How can Bitcoin be a society changer with current distribution of wealth?

[odolvlobo]

The distribution of bitcoins is not relevant to the distribution of wealth.

Bitcoins are not the same as wealth. Do you think it is unfair that only 0.5% of the people in the world own 100% of the Albanian leks? Think of all those unfortunate Americans that own no leks at all.


The distribution of bitcoins is insignificant compared to the distribution of wealth.

If you distributed all 21 million bitcoins evenly to every person on the planet, then each person would have about 3 mBTC, or about $1 USD worth. Do you think giving $1 to each person in the world will make any difference at all to anyone?

[Crypty3]

If we would give 1 Bitcoin to every person on earth, it would look the same in a year.
Most people would just sell it and a few people would see the potential and buy everything up, they can get.

Some people in here, know that I am a socialist. I don't believe in a completely free market. But even I, think you are delusional.

This is not what I am saying. I am not socialist. I am saying how is the general population supposed to buy into a system where the odds are stacked up against them?

[Crypty3]

The distribution of bitcoins is not relevant to the distribution of wealth.

Bitcoins are not the same as wealth. Do you think it is unfair that only 0.5% of the people in the world own 100% of the Albanian leks? Think of all those unfortunate Americans that own no leks at all.


The distribution of bitcoins is insignificant compared to the distribution of wealth.

If you distributed all 21 million bitcoins evenly to every person on the planet, then each person would have about 3 mBTC, or about $1 USD worth. Do you think giving $1 to each person in the world will make any difference at all to anyone?

Yes but if BitCoin was to get as big as some people want then they would be a reflection of wealth - period.

[General_A]

People should just stop trying to see something in Bitcoin, which is not there.
There are some things, Bitcoin can do for poor people.
- Poor people are those, who pay the highest fees. With Bitcoin everybody pays the same(small) fees.
- A bank can freeze your account. If you don't have the money to pay a lawyer, there is not much you can do about it. Nobody can freeze your Bitocoin.
- A country can increase inflation by printing money. Most of the time the rich are better informed about it and they have a lot of their money in assets anyways. It's the poor, who get hit by that, not so with Bitcoin.

So, Bitcoin is already doing a lot for the poor, if they are able to use it and stop  whining about, that it didn't make them rich.

Finally some answers. Agree with your 3 points. And just to clarify I have no interest in getting rich. I have an interest in a fair currency.

[General_A]

sorry to disappoint, but bitcoin is not the future. it's the 18th century all over again. wealth and means of production are accumulated in the hands of the few, while the average joes in this game are fed and feed themselves with semi-religious believes about how they too will end up on the sunny side if only their faith in bitcoin is strong enough. all driven by one force: good old-fashioned greed.

"the creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."

Pretty much sums up my feelings on the subject. Its not a libertarians dream. Its a libertarians nightmare.

[General_A]

Commy coin! The coin where everyone gets an equal share no matter what and the only way to come out on top is through personal merit or shady corrupt skills!

Freicoin is a commy coin. It loses value the longer you hold it. OP would probably love it.

Elwar - refer yourself to the question in this post. How is BitCoin supposed to help the average joe in society when such a small minority own the lions share?

[Soros Shorts]

This is not what I am saying. I am not socialist. I am saying how is the general population supposed to buy into a system where the odds are stacked up against them?

What exactly do you mean by this? Bitcoin is not a PoS coin (although many people would like to turn it into one) and current holders of BTC hold so special privileges. Latecomers might have missed out on some early gains, but that is pretty much it.

If anything, the distribution of bitcoins is not 100% correlated with the distribution of fiat, so this should improve overall wealth distribution if you believe that it is good (i.e. some fiat poor people might be Bitcoin rich and vice versa).

[General_A]

This is not what I am saying. I am not socialist. I am saying how is the general population supposed to buy into a system where the odds are stacked up against them?

What exactly do you mean by this? Bitcoin is not a PoS coin (although many people would like to turn it into one) and current holders of BTC hold so special privileges. Latecomers might have missed out on some early gains, but that is pretty much it.

If anything, the distribution of bitcoins is not 100% correlated with the distribution of fiat, so this should improve overall wealth distribution if you believe that it is good (i.e. some fiat poor people might be Bitcoin rich and vice versa).

