Bitcoin is NOT a decentralize currency

[knight22]

In that case we can only hope the big holders will spend their bitcoin with a responsible manner... and this is something we can never be sure about

[BoardGameCoin]

It's also something we can't be sure about in the 'real' economy. Wars are to a large extent caused by 'irresponsible' spending of resources.

-bgc

[Realpra]

I agree that every person who holds coins have not to be equally wealthy but the problem is when the imbalance is way to big, it's give control to the holder on the value of the currency.

I told you the rich people are relatively KNOWN and it is KNOWN that they do NOT hold all that much money.

There is NO single person out there with 99,9% of all bitcoins who can use it as monopoly money.

If that WAS the case I might agree with you, but its not, so admit that fact or make it obvious you are trolling.

Also, it is false to say that this person can dump is currency only once. Of course, he will do it in a manner that a huge amount will come back to him again (investment, companies, assets, etc)

If he "dumps" for companies or investments then he is just using BTC for normal trade which is a GOOD thing.

Manipulation of currency is per definition something unnatural... like printing or confiscating etc.

When a person or a group of person are in control of the value, IT IS CENTRALIZE. And no matter how you will call it, the problem still remain.

Yes... but no one is with bitcoin.

So what do you call it then? That's right de-centralized.

[knight22]

I told you the rich people are relatively KNOWN and it is KNOWN that they do NOT hold all that much money.

There is NO single person out there with 99,9% of all bitcoins who can use it as monopoly money.

If that WAS the case I might agree with you, but its not, so admit that fact or make it obvious you are trolling.

OK then but do you have any numbers to share?

[BoardGameCoin]

Look at the numbers in Jon Matonis' article here:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2012/06/22/the-bitcoin-richest-accumulating-large-balances/

[Realpra]

OK then but do you have any numbers to share?

BTC is pretty hard to track, however there is a known genesis block that is the first block.

That was created about 3-4 years ago and the BTC generation has been steady since by protocol design.

This means that even if satoshi was the ONLY miner the first YEAR he still "only" has 2.628.000 BTC or ~17 mil $ or what must be ~12.5% of all bitcoin there will ever be.

That is a long long way from 99.9% and likely far from what anyone has, as there have been multiple and different miners for most of bitcoins time and they likely used at least some of their coins before the value went way up.

[kokjo]

How a currency that approx 50% is held by a few people can be stated as a decentralize money? These people together can influence the value of bitcoin with their spending. In a way, they are in control of it's value and saying that it is fully decentralize is only a lie. The more the bitcoin will be valuable, the more they will be able to be in control. Unproportional holding of a currency is never good for the majority.

the 50% of the bitcoins have not yet been mined.

[knight22]

Look at the numbers in Jon Matonis' article here:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2012/06/22/the-bitcoin-richest-accumulating-large-balances/

Well I guest 12.5% of total holding is not enough to control but only influence the value. That is reassuring me.

Thanks for sharing.

[MoonShadow]

I told you the rich people are relatively KNOWN and it is KNOWN that they do NOT hold all that much money.

There is NO single person out there with 99,9% of all bitcoins who can use it as monopoly money.

If that WAS the case I might agree with you, but its not, so admit that fact or make it obvious you are trolling.

OK then but do you have any numbers to share?

Do you?  I can personally know for certain that it's impossible that anyone else has 99.9% of bitcoins, because I have direct evidence that there are several people that have enough to total to over 0.1% of said coins. 

[mccorvic]

In that case we can only hope the big holders will spend their bitcoin with a responsible manner... and this is something we can never be sure about

Yes! Onward to bitOrwllianism comrade!  We can only achieve decentralization by centralizing control to ensure that it is decentralized.

I like the cut of your jib.

[Syke]

Look at the numbers in Jon Matonis' article here:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2012/06/22/the-bitcoin-richest-accumulating-large-balances/

Well I guest 12.5% of total holding is not enough to control but only influence the value. That is reassuring me.

Thanks for sharing.

Read the article. There is one address that holds about 5%. The next largest address holds about 1%. Nobody has 12.5%.

[Realpra]

Look at the numbers in Jon Matonis' article here:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2012/06/22/the-bitcoin-richest-accumulating-large-balances/

Well I guest 12.5% of total holding is not enough to control but only influence the value. That is reassuring me.

Thanks for sharing.

Read the article. There is one address that holds about 5%. The next largest address holds about 1%. Nobody has 12.5%.

He was referring to a theoretical maximum number that I calculated.

+ address balance means nothing. You could have more.

[proudhon]

When a person or a group of person are in control of the value, IT IS CENTRALIZE. And no matter how you will call it, the problem still remain.

