Does Pareto's 80-20-Rule Apply to Bitcoin vs Altcoins?

[Jpja]

Vilfredo Pareto (1848 – 1923) observed that 20% of the population controlled 80% of the wealth. Similar distributions have been discovered in a many fields, and as a consequence, the Pareto principle has become popular among economists. Here's a list of Pareto distributions, copied from Wikipedia:

• The sizes of human settlements (few cities, many hamlets/villages)
  File size distribution of Internet traffic which uses the TCP protocol (many smaller files, few larger ones)
  Hard disk drive error rates
  Clusters of Bose–Einstein condensate near absolute zero
  The values of oil reserves in oil fields (a few large fields, many small fields)
  The length distribution in jobs assigned supercomputers (a few large ones, many small ones)
  The standardized price returns on individual stocks

Bitcoin is many times larger than the most popular altcoin, Litecoin. At the time of writing it is about 20 times larger than LTC.

If digital currencies were to be pareto distributed, then the top fifth of coins should have 80% of the market cap, or with a more relaxed interpretation, one could say that BTC should have 80% of the total market cap. I did a quick rough adding of all altcoins at coinmarketcap.com and came to ~ $700 million.

Bitcoin's market cap is $7,500 million, which means it has more than 90% of the total market. If the Pareto principle were to apply, BTC should halve in size or altcoins should double.

My questions; do you see any reason the Pareto law apply here at all? May bitcoin rather gravitate to a ~100% natural monopoly due to the network effect?

[E-C.Guru]

I'd say "Parteo Law" is not a law. My fingers are 10, so are my toes.. so are other peoples toes. Why isn't there 10 bitcoin? Why 21 000 000? Why doesn't this law apply to bitcoiN? Seems universal since I have 10 toes and 10 fingers. But why is there more than 10 bitcoins? 

[spazzdla]

IMHO, cryptocurrency will become massive but BTC won't become what everyone thinks it will.

It will be come THE store of wealth like gold, it won't be used to buy a bunch of stuff another alt coins will.  It will be horded and held to preserve peoples wealth.

I think the 80-20 will apply, the top 20% will hold 80% of the market.

[twiifm]

IMHO, cryptocurrency will become massive but BTC won't become what everyone thinks it will.

It will be come THE store of wealth like gold, it won't be used to buy a bunch of stuff another alt coins will.  It will be horded and held to preserve peoples wealth.

I think the 80-20 will apply, the top 20% will hold 80% of the market.

Isn't it already like this?  Its actually more skewed than USD

[spazzdla]

I am not talking about wealth distribution between people..

I mean the top 20% of the cryptos will be 80% of the wealth in crypto.


*Edit*

Ooooh looks like my panic buying put in me the owns more than 1 btc teir /flex..  actually more than 2.. and a lot of alt coins...  I have a problem.

[waldox]

i would lean towards 90-10 rule
bitcoin is 90% and altcoins consists of the remaining 10%

[Gimmelfarb]

i don't understand this part of it, though: why would pareto necessarily apply to such arbitrary categorizations as "digital currencies"? i think our definitions here are too vague to be meaningful.

[Jpja]

i don't understand this part of it, though: why would pareto necessarily apply to such arbitrary categorizations as "digital currencies"? i think our definitions here are too vague to be meaningful.

I'm with you on this one. I aired the question because it is an interesting concept that is observed surprisingly often without really knowing why. I wrote Pareto distribution and principle, not Paretp law, for a reason 

On top of my head I can think of reasons Bitcoin shall be dominant; more users = less volatile, safer, lower exchange spread, more merchants, better track record etc. Reasons there's room for an (or more) altcoin(s); diversifying risk, special features (more anonymous, colored), faster. If this logically should means 97/3, 95/5, 90/10 or 80/20 is beyond my ability to predict. 

[OROBTC]

...

Pareto's 80/20 law is not true in all situations.  You have seen above the numbers are more skewed than that (perhaps 95/5).

Our own bearing sales in Peru are about 85/15 to 90/20, both by customer and by part number.

For the short-term, it looks like to me (no expert!) that Bitcoin wins...