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

[rax]

The problem is not the price, or the divisibility: the matter is that few people control more than 50% of the purchasing power that the whole btc economy will ever have.
I do not like this centralization of purchasing power.

I can understand you don't like it but how is that an actual problem? I keep reading "the odds are stacked against you" and things like that but it's not like we need to fight to death with each other, or do we?

[Kimowa]

Someone comment on the divisibility of bitcoin.

[Bizmark13]

There are coins which tried to set the distribution to an equal amount for one person (e.g. Auroracoin for Iceland). Then there are coins like NEM which tried to make the initial distribution as equal and widespread as possible by distributing the coins for free at first and then for a small amount of BTC, removing sockpuppets, and setting a limit of stakes per NXT account.

The skewed distribution of Bitcoin wealth is a legitimate concern but it's not something that we can really change. They are the early adopters who took the risk and invested/mined when the BTC was worth pennies while the rest of the world watched and laughed. Besides, most of the earliest adopters were libertarian computer geeks like Satoshi and Hal Finney and I guess it's better to have them in control of the majority of the world's wealth than the bankers and politicians of today.

[johnyj]

Modern fiat money distribution is magnitudes worse than bitcoin: A few guys own the central bank get ownership of every newly created dollar, and old dollars are backed by gold which is also hold by the same people, the number of these bankers are a few. The people who made those fiat money wealth statistics typically don't even understand how fiat money works

Money is only one type of wealth, holding a lot of bitcoin only grant some part of the whole bitcoin ecosystem's value, you are still investing in an unknown possibility

And, the top address in bitcoin are mostly mining farm/pool account or exchanges account, the coins in those accounts are typically collectively owned by thousands of users

[Elwar]

If you don't like Bitcoin's distribution, you'll hate Ripples.

With Ripple, 3 people own 90% of the coins.

[Flashman]

Let's assign a monetary value to something that has already been distributed equally, like kidneys, everyone has 2. Let's say they're worth $5000 each, and let's say the market in them is completely free.... In 5 years time, what strata of society has the least kidneys?

[lunarboy]

serious thread deja vu.

Hating on the Bitcoin distribution always misses the point.

The current global fiat/financial system is broken and concentrates wealth upwards. Rich get richer poor get poorer. Why? Because it's a an opaque rigged casino, with the banks, credit card companies and JP morgan et al owned high frequency algorithms siphoning off value on every single transaction.

The point being, that until the current playing field is levelled, open and mathematically honest there can never a fair distribution of wealth let alone an equally distributed one.

Even a person born after all the Bitcoins are distributed and earning a tiny trickle of Bitcoin through hard toil will be better off than in the current system.

 As it is, they are playing a rigged game without knowing the rules, blindfolded. Be a part of a possible solution, buy a few coins and give them away to those less fortunate in 10 years time. Charity is one of the best use cases.

[johnyj]

The only concern about bitcoin's distribution design is its steep setting of reward halving, which dramatically benefit the early adopters

Satoshi could set the reward halving scheme to reduce the block coin generation by 33%, or even 25% every 4 years. This will not change the nature of total limited supply, but give people much more time to join the mining and grab some bitcoins while exploring the possibilities of bitcoin

With today's 50% reward halving, it generated strong motivation to adopt as early as possible. This will have a huge advertising effect in the first several years while everyone want to join the mining game and grab their share before it is too late, but when most of the coins were mined out, the motivation for late comers can be a problem

Of course when the system is widely adopted, the transaction fee will also rise to compensate for the block reward, hopefully we will reach that state in 10 years, when the block reward is 6.25

Anyway, from a larger perspective, most of the easy gold has been digged out (170K tons in existence and now yearly production of 3k tons, means less than 2% increase per year) but still works as most honest money, so the initial distribution is not that important since it is usually the production cost decide its value

[dmugetsu]

This is bitcoin we are talking about,everything can happen

[Flashman]

Yah, everything can happen, on the same day, 30 news articles, and market be like...

