So, did the people who whined about early adopters buy cheap BTC?

[SmokeAndMirrors]

Guess what, the discussion turned about early adopters.


My question is, who of these whiners bought bitcoins at 6$? So? You missed them at 0.01$ and so on, but you were HERE when bitcoins were at 6$, a cheap price. Since all your whine i am sure you invested a lot in buying bitcoins at 6$ am i right??

Or you are only good at whining omg pizza for 10.000 btc?

Whining about the whiners is just as bad as whining about the early adopters.

I'm pretty sure I wasn't complaining about the pizza scenario rather just stating a point. But if you saw it that way then it makes sense why you come up with such a thread crying over how everyone is crying.

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[wareen]

What's all this talk about early adopters taking "risk?" If anything, people nowadays are taking more of a risk with current prices of bitcoins.

Well - they did have to take the "risk" of not selling all their coins when the price went to 0.01 USD for the first time, or 0.10 USD,... That risk is often neglected when discussing this issue.

True, the hardware cost was lower because there weren't many miners, but thats not Satoshi's fault - to quote Gavin in a recent post to point out the difference to the "creator" of the ixcoin "fork":

First, I want to squash the "Satoshi mined a bunch of bitcoins on his own before releasing the bitcoin chain" idea.  He publicly announced bitcoin version 0.1 six days after he generated the genesis block: January 9, 2009:
  http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg10142.html

According to the block chain history, he generated about 10 blocks total before the announcement.  And we know that he didn't pre-generate blocks because the genesis block contains a quote from the January 3rd Financial Times newspaper.

There were about 1.6 million as of yet unspent coins mined before difficulty went up from 1 for the first time at the end of 2009. Since at least Hal Finney speculated about the great potential gain from mining Bitcoin immediately after Satoshi's announcement , we can safely assume that Satoshi wasn't alone during the first year. Lets assume there were on average about 8 miners during 2009, so each one might have made 200k BTC. If anybody has more reliable data/estimations, please tell us.

A handful of Bitcoin USD-millionaires are certainly no problem today in terms of market manipulation. Even a puny little hedge-fund could cause more disruption but I don't see anybody really complaining about that.

As for the future: who knows, but if Bitcoin really becomes widely adopted then we will definitely see a lot of huge booms and busts along the way - no wealthy early adopter needed for that. The market will simply have to learn to cope with that or it will never grow very large in the first place.

[kgo]

What's all this talk about early adopters taking "risk?" If anything, people nowadays are taking more of a risk with current prices of bitcoins.

Early adopter wants 10,000 coins a year ago? he sells someone a pizza.

A bitcoiner these days wants 10,000 coins? he sells his house.

Mining coins was a hell of a lot easier during the early-adopter stage, a lot cheaper too. It didn't require you to go out and buy thousands upon thousands of dollars worth of hardware in order to make 5 bitcoins in a day. Hell, most people would set-up their miners, leave their computer running all night (like most people do here regardless if their mining or not) and probably not even notice that their electricity usage went up.

The stage we're at now is risky. Businesses are popping up every day, people are investing in coins to hold, hardware is being purchased at a value worth tens of thousands of dollars by the sum of all miners, etc. etc. You can't honestly believe that the early adopters took any real risk...

No, it was much more risky because it was much more likely that they would lose EVERYTHING they invested if bitcoin never took off, if an exchange that took USD was never created, if no-one actually setup a store.  And the likelyhood of any sort of actual real-world chance of bitcoin succeeding was much much lower.

Now it's more likely that someone starting a business or mining or investing might lose 50% of their money, maybe 75%, but it's much less likely that bitcoin will drop to 0 and they'll lose everything.  The flip side is it's much less likely that they'll make 100x or 1000x their investment.

You can argue that even if the early adopters lost everything, they didn't invest much to begin with.  But that's like saying that an Angel Investor who invested in Groupon (or faceboot or any other startup) when it was just one guy with an idea is risking much less than the people who buy into the IPO.

[Explodicle]

I don't have a problem with early adopters being rewarded.  I DO have a problem with any single person holding more than 0.5% of the currency available.

In hindsight maybe a slower curve or earlier hype would have been better for economic stability, but at this point I feel like changing the rules would do more harm than good. A new fork wouldn't gain acceptance before the Bitcoin early adopters all sell out and the problem solves itself. It's not like they don't "deserve" it, so what's the big deal?