I mean with such a minority of players (around 15,000) holding 62% of the wealth how can Bitcoin possibly be a good thing for the little guy? This has nothing to do with my personal ideologies, but I fail to see how changing Bitcoin for the 'fiat' system would benefit anyone in anyway. 

[Elwar]

Commy coin! The coin where everyone gets an equal share no matter what and the only way to come out on top is through personal merit or shady corrupt skills!

Freicoin is a commy coin. It loses value the longer you hold it. OP would probably love it.

Elwar - refer yourself to the question in this post. How is BitCoin supposed to help the average joe in society when such a small minority own the lions share?

Is every average joe in society the exact same person? Please describe how this person that represents every single person lives, works, spends his money, etc. on a daily basis then I can address this mythical question.

I can, however, speak for myself. I live in Germany working for a US company that pays me in dollars. Thanks to bitwage.co I can get paid in bitcoins. Thanks to localbitcoins I can turn those bitcoins into euros. This conversion actually nets me more money than I am paid in dollars because of the high demand for bitcoins for cash. I like the ease of buying things online with bitcoins instead of giving all of my credit card information, making sure I use whatever address they need to match up to my credit card, make sure my credit card isn't cancelled because I used it in some foreign country without calling the credit card company.

I like that my bitcoins are not run by a central authority who needs war and violence to continue its operation. That my bitcoins are not a currency that is on the hook for over $18 trillion in debt and climbing. I like that I can go to Prague for the weekend and spend bitcoins without paying for the high conversion cost to the local currency.

Average Joe will use Bitcoin or not. For me, it is helpful.

[RodeoX]

While it's certainly true that the distribution of BTC is not even. Just as you point out some have a lot, many have a little. But remember that distribution in the bitcoin economy is in the hands of users. If a poor person wants bitcoin they are in the same position as a rich person. There is no barrier other than their personal motivation.

Bitcoin (the coin) is not distributed. Block rewards are payment for the service of hashing and the more you hash the more likely you are to receive bitcoin. Any attempt to give coins to people because they are poor is just a distortion of the market. Since bitcoins cost money to produce, it's not even possible to do without someone getting stuck paying.

It's just like gold. Anyone can pack a mule and go to Alaska to try finding some. But nobody is going to give you gold for sitting at home and wanting it.

[General_A]

Enjoyed the last two answers - thank you. I will consolidate my thoughts and get back to you

[Flashman]

If we would give 1 Bitcoin to every person on earth, it would look the same in a year.
Most people would just sell it and a few people would see the potential and buy everything up, they can get.

Some people in here, know that I am a socialist. I don't believe in a completely free market. But even I, think you are delusional.

It would be interesting actually to see current distribution of Auroracoin

[Elwar]

I mean with such a minority of players (around 15,000) holding 62% of the wealth how can Bitcoin possibly be a good thing for the little guy? This has nothing to do with my personal ideologies, but I fail to see how changing Bitcoin for the 'fiat' system would benefit anyone in anyway. 

Do you spend a large portion of your life worrying about what other people have compared to yourself?

[DeathAndTaxes]

I mean with such a minority of players (around 15,000) holding 62% of the wealth how can Bitcoin possibly be a good thing for the little guy?

Possession is not ownership*.  The major exchanges hold a lot of coins but those coins (legally) belong to the depositors. This can't be reflected by looking at the address distribution.  Using the graph you used to illustrate a point would be like graphing where all the US dollars are and showing that 5 "people" (BofA, Citibank, etc) have 95% of the dollars.  Yes their is unequal wealth distribution in the US (and everywhere) but simply looking at who is currently "holding" the assets as a bailor is pointless.

* That being said if you don't have the private key for "your" bitcoins then you don't have any bitcoins.  At best you have an IOU for some bitcoins owed to you which hopefully will be paid on demand in the future.

[General_A]

I mean with such a minority of players (around 15,000) holding 62% of the wealth how can Bitcoin possibly be a good thing for the little guy? This has nothing to do with my personal ideologies, but I fail to see how changing Bitcoin for the 'fiat' system would benefit anyone in anyway. 

Do you spend a large portion of your life worrying about what other people have compared to yourself?

Not at all. Do you spend a large portion of your life trying to find flaws in people with different opinions to yourself?

