Is Bitcoin looting the wealth of most people?

[henrythebest]

article originally from fmz.com

Bitcoin for most people who are not familiar with, is still treated with misunderstandings and doubts.

A question for you:

If people who entered the field of bitcoin in the early stage had more than 100,000 bitcoins, they would have a lot of wealth and can buy goods and services. Isn't this loot?

Now, we will try to answer this question.

01. Price of Bitcoin

Putting aside the hype, in essence, the price of something rises, either the value of the thing is re-excavated, or the currency that measures the price is depreciating, or the two work together.

The essence of value is consensus, and the value of bitcoin lies in consensus. Those who influence the price of bitcoin are not those who are scornful, but those who have consensus.

In the past 10 years, bitcoin prices have gone from scratch, from 10,000 bitcoins for 2 pizzas to 1 bitcoin worth 26,000 yuan, except for some speculation factors, mainly for groups with consensus on Bitcoin are growing up.

The skyrocketing price of Bitcoin certainly makes some early-stage visitors happy, and many people envy and hate, but many people overlook one point: those who bought Bitcoin early, they took high risks. If Bitcoin fails, their investment will go directly to zero.

Those who entered the Bitcoin field early could also invest their money in stocks, bonds, real estate, etc., but they chose Bitcoin and took the corresponding risks.

Of course, even now, Bitcoin is still a social experiment, and no one can determine what will happen to Bitcoin in the future.

02. What is wealth looting?

"The looting of wealth" means that the value of the wealth is shrunk, and only for those who own the wealth, it has no effect on others.

For example, we all know that inflation in Venezuela is serious. Suppose Jimmy saved 10 million Bolivars (Venezuela currency units) in the bank at the beginning of the year. The 10 million Bolivars can buy a car; Dan is a poor man with no bank deposits. A year later, the currency depreciated by 50%, Jimmy's 10 million Bolivars can only buy "half-car", and wealth has shrunk by half. Dan had no deposits, and the currency depreciation did not affect his deposits because he did not have any deposits.

Bitcoin is similar. Bitcoin price fluctuations only affect Bitcoin holders and have no effect on ordinary people.

03. Bitcoin is owned by a minority of people

Since the price fluctuation of Bitcoin only affects those who hold Bitcoin, how many people hold Bitcoin?
At present, there are 22573341 (more than 2257,000) addresses with Bitcoins. Although it is difficult to accurately estimate the number of Bitcoin users, according to a number of media and institutional surveys, the number of Bitcoin users will not exceed 20 million. Bitcoin users account for only 0.286% of the total population, compared with more than 7 billion people worldwide.
So we can't say that Bitcoin is looting "most people" because there are too few people who own Bitcoin.

04. To sum up

In many countries, bitcoin is defined as a "goods." Buying and selling Bitcoin is voluntary. Whether the price rises and falls, whether it "loots wealth", will only affect people who own Bitcoin, and this group is currently less than 0.3% of the total population. .

For the majority of ordinary people, no matter how the future development of Bitcoin is, it will not affect them, how can we say that "bitcoin is looting the wealth of most people"?

article originally from fmz.com

[St4yInTh3D4rk]

This is not looting,this is how the system works,yes we can be richer now if we invested on the bitcoin now because at that time the risk is more when compared to now.

This can also applies to other things like gold,diamonds,etc.If you have them few years back the now you will have more value for it in terms of fiat.

But no one forces us to invest even now,still there is no assured reason we have to invest on it,so just do it our own risk.

[Ewinsane]

This makes no sense at all, first of all people who started early couldn't get 100 thousand without buying, which means nobody forced anyone to sell to them, they just bought bitcoin early with their money, that doesn't make it bad, it makes it smart. Secondly people who started this all like satoshi could do whatever they please with their bitcoins because when they first started out it wasn't suppose to go this big, they wanted to just test something, apparently what they tested became huge.

And again nobody stops people buying bitcoins so if minority owns bitcoin (0.286 of the population) than its their move and risk, there is nothing stopping other 7 billion people to go out and buy bitcoin, everyone can own bitcoin, just because not everyone wants to doesn't mean the ones who own are hoarding it.

Basically bitcoin is definitely not looting so I agree with the article, I doubt people even say its looting, its ludacris.

[henrythebest]

right now, the major issue of bitcoin i think is that very few people holding most part of the entire bitcoin.

Technically speaking，it is way far from “Effective market”，also why the price just move so fast,

only one day, when these major "big player" exiting the market and let small retail trader take over the their share, the value invertment will have a place in this market.

although, this day may never come. or most of us may not have that kind of life time to see it come.

[binhvo1505]

I think you have some deviant thoughts about bitcoin. It does not steal anyone's money. It only affects those who hold Bitcoin because they are investors, they are subject to risks or profits and it does not affect ordinary people. The price of bitcoin is soaring because it is owned by a few people, so its value is high because of scarcity.
Those who invest early and take high risks and now they are rich, it is a normal thing. I don't see any injustice here.

[otundebis]

Considering that not many early holder of bitcoin still hold significant sum of bitcoin at the moment tell us that bitcoin has been fairly distributed over the years.  I think bitcoin decentralized nature make it impossible for it's supply to be domicile with a person or group of people!

[henrythebest]

the real decentralized stage still got a long way to go!

[farosa]

In Bitcoin when someone loses money, someone else gains. When you trade, you exchange the money or Bitcoin with another person, not with any institution and the money you lose or earn doesn't go to a separate institution. Some money should be lost for the same amount of money to gain in trade.

[dothebeats]

Or wealth redistribution? The term 'looting' implies a negative picture for those who use bitcoin and makes those who lost their money on bitcoin appear as they're the victims of the system. Buying and using bitcoin is voluntary, and no one forces anyone to buy it and be a part of the system, so yeah, that cannot fall into the definition of looting IMO. Wealth is being redistributed everyday in different manners and forms, and bitcoin is not the only culprit I see for the 'looting' the article wants to point out.

[Oilacris]

Or wealth redistribution? The term 'looting' implies a negative picture for those who use bitcoin and makes those who lost their money on bitcoin appear as they're the victims of the system. Buying and using bitcoin is voluntary, and no one forces anyone to buy it and be a part of the system, so yeah, that cannot fall into the definition of looting IMO. Wealth is being redistributed everyday in different manners and forms, and bitcoin is not the only culprit I see for the 'looting' the article wants to point out.

The word "looting" isn't really appropriate at all if we do talk about on Bitcoin.You already explained that no one really forces out to buy BTC in the first place.Its completely
depending on ones decisions and if you do lose up money then its really part of the system.The only thing you can do is to complain in the end and thinking up these way. 

[Matthewmorris4]

somehow, I also feel the same way, as if bitcoin is transferring assets and money to wealthy people who can not afford even though in practice this also happens indirectly. Such as hacking cases, ICO fraud, OTC asset sales, illegal mining, and other things

[izanagi narukami]

Bitcoin is making people's rich , some people rich 
If you're early bitcoin adopter, congrats, you're able to earn more than 1000% profit in  8 years !

Nobody expect to happen but it's really happen on crypto !

[omonuyak]

I will said yes for those that did not play there games well but for those that know how to play there game bitcoin is making them very wealthy.  Cryptocurrencies market need more than investments to make money you really need to understand what the whales are doing as they keep manipulating the market and make more people poorer than richer.