Did Satoshi make any comments about the initial 'imbalance' of Bitcoin wealth?

[teukon]

I'll be alive 50 years from now to see how it all turns out (barring an early grave from cancer, heart attack, bear attack, etc) , so the future implications of this technology concern me greatly and I am extremely worried about the severity of unequal distribution.

Curious.  Are you suggesting that if you had a terminal illness and knew you would perish in short order that you would not worry about future wealth inequality?  Why does your belief that you'll be alive long from now affect how you feel right now about the future relative prosperity of others?

[MineForeman.com]

be that with low values increasing over time as would have been best in my opinion and example i provided , or even with merely a low set constant value which also would have been better in terms of fairer distribution. He chose not to , opting instead for a distribution pattern that was quite the opposite of what would be considered fair or egalitarian to most people , to the potential extreme detriment of society.

I get where you are going but you may not have been in to bitcoin back in those dim dark ages but to get this whole ball rolling people needed to be motivated to mine at all.

With the benefit of hindsight it it seems bazaar now but people were reluctant to spend a couple of hundred dollars to make a bitcoin or two a month (that were worth 20 cents).  If it were stacked in such a way that you would spend your cash and get .02 bitcoin we may never have got to where we are today.

[12345mm]

Good point , I guess. Pending mortality in a short time frame vs likely continued longevity shouldn't effect people's views on the future prosperity of humanity , though knowing I'm likely to see and experience first hand the consequences of this little experiment that is bitcoin gives me a greater sense of responsibility than if I knew I'd be gone tomorrow. I assume I would not care about anything if I were dead.

In the early days of bitcoin 7200 were produced per day for a couple dollars in electricity on basic cpus on household computers by a few dozen individuals - it certainly did not cost hundreds to produce a coin or two per month - it was not until years later that such a ratio was reached , at which time millions upon millions were already produced for next to nothing.

It's woefully obvious to me it was created with the express intent of extreme distribution inequality as opposed to egalitarian distribution. What else could be the result of having so few people involved in the beginning combined with such a high initial payout and complete lack of public awareness ?

[yogg]

It's woefully obvious to me it was created with the express intent of extreme distribution inequality as opposed to egalitarian distribution. What else could be the result of having so few people involved in the beginning combined with such a high initial payout and complete lack of public awareness ?

It's not obvious. It was created that way, because ... how else can such a protocol and currency work ?
If Bitcoin had some kind of egalitarian distribution, it wouldn't be Bitcoin anymore. It means, having some control over who gets coins and when.

I don't see it happening in a decentralized way, as Bitcoin is intended to be.

[MineForeman.com]

In the early days of bitcoin 7200 were produced per day for a couple dollars in electricity on basic cpus on household computers by a few dozen individuals - it certainly did not cost hundreds to produce a coin or two per month - it was not until years later that such a ratio was reached , at which time millions upon millions were already produced for next to nothing.

Your saying all this with the benefit of hindsight.  Back then would you have mined for something that had absolutely no value whatsoever?

The chances that bitcoin has got to where it is today is INCREDIBLY slim we needed those guys to take the long chance.  Back then if the plan was you made a fraction of what you would make today do you really think anyone would have even bothered?  Bitcoin needed those early gamblers and speculators to fill out the ranks of us geeks to get things going, without them we would not be having this conversation.

[BitCoinNutJob]

I dont think he had much choice but to design it in a way that the earliest adpotors got a nice % vs later.  This distribution of coin is just an honest reflection of where we are currently at.  People needed incentives to get maximum interest in bitcoin its impossible to just run on... lets change the world ideals alone.

[12345mm]

Since these things were initially assumed to have a price of $0 and all involved mining were doing so out of supposed intellectual interest and support of the project anyway then would it not have made sense to pay out 1 unit worth nothing as opposed to 50 units worth nothing every ten minutes ?

Or even 5 units worth nothing instead of 50 units worth nothing every ten minutes ?