[General_A]

Possession is not ownership.  The major exchanges hold a lot of coins but those coins (legally) belong to the depositors. This can't be reflected by looking at the address distribution.  Using the graph you used to illustrate a point would be like graphing where all the US dollars are and showing that 5 "people" (BofA, Citibank) have 90% of the dollars.

The truth for fiat is that around 35% of the top 1% own all the money. 70% for the top 10%. (In the USA). Regardless of the exchanges its clear to see that distribution is actually worse for BTC. Has anyone actually read my first post or have they just read wealth distribution and already made their minds up?

[Crypty3]

Possession is not ownership.  The major exchanges hold a lot of coins but those coins (legally) belong to the depositors. This can't be reflected by looking at the address distribution.  Using the graph you used to illustrate a point would be like graphing where all the US dollars are and showing that 5 "people" (BofA, Citibank) have 90% of the dollars.

The truth for fiat is that around 35% of the top 1% own all the money. 70% for the top 10%. (In the USA). Regardless of the exchanges its clear to see that distribution is actually worse for BTC. Has anyone actually read my first post or have they just read wealth distribution and already made their minds up?

Probably the latter .

[DeathAndTaxes]

Regardless of the exchanges its clear to see that distribution is actually worse for BTC. Has anyone actually read my first post?

You base this on what?  People read your first post but you leap to unsupported conclusions because of a misunderstanding of terminology.
1 address =/= 1 wallet =/= 1 person. Due to the way that Bitcoin creates transactions most wallets will have more than one "funded" address.  They will also have addresses with a mix of value (some larger, some smaller, some left over change so small they may never be spent).   You assume that because there are 46 million non zero addresses that means there are 46 million unique entities and 95% of them have less than 1% of the total coins.  No it only means that there is a huge amount of spam in the network.   Most of those outputs below 1000 satoshis will never be spent and come from a period in time when the network had no anti-spam provisions.  As an example one company would send betters a single satoshi for each losing bet to provide confirmation that the bet was processed and lost.  Millions upon millions of them.  You treat each of those spam transactions as a single PERSON!




For the sake of the argument lets assume the distribution is as bad. You also indirectly assume that distribution won't widen.   At block 1 a single person owned 100% of the Bitcoins and now that is no longer true.  The Bitcoin money supply is ~$4B. The total wealth on earth is $263T.   Bitcoin is roughly .001% of the total wealth and is used by more than 0.001% of the planet.  

The rise in value of the Bitcoin money supply is directly linked to a wider distribution.   There is no scenario where Bitcoin will be worth tens of trillions of dollars and the same x people control 62% (your claim) of that.   It is a self solving problem.  Either the distribution widens (though commerce, speculation, and yes theft/scams/fraud) or the system won't increase in value.

[Elwar]

Possession is not ownership.  The major exchanges hold a lot of coins but those coins (legally) belong to the depositors. This can't be reflected by looking at the address distribution.  Using the graph you used to illustrate a point would be like graphing where all the US dollars are and showing that 5 "people" (BofA, Citibank) have 90% of the dollars.

The truth for fiat is that around 35% of the top 1% own all the money. 70% for the top 10%. (In the USA). Regardless of the exchanges its clear to see that distribution is actually worse for BTC. Has anyone actually read my first post?

What I like the most about your numbers are that that large percentage of bitcoin holders were here early on. They actually took the risks because they believed in Bitcoin and what it stands for.

The people who want to bring in regulations and redistribution belong to the small percentage. The longer that is true, the better. You really should try freicoin...that sounds like a better currency for you.

[RodeoX]

The truth for fiat is that around 35% of the top 1% own all the money. 70% for the top 10%. (In the USA). Regardless of the exchanges its clear to see that distribution is actually worse for BTC. Has anyone actually read my first post?

I do understand what you are saying. But why did YOU let this happen? Many who have a lot of coins have them because they took a big risk buying early. They had no guarantee that their $5 bitcoins would not drop to $0.02. They risked more and now they have more. Sure, now that they are hundreds of dollars each everyone wants $5 bitcoins. This relationship between risk and reward exists in all markets. I wish I could go back 10 years and buy an apartment in Dubai. I didn't take that risk and it would be unfair of me to demand an apartment now.