0.1% guys hold 50% Bitcoins, that's too CENTRALIZED!

[rainingbitcoins]

The caste system is a cultural problem. If even these religious dupes left their home country, they would still subject themselves to the same superstitious bullshit. It's going to take generations of reeducation to fix this. Fortunately, India is becoming a bit more secular thanks to work coming from overseas.

These are your rational actors, Atlas. These are humans. They're prone to believe stupid things no matter how much education you give them. When the successful implementation of your ideology involves steps like "entirely change everything we've ever known about human nature", your ideology sucks.

[1713991894]

1713991894

[1713991894]

1713991894

[Crypt_Current]

Seriously? Some of the most valuable resources in the world are being mined by literal slaves at gunpoint.

I know, right!

Just wait til THEY occupy Wall Street... til then, it's friggin hilarious

[Rassah]

Seriously? Some of the most valuable resources in the world are being mined by literal slaves at gunpoint.

I know, right!

I notice your miner is asleep on the job (fan isn't spinning). Time to bring out the beating stick?

[BitterTea]

I notice your miner is asleep on the job (fan isn't spinning). Time to bring out the beating stick?

Cameras are magic in that they freeze time, though what you say is a possibility as well...

[Rassah]

I notice your miner is asleep on the job (fan isn't spinning). Time to bring out the beating stick?

It was indeed spinning at the time of the picture. I guess the shutter on the camera was fast enough to make it appear to be stationary.

Wow, not even motion blur! Impressive camera.

Also, why am I getting an image of a video card being whipped and asked, "What is your name, boy?", and when it replies, "Radeon HD 9530," the whipper yells, " No, it's VisionTek SuperCoolGraphicsYeahAwesome!" and whipps it some more  

[Rassah]

Also, why am I getting an image of a video card being whipped and asked, "What is your name, boy?", and when it replies, "Radeon HD 9530," the whipper yells, " No, it's VisionTek SuperCoolGraphics!" and whipps it some more  

Oh, when they act up I don't whip them. I dismantle one of those lighters with a piezo ignition and proceed to shock random circuits on the board of the video card.

Huh... I just turn off the AC and let them sweat for a while in blistering heat until they pass out. That usually shows them, and after I hit reset, no damage is done.

[tvbcof]

OP:  I would suspect that a straight count of your list would not accurately reflect a count of people who control more than 1000 BTC.  It seems dumb to me to keep more than a certain amount in any wallet.dat (or any group of addresses within one.)  I split up my stash so as to keep a bulk of it in offline deep storage.  So some of those addresses are likely controlled by the same person, and a fair fraction of the sub-1000 addresses are likely to be owned by persons who control more than 1000 BTC altogether.

The low price indicates to me that although the world has 6.7x10^9 people, a tiny tiny fraction of them have much interest in Bitcoin, and a small fraction of those have enough disposable income (and questionable enough judgement) to take a semi-significant position.  On top of that, a lot of early adopters may choose to sit on their relatively larger stashes no matter what.  It would not surprise me if your .1/50% estimate were off on the 'low' side.

I would not consider Bitcoin 'centralized' unless and until the holders of the currency base form a cartel (which could easily happen and for all I know, already has.)  But I would not consider Bitcoin to be well distributed either.  That is probably not tenible without a re-boot or major re-implementation, and even then it would likely be at best transient.

I pin my hopes for Bitcoin(-ish solutions) not on an equitable distribution of the currency itself, but rather on an equitable distribution of the value that use of currency system can provide.

[Crypt_Current]

OP:  I would suspect that a straight count of your list would not accurately reflect a count of people who control more than 1000 BTC.  It seems dumb to me to keep more than a certain amount in any wallet.dat (or any group of addresses within one.)  I split up my stash so as to keep a bulk of it in offline deep storage.  So some of those addresses are likely controlled by the same person, and a fair fraction of the sub-1000 addresses are likely to be owned by persons who control more than 1000 BTC altogether.

The low price indicates to me that although the world has 6.7x10^9 people, a tiny tiny fraction of them have much interest in Bitcoin, and a small fraction of those have enough disposable income (and questionable enough judgement) to take a semi-significant position.  On top of that, a lot of early adopters may choose to sit on their relatively larger stashes no matter what.  It would not surprise me if your .1/50% estimate were off on the 'low' side.

I would not consider Bitcoin 'centralized' unless and until the holders of the currency base form a cartel (which could easily happen and for all I know, already has.)  But I would not consider Bitcoin to be well distributed either.  That is probably not tenible without a re-boot or major re-implementation, and even then it would likely be at best transient.

I pin my hopes for Bitcoin(-ish solutions) not on an equitable distribution of the currency itself, but rather on an equitable distribution of the value that use of currency system can provide.

Well said.

[phillipsjk]

Yesterday I was talking on IRC with somebody who took a few more economics courses than I did. He was very concerned by hoarding, which would possibly make the early adopters stupidly rich. We agreed Shatoshi cashing out would probably signal the end of bitcoin.

Anyway, at the end of our discussion, I came up with a theory that explains the price of bitcoin over that past year or so:

<phillipsjk> Bitcoin does have some real value as a medium of exchange (asside from speculation). The problem is that hoarding has overshadowed that. The bubble may have simply been because it was being used as a medium of exchange by new hoarders coming on board.
...
<phillipsjk> As the new people hoard instead of spend, the value slowly declines again.

Essentially, your bitcoins are only really valuable if they are being spent. Coins stored in a savings wallets are indistinguishable from lost coins from the network's perspective. This implies that people hoarding coins can "issue" coins back into circulation any time they wish. That is to say, the early adopters can act as a central bank, regulating the rate of deflation.

I plan on exploring this further is the Why doesn't somebody set a floor price? thread.

