced the concept to its current point.

All of us here are early adopters. If we weren't, there wouldn't be any discussion about how to get merchants on board, why Bitcoin is stuck at $14, etc. We'd all be permanently retired and living on the beach in Fiji on the proceeds from 15 or 20 BTC while the latecomers fight over why the µBTC is stuck at $14. Yes, I'm taking a long view.

[casascius]

If you want to experiment with what it would look like with a new block chain, consider buying Namecoins and treating them like money.

In my mind, the namecoin DNS idea is flawed.  But on the other hand, namecoins work just like bitcoins, in that they can be traded, bought, and sold, but instead of 6M coins gone to early adopters, there has only been a total of just over 100 days worth of mining done on Namecoins, a total circulation of well under 1M, and a far higher percentage of the total NMC circulation are for sale on the market right now in the form of open orders (about 9%, vs about 1%).  Namecoin already has a working block explorer, trading website, and application.  Why reinvent the wheel?

The way I see it, new Bitcoin clients are inevitable, and it is very possible that someone could make a combo Bitcoin / Namecoin client in the future, that allows the trading of both from the same program.  From a technical perspective, it is very easy.  Since people value their Bitcoins in USD or whatever anyway, who wouldn't accept Namecoins?  The only reason is because nobody wants to run 2 clients for 2x the hassle, or manage 2 wallets, or to do 2x the programming to integrate it into their website.

If later it becomes just as easy to accept Namecoins as payment as Bitcoins, I can't see why someone wouldn't be willing to do it, at the current Namecoin exchange rate.  If I owed you $10, and I could pay you $10 worth of BTC or $10 worth of NMC and they would both appear the same way in your same wallet, wouldn't you take it?  Especially if NMC's value had a reputation for not crashing all of the time each time a BTC early adopter feels like liquidating 1-2% of his stake?

If this scenario happens, Namecoins will likely multiply in value instantly, just like Bitcoins basically did.  Because of that possibility, I have regularly been buying up Namecoins, even as the price continues to fall.

[pointbiz]

remember the gox sell off ? 5 minutes later the price was back at $12

[cypherdoc]

i think its much higher than this.

It was just an arbitrary number to use in the example.  You could be right.

this is not even close to being correct.  there was no market during those 30 min and set the chart on 1 min. i witnessed the entire crash firsthand and all new buyers, except for Kevin Day, could not log on which would have blunted the fall.  i believe the hacker blocked all access to prevent this.  and how does the creation of 500K fake BTC represent a market event?

I was not aware that the hackers prevented all access.  The 500k, fake or not, would be a market event in that it quantifies the amount of coin that it would take to move the price substantially.  However, if buyers were blocked by the hackers then obviously the data is corrupt.  But as I said, I wasn't aware of this, my understanding was they just flooded the market and ate up all the bids.

if you use Sierra Charts like i do, go back to that 30 min timespan of the crash and set the chart on 1 min.  i knew it was a hack 10 minutes into it just by the appearance of the trading bars (or lack thereof).  instead of bars or candlesticks representing a range of trades going off during each minute, you'll see a continuous series of dashes (-) all the way down to 0.01.  the dashes (-) meant that all pre-existing bids at a particular price were just being wiped out one by one on the way down.  no new buyers were being allowed in.  it looks very strange on the chart and was obvious price manipulation by someone, or some entity, wanting price destruction.

[RandyFolds]

Why is this topic so taboo that it can't be discussed even hypothetically?  What I'm trying to say is if you believe in Bitcoin as a viable long-term P2P currency then you need to identify the inherent risks to its longevity.  Shouldn't the fact that a very small portion of the overall community having the ability to bring BTC to its knees be at least something to discuss?

I don't understand why early-adopters need to be treated as gods and any sort of topic that comes up is automatically met with, "oh yeah just another guy trying to get rich off them."  As if my ONE thread can somehow re-write history...

I am confused by everyone's assumption that the 'early adopters' took a risk...pennies worth of electricity is not a risk on generating thousands of worthless bitcoins is not a gamble. If anything, they gambled their brain power on something they saw as immensely useful. Those that propped up the system and invested in BTC for cash and began to offer goods and services for bitcoin are the ones bearing a risk...basically everyone that came in after the 'earliest adopters'.

The entrants into the current market are the ones bearing the greatest risk. Buying in at $14/per is a lot different than buying in for pennies...

Some guy spent 10,000 BTC on two pizzas. He (and his counterparty) took more of a risk than any of us.

What risk? At the time of the transaction, they were essentially worthless... The guy that paid USD for the pizzas took a risk, but only for the value of the pizzas. Neither party had a clue as to the future value. They were placing faith in the currencies ability to grow, and through their (and a ton of others') actions, built bitcoin to what it is today.


EDIT: Whoa, there was another page of replies there...