What's the big deal?

The big deal is, no one will accept Bitcoins to replace any major currency once they realize how much the early adopters hold.

Right now, the world's richest man holds what, 60 or 70 billion USD?  The 1.5 million BTC that Satoshi holds now would effectively become at least one TRILLION dollars if BTC replaced the USD.  That's just too much to be acceptable by any reasonable person.  WAY too much.

I'm not denying the problem. My claim is that over time these guys WILL sell their coins. It's a temporary problem which has been improving, and will continue to improve automatically from market forces. Bitcoin instantly replacing the USD just isn't going to happen.

[evoorhees]

Need I remind my American friends that something like 90% of our wealth is in the hands of the top 2%. Why doesn't that piss you off?

Because those hands produced the wealth. It is not "our" wealth... it belongs with the person who produces it. Unless he is a thief, the rich man got rich by enriching others with equal or greater value.

And you know what? Need I remind my global friends that something like 90% of our wealth is in the hands of the Americans? Why doesn't that piss you off? The poor man in America is a rich man in the world...

[evoorhees]

 it’s absolutely not like he could just drastically decrease the value of everyone’s Bitcoin savings by throwing a bit of his Bitcoins on the market.

Everyone who says something else is just jealous/communist and doesn’t understand how the free market works!

Don't confuse market prices with value. If an early adopter sells all his coins, he has stolen no value from anyone... though he has created an opportunity to acquire more value at a better price.

[Gabi]

Unless he is a thief, the rich man got rich by enriching others with equal or greater value.

Mh... i have some doubts

[N12]

 it’s absolutely not like he could just drastically decrease the value of everyone’s Bitcoin savings by throwing a bit of his Bitcoins on the market.

Everyone who says something else is just jealous/communist and doesn’t understand how the free market works!

Don't confuse market prices with value. If an early adopter sells all his coins, he has stolen no value from anyone... though he has created an opportunity to acquire more value at a better price.

I don’t understand this. Of course the perceived value mainly derives from market price, and of course your wealth in Bitcoins will be greatly diminished if Satoshi et al. ever decide to sell off part of their stash. Noone is magically going to appear and buy up all coins until they are worth as much as before.

Also, I think many people decide to invest and don’t even know how the distribution is (and yes, for reasons of a stable value this is important to know). Now, according to Libertarianism, it’s entirely their fault if they don’t do their due diligence and the market will punish them. Can’t argue with ideology.

[Gabi]

Noone is magically going to appear and buy up all coins until they are worth as much as before.

Why someone should not buy CHEAPER bitcoins?

[btcbaby]

Whining in general will make your Bitcoin worth less.... GO BITCOIN GO!!!

[evoorhees]

 it’s absolutely not like he could just drastically decrease the value of everyone’s Bitcoin savings by throwing a bit of his Bitcoins on the market.

Everyone who says something else is just jealous/communist and doesn’t understand how the free market works!

Don't confuse market prices with value. If an early adopter sells all his coins, he has stolen no value from anyone... though he has created an opportunity to acquire more value at a better price.

I don’t understand this. Of course the perceived value mainly derives from market price, and of course your wealth in Bitcoins will be greatly diminished if Satoshi et al. ever decide to sell off part of their stash. Noone is magically going to appear and buy up all coins until they are worth as much as before.

Also, I think many people decide to invest and don’t even know how the distribution is (and yes, for reasons of a stable value this is important to know). Now, according to Libertarianism, it’s entirely their fault if they don’t do their due diligence and the market will punish them. Can’t argue with ideology.

You have it backwards... price is derived over time from perceived value. And one's wealth in any commodity or asset is "reduced" if someone else floods the market with that thing. It's not unique to Bitcoin. Supply and demand... it's like being upset with gravity.

And yes, if someone does not engage in their own due diligence, and take responsibility for himself, he cannot fault anyone else for the trouble that besets him. We are not children here, and indeed the Bitcoin marketplace is probably the most open and "knowable" marketplaces anywhere in the world. The entire thing is open-source, for crying out loud. Anyone upset that the consumer may "be in the dark" about some things should more appropriately direct their attention to the Federal Reserve. I can't tell you how many dollars are in existence, but I can figure out in 5 seconds the number of bitcoins down to single digits. Markets trade 24/7 in countries all around the world. Nobody has to jump through hoops or pass silly tests to participate - the responsibility is on the individual. Nobody is forced into Bitcoin, the same cannot be said for dollars.