[gmaxwell]

Yesterday I was talking on IRC with somebody who took a few more economics courses than I did. He was very concerned by hoarding, which would possibly make the early adopters stupidly rich. We agreed Shatoshi cashing out would probably signal the end of bitcoin.

The bitcoin days destroyed metric doesn't support the idea that there are enormous amounts of horded coins— a good a mount of coins are moving around.

I also don't see why people assume Satoshi has some enormous number of coins— bitcoin was made public as soon as the chain started (and had been discussed in public months before, so people knew what it was when it was announced).

He was far from the only user when bitcoin was announced— if he was only mining with a single modest cpu of mid to late 2000s vintage he might only have a few tens of thousands.   This guess is actually well supported by the initial data— bitcoin had enough hashing right at its launch to maintain 1/block per ten minutes but actually fell to what should have been difficulty .05 in late august 2009.  Because the system can't adjust to difficulty below 1 this loss of hash power just mean less coin was created overall.  If you make the somewhat conservative assumption that the remaining  miners included at least Satoshi and that he had similar hash power all year, then Satoshi could not have more than 5% of the first years bitcoin and very likely he wasn't the only remaining miner so that 5% would have been shared between everyone else who was still mining during the lull (and there was less coin produced in 2009 than programmed due to the time spent with hash power below diff 1... about 60% of what the system is programmed to produce in a year).  The large gap between block 0 and block 1 (when he made the system public) also supports the notion that he didn't have a ton of hash power applied.

We often view the early difficulty through the distorted lens of todays faster hardware and software. This is a mistake. modern mining software is an order of magnitude faster than openssl's SHA256 used simplistically, and modern CPUs are also much faster (not to mention GPUs...).

[Rassah]

He was very concerned by hoarding, which would possibly make the early adopters stupidly rich. We agreed Shatoshi cashing out would probably signal the end of bitcoin.

The part he missed is that simply holding Bitcoin does not earn you wealth, unlike cash or stocks. If/when Bitcoin stabilizes, and they become filthy rich, the only way for them to benefit from their wealth will be to sell i, trade it for cash/stocks/bonds, or use it to start a business.  Either way their bitcoin will end up getting redistributed into the economic system.

Anyway, at the end of our discussion, I came up with a theory that explains the price of bitcoin over that past year or so:

<phillipsjk> Bitcoin does have some real value as a medium of exchange (asside from speculation). The problem is that hoarding has overshadowed that. The bubble may have simply been because it was being used as a medium of exchange by new hoarders coming on board.
...
<phillipsjk> As the new people hoard instead of spend, the value slowly declines again.

Essentially, your bitcoins are only really valuable if they are being spent.

This doesn't seem to follow the hoarding = decreased supply = increased price basic econ theory. Sure, hoarding may support the price artificially, but I don't see how it can make the price go down. Can you elaborate please?

[Vandroiy]

Seriously, guys.

- Initial distribution is irrelevant in the long run. I believe someone's proven that, go look it up or something.

- Financial speculation is not something that should be dominated by a horde of impatient people.

- The cool thing about Bitcoin? It's not democratic, it doesn't give a shit what the mob thinks. Bitcoin is market-driven with a little bit of programmer's influence. Don't like it? Go back to the incompetent and uncaring governments' currencies if you like that better.

You now see the chaos while market forces take control. But you cannot change that. All you can do is a binary "I'm in" or "Bitcoin sucks".

I'm in.

[BitterTea]

Seriously, guys.

- Initial distribution is irrelevant in the long run. I believe someone's proven that, go look it up or something.

- Financial speculation is not something that should be dominated by a horde of impatient people.

- The cool thing about Bitcoin? It's not democratic, it doesn't give a shit what the mob thinks. Bitcoin is market-driven with a little bit of programmer's influence. Don't like it? Go back to the incompetent and uncaring governments' currencies if you like that better.

You now see the chaos while market forces take control. But you cannot change that. All you can do is a binary "I'm in" or "Bitcoin sucks".

I'm in.

I'm in. Don't really give a shit about the price. If it goes down, oh well, more people just get to be "early adopters".

[Rassah]

I'm in too. The possible return WAY outweights the risk of the money I put in, and I'm willing to wait for years.

[phillipsjk]

This doesn't seem to follow the hoarding = decreased supply = increased price basic econ theory. Sure, hoarding may support the price artificially, but I don't see how it can make the price go down. Can you elaborate please?

The price goes up temporarily. When you spend the coins again, they are again is circulation, so the price goes back down. The part of my IRC conversation I did not quote, I mentioned that any hoarder trying to cash in will lower the price. If the coins had been hoarded for months or years, the marklet likely already deemed those coins "lost."

[BitterTea]

This doesn't seem to follow the hoarding = decreased supply = increased price basic econ theory. Sure, hoarding may support the price artificially, but I don't see how it can make the price go down. Can you elaborate please?

The price goes up temporarily. When you spend the coins again, they are again is circulation, so the price goes back down. The part of my IRC conversation I did not quote, I mentioned that any hoarder trying to cash in will lower the price. If the coins had been hoarded for months or years, the marklet likely already deemed those coins "lost."

Ok. So what?

Is that somehow worse than prices constantly rising?

[phillipsjk]

This doesn't seem to follow the hoarding = decreased supply = increased price basic econ theory. Sure, hoarding may support the price artificially, but I don't see how it can make the price go down. Can you elaborate please?

The price goes up temporarily. When you spend the coins again, they are again is circulation, so the price goes back down. The part of my IRC conversation I did not quote, I mentioned that any hoarder trying to cash in will lower the price. If the coins had been hoarded for months or years, the marklet likely already deemed those coins "lost."

Ok. So what?

Is that somehow worse than prices constantly rising?

It is not "worse" per se, it means the price can be regulated.

Decentralized Central Banking Proposal.