I am wholly with cypherdoc in not begrudging the early adopters anything. They built this to what it is, I hopped on board and am having a blast. I have immense respect for everyone who preceded (and followed) me into this, and I hope those early adopters that drove the construction of this incredible community do get paid for their efforts...not so much their risks.

[markm]

A whole series of early-adoption opportunities are flowing.

Get in on the ground floor. Find out what new blockchains are starting up and get in at the startup.

If namecoins are too high in difficulty already for your taste, or have too many earlier-adopters thatn you for your taste, pick something even newer. I think there are still a couple of miner bounties outstanding for the GRouPcoin->DEVcoin project, you could still be able to get yourself a genuine original BiTCoin just by setting up a groupcoind with some nominal amount of hashing turned on - even just a CPU or two.

There are plenty more in the wings, albeit quite a few of them are wanting to "back" their coins in some way and thus are waitign for the "licensed miners" capability the GRouPcoin->DEVcoin project is working on.

Or be the very earliest adopter of your own new blockchain: pick up a copy of Multicoin and roll your own!

-MarkM-

[DamienBlack]

A meritocracy is a theoretical concept where everyone gets exactly what they deserve, based on merit alone. Currently, many do not get what they deserve because they find themselves in situations outside their control that limit their ability to move up the social ladder.

Government is not omniscient and is not able to know what role irresponsibility played in a person's poor circumstances rather than bad luck. Providing for the unlucky also means providing for the irresponsible, and this reduces the incentive to behave responsibly, leading to less prosperity overall.

That is a common argument that crops up in many different discussions. We cannot do 'X' perfectly, we make mistakes, those mistakes have negative consequences, so we should not do 'X' at all. Yes, it is true, we cannot do it perfectly. A true meritocracy is unachievable. But we can move closer to one. We can weigh the good and the bad and decide which path to take. The discussion is much deeper than you pretend.

And as to the 'irresponsible' you speak of. I have never met anyone I would call irresponsible. I have certainly never met anyone so irresponsible that I believe they deserve abject poverty. Have you? I've only seen people trying to get by, whatever way they can. I've only seen people that were not equipped with the skills and education needed to make the right choices in life. If these irredeemably 'irresponsible' people exist, they must be few and far between. And what of the rich 'irresponsible'? They can go their whole lives without want, all the while the poor 'irresponsible' live on the streets. How is that fair?

Or are you one of those that believe that the poor 'earned' their position. That is a great story to tell kids -- to hide the awful truth of our unfair world. But surely you can see through such fairytales. It isn't usually 'bad luck' that hold people back, but rather systematic class discrimination. The rich get rich, and the poor get poor, because the rich use their power to arrange it that way. I know the stories, the fairytales, about how poor people that work hard can rise up. But these are just stories. The poor aren't going very far, middle class at best, and it is usually luck and happenstance that helps them rise, not hard work. And even if the stories are true, why do the poor have to work so hard when the rich get it handed to them?

My apologies, I'll get off my soapbox now. Class discrepancy is my issue, my cause. In our society, even the poor believe they've earned their position somehow. It is simply sickeningly unjust.

[koin]

the alarm bells aren't ringing because bitcoin is at a $100 million valuation with a few who were early and hold 25% or some number like that.  the alarm bells are ringing because for a number of reasons:  anyone holding bitcoins is doing so against the advice of economists (e.g., http://www.quora.com/Bitcoin/Is-the-cryptocurrency-Bitcoin-a-good-idea 534 votes can't be wrong! ), against the advice of investors (e.g., http://www.caseyresearch.com/cwc/doug-casey-bitcoin-and-currencies ) and against the advice of security pros ( http://blogs.mcafee.com/mcafee-labs/bitcoin-a-matter-of-trust-going-bad ).

essentially, consider anyone who buys or holds here at this time deserving of any rewards that come later simply because instead of heeding the prudent advice of the experts, bitcoiners instead took on the risks and did not liquidate their holdings.

[Timo Y]

A restart would not result in a more equal distribution of wealth. We would see the same approximate Pareto distribution.

Except that this time, the richest bitcoiners would not be geeky early adopters but City Boys from Wall Street and Canary Wharf who can afford to lose $1 M on a high risk investment.

What difference does it make?

[DamienBlack]

A restart would not result in a more equal distribution of wealth. We would see the same approximate Pareto distribution.

Except that this time, the richest bitcoiners would not be geeky early adopters but City Boys from Wall Street and Canary Wharf who can afford to lose $1 M on a high risk investment.

What difference does it make?

I agree. Restarting the block chain wouldn't help with distribution (if that is even a problem). Assuming not many people left, the difficulty would start up at the same rate as now. 7200 coins made a day, and a majority to the people that have sunk a lot of money into mining. In a year, some people will still have a huge share.