[Maged]

Maged - I don't know what the exact number is, but since you said it isn't true, you must know?

It seems that 1.5 million might be accurate after all, if we assume that the rate Satoshi mined the first 10 blocks was representative of his total hashing power. What I find interesting, however, is that mining speeds slowly dropped from that initial speed during the first few months. I almost wonder if Satoshi pulled a Satoshi and foresaw this very issue. It's quite possible that he slowly pulled out of mining in order to spread the wealth.

[N12]

You have it backwards... price is derived over time from perceived value. And one's wealth in any commodity or asset is "reduced" if someone else floods the market with that thing. It's not unique to Bitcoin. Supply and demand... it's like being upset with gravity.

Indeed, in principal it is the same non-issue with Bitcoin. What differs though is the scale of it, with one individual possibly holding over 20% of the current coins in existence. The market volumes are nothing in comparison. I know you don’t consider this scary or problematic, but many people do, for example if they want to use Bitcoin as a store of value.

And yes, if someone does not engage in their own due diligence, and take responsibility for himself, he cannot fault anyone else for the trouble that besets him. We are not children here, and indeed the Bitcoin marketplace is probably the most open and "knowable" marketplaces anywhere in the world. The entire thing is open-source, for crying out loud. Anyone upset that the consumer may "be in the dark" about some things should more appropriately direct their attention to the Federal Reserve. I can't tell you how many dollars are in existence, but I can figure out in 5 seconds the number of bitcoins down to single digits. Markets trade 24/7 in countries all around the world. Nobody has to jump through hoops or pass silly tests to participate - the responsibility is on the individual. Nobody is forced into Bitcoin, the same cannot be said for dollars.

Again, that’s a matter of ideology (individualism and responsibility) … I don’t think we can assume that people could ever be 100% rational actors with near-perfect information. Of course, that’s the reason profit exists at all in the free market.

[SgtSpike]

Maged - I don't know what the exact number is, but since you said it isn't true, you must know?

It seems that 1.5 million might be accurate after all, if we assume that the rate Satoshi mined the first 10 blocks was representative of his total hashing power. What I find interesting, however, is that mining speeds slowly dropped from that initial speed during the first few months. I almost wonder if Satoshi pulled a Satoshi and foresaw this very issue. It's quite possible that he slowly pulled out of mining in order to spread the wealth.

Well, props to him if he did so on purpose!

[Trader Steve]

Wow! Lot's of people crying about other people's money. If Satoshi does own that much BTC I think he is drastically underpaid. Bitcoin has the potential to bring more freedom and liberty to mankind than we have seen maybe in our lifetimes. Seriously, if you don't like bitcoin don't buy it. I don't care what Satoshi does with his money - it's none of my business. If he dumps it on the market I will buy as much as I can.

[Ten98]

Satoshi, if he does indeed have the rumored 1.5 million coins, would hold 7%.  That is a HUGE amount of the total currency to be able to "play the market" with.  Or do whatever the heck he wants.  Again, it's not jealousy, it's my concern for the power that that would give him to manipulate the currency and the people.

You can think it's a myth all you want, but when people already feel that $60B is too much, I can't imagine what they would think about a single person owning $1T.

I think he does have at least a million coins, it's not hard to see how this may have happened. I'm sure some clever hedge fund manager bought like crazy at <$1 as well and probably owns a sizeable chunk.

But your premise that's it's somehow unacceptable for anyone to hold this large a proportion of the currency is based around the notion that Bitcoin will somehow replace all fiat currencies one day. I'm sorry to break your heart, but this won't happen in our lifetimes. The sovereign states will always retain fiat currency in some form, it's what keeps them in power.

In any case, they have to sell their coins sometime, and then the "problem" goes away.

At worst, Bitcoin will fade away in a few years time and people will move on to something else. At best, Bitcoin is going to become an established worldwide online alternate currency worth hundreds of billions. I suspect something in the middle will be the reality.

In the best-case scenario, Satoshi may yet be worth billions, but I'm ok with that. He's got to do a better job of it than the Rothchilds or any of the other slave owners from the 1800s who bought and sold the world, simply by being in the right place at the right time, hmm?