And, again, the protocol wasn't design to address that concern.  The decentralization of bitcoin doesn't have to do with value.  There is no way to address the concern your raising.  Want to know why?  Because it has to do with the economics of supply and demand and that some people simply have enough wealth to influence the value of any financial instrument.  There is no solution to this "problem".

[notme]

When a person or a group of person are in control of the value, IT IS CENTRALIZE. And no matter how you will call it, the problem still remain.

And, again, the protocol wasn't design to address that concern.  The decentralization of bitcoin doesn't have to do with value.  There is no way to address the concern your raising.  Want to know why?  Because it has to do with the economics of supply and demand and that some people simply have enough wealth to influence the value of any financial instrument.  There is no solution to this "problem".

Sure there is... Off with their heads!

Disclaimer: this is a joke, killing people is bad m'kay?

[Realpra]

When a person or a group of person are in control of the value, IT IS CENTRALIZE. And no matter how you will call it, the problem still remain.

And, again, the protocol wasn't design to address that concern.  The decentralization of bitcoin doesn't have to do with value.  There is no way to address the concern your raising.  Want to know why?  Because it has to do with the economics of supply and demand and that some people simply have enough wealth to influence the value of any financial instrument.  There is no solution to this "problem".

I think that his concern was that Satoshi created a trillion BTC for himself before he released the client.

BTC would still be cool and all, but with that much wealth in the hands of the creator he might as well have put in a "print BTC"-button.


An alt chain with less initial cash would have been the easy solution to that.

[MoonShadow]

When a person or a group of person are in control of the value, IT IS CENTRALIZE. And no matter how you will call it, the problem still remain.

And, again, the protocol wasn't design to address that concern.  The decentralization of bitcoin doesn't have to do with value.  There is no way to address the concern your raising.  Want to know why?  Because it has to do with the economics of supply and demand and that some people simply have enough wealth to influence the value of any financial instrument.  There is no solution to this "problem".

I think that his concern was that Satoshi created a trillion BTC for himself before he released the client.

He could have, but he didn't and couldn't do it now.  The running codebase wouldn't recognize it as valid.  There is no special powers that Satoshi (or anyone else) can grant themselves at this point.

[molecular]

When a person or a group of person are in control of the value, IT IS CENTRALIZE. And no matter how you will call it, the problem still remain.

And, again, the protocol wasn't design to address that concern.  The decentralization of bitcoin doesn't have to do with value.  There is no way to address the concern your raising.  Want to know why?  Because it has to do with the economics of supply and demand and that some people simply have enough wealth to influence the value of any financial instrument.  There is no solution to this "problem".

I think that his concern was that Satoshi created a trillion 57,600 BTC for himself before he released the client.

ftfy

• January 3, 2009: Genesis block established at 18:15:05 GMT
• January 11, 2009: Bitcoin v0.1 released and announced on the cryptography mailing list

[Syke]

I think that his concern was that Satoshi created a trillion 57,600 BTC for himself before he released the client.

ftfy

• January 3, 2009: Genesis block established at 18:15:05 GMT
• January 11, 2009: Bitcoin v0.1 released and announced on the cryptography mailing list

The early miner was pretty slow. It took much longer than 10 minutes per block. Only about 100 blocks (5000 btc) were solved by Jan 11.

[MoonShadow]

I think that his concern was that Satoshi created a trillion 57,600 BTC for himself before he released the client.

ftfy

• January 3, 2009: Genesis block established at 18:15:05 GMT
• January 11, 2009: Bitcoin v0.1 released and announced on the cryptography mailing list

The early miner was pretty slow. It took much longer than 10 minutes per block. Only about 100 blocks (5000 btc) were solved by Jan 11.

Part of that was because Satoshi also coded a minimum difficulty into the algo, which was high enough that one cpu was never going to be able to reach that mark.  Since there were no gpu miners yet, this required that a number of other players jump into the game before the 10 minute target interval could be obtained.

[molecular]

I think that his concern was that Satoshi created a trillion 57,600 BTC for himself before he released the client.

ftfy

• January 3, 2009: Genesis block established at 18:15:05 GMT
• January 11, 2009: Bitcoin v0.1 released and announced on the cryptography mailing list

The early miner was pretty slow. It took much longer than 10 minutes per block. Only about 100 blocks (5000 btc) were solved by Jan 11.

Part of that was because Satoshi also coded a minimum difficulty into the algo, which was high enough that one cpu was never going to be able to reach that mark.  Since there were no gpu miners yet, this required that a number of other players jump into the game before the 10 minute target interval could be obtained.

So Satoshi didn't give himself more advantage than he deserves as the inventor. He even gave himself much less than what could be argued as a "fair first mover advantage".

relevant old thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=37333 ("Satoshi Nakamoto - 1,5 million Bitcoins - We need answers")