[N12]

I. Many early adopters neither took risk or had foresight. Running a CPU consuming app for a few days or weeks is something that anyone would do for a project he likes (Now please don’t nitpick me on the bit of electricity consumed or heat or strain on CPU). Then, stumbling upon Bitcoin one year after and finding your wallet.dat also requires neither risk or foresight. All of this just needed a series of coincidences usually called "luck".

The people who indeed took risks and are taking risks are the speculators and the miners who invested money in GPUs.

II. I agree the current distribution is making it difficult to find an equilibrium price, and theoretically the free market would take care of it in the long term, but Bitcoin is a special case, as it is moving with Internet speed. A year ago, one Bitcoin was worth a few cents. Major disturbances become more and more likely as there are individuals with hundreds of thousands of coins, and Satoshi is suspected to own more than a million.

III. I don’t think there will ever be a real solution, to quote Satoshi:

Yes, [we will not find a solution to political problems in cryptography,] but we can win a major battle in the arms race and gain a new territory of freedom for several years.

The "problem" will just be postponed and the effect reduced for a while. Meanwhile, trust in Bitcoin as an investment would of course vanish.

IV. In hindsight, the solution would be to alter the distribution curve of Bitcoin into an S-curve, adapting more to the increase of demand. It’s pretty much impossible to time the curve right though, as one can’t predict the future.

Bitcoin does (did) not behave like a precious metal would. Satoshi was the first miner and he received 100% of the reward a few tens of thousands now do. I’m pretty certain that this wouldn’t translate into an analagous situation with the first gold miner, who doesn’t even have a pickaxe.

The supply is totally unelastic because it is unaltered, no matter how much effort is put in. The algorithm rules.

[amincd]

That is a common argument that crops up in many different discussions. We cannot do 'X' perfectly, we make mistakes, those mistakes have negative consequences, so we should not do 'X' at all. Yes, it is true, we cannot do it perfectly. A true meritocracy is unachievable. But we can move closer to one. We can weigh the good and the bad and decide which path to take. The discussion is much deeper than you pretend.

I would argue that any government effort to determine who is at their current predicament "through no fault of their own" versus through their own irresponsibility is bound for complete failure.

Government works through bureaucracy; sets of procedures and rules. Human beings easily adjust their behavior to escape the controls those rules are supposed to impose. It's not hard to game a government bureaucracy. There are hundred billion dollar industries built around this (e.g. tax planning).

In the one case where we know someone is not at fault, with children who are born into poverty, subsidizing them has the unfortunate effect of encouraging people to have children that they are not in a position to support. In fact, studies have shown a marked increase in children born out of wedlock with increases in welfare.

If you want to fix the injustices of fate, charity is the way to do that. Personal relationships where the giver and the receiver are in direct communication, or at least have fewer intermediaries between them, creates accountability for those receiving aid, and they appreciate what they're given rather than taking it for granted the way many welfare recipients do.

And as to the 'irresponsible' you speak of. I have never met anyone I would call irresponsible.

I have met scores of people who make no effort to fix their life, indulge in the most self-destructive behavior, and live off of government.

This kind of irresponsibility, as far as I've seen, is rampant, and is a direct result of welfare and other forms of government aid.

I have certainly never met anyone so irresponsible that I believe they deserve abject poverty. Have you?

No one deserves to suffer, but no one deserves to be forcibly made to give up their wealth to fix someone's problem. The government shouldn't directly cause the latter to try to alleviate the former.

I've only seen people trying to get by, whatever way they can. I've only seen people that were not equipped with the skills and education needed to make the right choices in life. If these irredeemably 'irresponsible' people exist, they must be few and far between. And what of the rich 'irresponsible'? They can go their whole lives without want, all the while the poor 'irresponsible' live on the streets. How is that fair?

Government can't start interfering in people's lives based on what the majority considers is 'fair'. Is it fair someone was born more intelligent than another? Should we tax him at a higher rate to make life more fair?

The way I see it, you can either go down of the road of trying to use government as a tool to make the world fair, which has no ends to how much it will interfere in innocent people's lives to get the funds for this type of 'social justice', or you can have a government that we know maximizes wealth generation: a limited government that enforces contract law and doesn't interfere with people trying to create and expand businesses, or interfere with the incentives (e.g. through a progressive income tax) that motivate people to do so.

The more prosperity there is in society, the more opportunities every one has. The opportunity that someone in the lowest decile of income has this century is orders of magnitude greater than the opportunity that someone in the same decile had 200 years ago, and the cause of this change is the increase in overall economic prosperity.

essentially, consider anyone who buys or holds here at this time deserving of any reward that comes due simply because instead of heeding the prudent advice of the economists, investors and security professionals bitcoiners assumed the risks and did not liquidating their holdings.

Well put.