"LOL didn't read"

Next week, dead, apart from "Ashton Kucher gets sliver off plywood BTM case at Bitcoin Hackathon" .... market plunges 20%

[Beliathon]

Want to distribute wealth equally? Buy now while the price is low. Give it away when you are rich.

+1

[ChuckBuck]

This is a very interesting argument and one can possibly agree on both sides of the coin.

On the one hand you have the minority early adopters like all the CPU/GPU miners that amassed ridiculous amounts of coin and held throughout, Satoshi, and the Winklevii, etc...

Then you have the late comers that are just trying to enter the space, but are finding the price of entry too high.

It's quite a quandary we have here.  Trying to bridge that gap between the "wealthy elite" and people trying to enter the club.

Personally, I think that's where "Bits" or "mBits" come in.  As development, investment, and adoption continues on an upward slope, we'll have to implement the technology to transfer, pay, remit, and transmit as fast as the fiat, click, and card swipe system.  For smaller transactions under $100, this should be a given.  For larger ones in the thousands, it'll definitely has to be faster than the 10 minute wait times we usually experience.  No one should have to wait 5-10 minutes for a confirmation to see if their flight booked or if their new Dell laptop purchase finally went through.

If the whole ecosystem speeds up and deals more with "Bits/mBits" on a daily basis more often, then they'll use it enough, that'll become a real viable method of payment and become treated like "e-cash", the way Satoshi's experiment originally wanted it to.

If we get to this point with millions of people transacting these small and medium amounts, "Bitcoin" the larger amount and commodity like cryptocurrency value will probably rise, and these early adopter bag holders will likely spend on "houses" and "cars" and "vacations" and "jewelry" and pour it into "businesses" etc...

Get the small timers involved and big timers will get involved as well.  Bitcoin is like a grass roots movement, and the wealth will be redistributed once the people on the ground start using it, causing the BTC wealthy at the top to take notice to lend a hand and redistribute.

[Razick]

This would be a problem only if all wealth in the global economy was suddenly represented solely by Bitcoin. However, it is important to remember that Bitcoin represents only a small portion of the real economy. The wealth distribution within that small portion of the economy doesn't really matter because it ignores other assets. For example, I own a very small fraction of all Bitcoin in circulation, but for all you know I could still be a billionaire. I might be wealthy despite the small amount of Bitcoin I own. If I wanted to increase my Bitcoin holdings I could shift my current assets more towards Bitcoin.

The current distribution represents the fact that most people are not very invested in Bitcoin. Only a small portion of the global economy is represented by Bitcoin and a few individuals own a large percentage of that small part. The distribution will likely even out as more and more non-Bitcoin assets are exchange for Bitcoin and Bitcoin begins to represent a larger portion of the economy.

Again, the current distribution simply doesn't matter. If you look at this from an equality of opportunity/wealth distribution perspective, you are completely missing some very important points.

[odolvlobo]

On the one hand you have the minority early adopters like all the CPU/GPU miners that amassed ridiculous amounts of coin and held throughout, Satoshi, and the Winklevii, etc...

Everyone reading this post is an early adopter. In 5 years, people will complain about how unfair it is that you amassed ridiculous amount of coin. How will you respond to them?

Then you have the late comers that are just trying to enter the space, but are finding the price of entry too high.

The price of entry is no higher than it was 4 years ago. Now, just as then, if you want to own $1 worth of BTC, you can own $1 worth of BTC, and it will cost you about $1.

[jbreher]

... but when most of the coins were mined out, the motivation for late comers can be a problem

So Bitcoin stops being magic beans for the miners, and becomes actual money for the masses. Money that people will need to earn by applying their efforts, before they are rewarded with purchasing power. Oh the horrors. How could such a money ever hope to work?

[ChuckBuck]

On the one hand you have the minority early adopters like all the CPU/GPU miners that amassed ridiculous amounts of coin and held throughout, Satoshi, and the Winklevii, etc...

Everyone reading this post is an early adopter. In 5 years, people will complain about how unfair it is that you amassed ridiculous amount of coin. How will you respond to them?

Then you have the late comers that are just trying to enter the space, but are finding the price of entry too high.

The price of entry is no higher than it was 4 years ago. Now, just as then, if you want to own $1 worth of BTC, you can own $1 worth of BTC, and it will cost you about $1.

Yes, in the larger scope of things of the technology curve, it could be still considered the "Early Adopter stage".

I'm referring to in the 6 year fast moving history of Bitcoin, only the miners that started in the CPU/GPU age back in 2011 to early 2013 really benefitted if they held and amassed their coin.

To the people who became interested in 2013 after the Gox and price spikes to just shy of $1200, you can say we're "latecomer".

I'd consider myself a "latecomer/newcomer" in Bitcoin years, since I arrived to the party in late 2013.

To the average person on the street, they don't know about millibits or fractions of a Bitcoin or definitely not "Satoshis".  If they actually know a little about Bitcoin, they'll reference the whole Bitcoin price of $300, because the average person doesn't deal with 8 decimals on a regular basis.

So to answer your retorts, you're actually right about your points overall.  For the people that aren't as versed as you or I or the people of this forum, this "internet of money" called Bitcoin has a steep learning curve and can seem intimidating and scary, then just pulling out a $20 bill to pay something.  You have to go get the lowest common denominator first to accept and actually use the tech, before the whales and early adopters can splash the pond.

[cr1776]

I really don't see the problem here. 

Yes, there are a few who own a disproportionally large amount of Bitcoin, but why does that matter?  Bitcoin is divisible down to one millionth or a Satoshi, and there is further subdivision capability if needed. 

 If the "bitcoin rich" just hold on to it, the value of the rest of the circulated bitcoin will rise, and if they spend it then they are spreading the wealth around.  It is all good.

And forced redistribution of wealth has led to history's worst atrocities.  And in reality, the numbers won't make anyone rich or do anything but buy a month or two of living if all wealth were redistributed equally.  Volume of exchanges and class MOBILITY is what matters, and that involves a free market, which I assumed Bitcoin represented.


Stop with the class warfare neo-marxism crap.

The problem is not the price, or the divisibility: the matter is that few people control more than 50% of the purchasing power that the whole btc economy will ever have.
I do not like this centralization of purchasing power.

Then it sounds like you need another coin.

Perhaps fork Bitcoin to change the distribution. Or create an alt coin.  See how many people follow.  Or not. That is freedom. 

[Razick]

I really don't see the problem here. 

Yes, there are a few who own a disproportionally large amount of Bitcoin, but why does that matter?  Bitcoin is divisible down to one millionth or a Satoshi, and there is further subdivision capability if needed. 

 If the "bitcoin rich" just hold on to it, the value of the rest of the circulated bitcoin will rise, and if they spend it then they are spreading the wealth around.  It is all good.

And forced redistribution of wealth has led to history's worst atrocities.  And in reality, the numbers won't make anyone rich or do anything but buy a month or two of living if all wealth were redistributed equally.  Volume of exchanges and class MOBILITY is what matters, and that involves a free market, which I assumed Bitcoin represented.


Stop with the class warfare neo-marxism crap.

The problem is not the price, or the divisibility: the matter is that few people control more than 50% of the purchasing power that the whole btc economy will ever have.
I do not like this centralization of purchasing power.

Like I said in my earlier post, this is only true if you ignore the fact that Bitcoin is only a small portion of the wider economy.

[Possum577]

It is fair because the free market is one that allows for winners and losers. If everyone has the same the market will collapse...there will be no demand, and subsequently no supply.

[Flashman]

Okay, I'll fix this....

This week, each one of you has a homework assignment. You're gonna go out, you're gonna start a talk with a total stranger, you're gonna start a talk, and determine their net worth, if it's under $50,000, pull a glock and force them to buy greater than 0.3 worth of bitcoin.