Could have easily been just as much decentralized structurally , paid out early participants , and been far more widely distributed using either a 1 coin per block doubling every 2 or 4 years , or using a 5 coins per block with constant payout and no halving or doubling , with same or similar results of total eventual supply.

Result would have been a much much more widely distributed payout schedule , rather than extreme concentration of distribution in the hands of a few.

Additionally , it's obvious they considered the implications of what it would mean for bitcoin to be adopted as a global currency prior to the inception of it , yet opted for a payout schedule that created more than 1/4 of the coins ever to be produced in the first 2 years of a 140 year timeline.

They could have set it up to produce 0.5% of the coins ever to be produced in the first 2 years.

They knew what they were doing.

I suppose it could have been worse and they could have flash mined 95% of them in the first year?

That wouldn't be wrong either huh?

[MineForeman.com]

Your second guessing everything, maybe this maybe that.  Who actually knows, the only thing we know fore sure is that bitcoin had one chance and that was it.  (Probably a one in a million or more chance at that).

I get it, you are unhappy with the inequity in the world and bitcoin probably won't fix that.  Perhaps you should look for another vehicle to work on to fix that but I would ask you to leave bitcoin alone, it has a lot of other fishes to fry and it may actually do those .

My personal peeve with the world is debt and money printing (a great source of the inequity by the way) and bitcoin may actually do something about those.  It may not fix everything, but it may fix some things.

[12345mm]

It won't "not fix it" - it has added to it already and with every greater success continues to add to the inequity of the world.

If it replaces global fiat currencies , we'll have near total wealth inequity among mankind , orders of magnitude worse than already exists.

When considering the creation of a potentially globally adopted e-currency , and taking into consideration the potential future value of it , which they obviously considered , you don't produce 1/4 of it with you and your buddies if you want to improve the world - you do that if you want to own / rule it.

It could have been made in such a way so as to be distributed with the benefit of humanity in mind as the primary goal - it was created with the opposite intent - personal greed and potential for profit.

I'll leave you all be now as asked. I've said everything I care to on the subject.

[cambda]

The block reward halving is easiest way how to finally have certain amount of coins and slowly prepare miners for no block rewards after this event, so more and more tansaction fees become necessary to keep mining possible. With other distribution methods you need cut the block rewards dramatically when you reach certain amount of coins, which does not prepare miners for what is to be next.

[BitmoreCoin]

if he wanted to actually create an egalitarian currency of the people and wanted it to be as widely distributed and as fairly distributed as possible ... it would have been possible to ... for example ... just using a simplified number ... make the initial blocks worth 1 btc per 10 minute block and have that double , rather than halve , every 2 years until reaching a certain cutoff point to accomplish the same number of total coins and assuring a much fairer distribution in the process ... with this example this would have allowed for 6 coins per hour , 144 coins per day , and 52,560 coins per year produced for a total of 105,120 in the first 2 years , 210,240 produced in the next 2 years , 420,480 produced in the next 2 years , etc etc ... that would have allowed for today there be less than 1 million coins in existence with the remaining 20 million still yet to be mined and at a predictable rate and with the same total number of coins (more or less , depending on the cutoff point chosen and programmed into the software) ... it would also allowed for all of the coins to be created a helluva lot sooner than 2140 or whatever it's supposed to be for all of them to come into existence as in within our lifetimes ... how it was setup was instead 300 coins per hour , 7200 coins per day , 2,628,000 coins per year at the start ... which seems like a fair distribution method allowing for public awareness and evenly distributed coins ? ... 52,560 produced at the start per year or 2,628,000 produced at the start per year ? ... he knew exactly what he was doing in terms of assuring imbalance ... and since it was supposedly an experiment and they were valued so low / at zero value , what would have been the harm doing it that fairer way ? ... initial value argument is irrelevant flawed logic in terms of distribution imbalance ...

The bitcoin was worth very little initially. So the actual worth of the distributed coins increases with time. In your example, 210,240 produced in the next 2 years is more than double the value of the first 105,120 in the first 2 years if the price of bticoin increases.

[pozmu]

The bitcoin was worth very little initially. So the actual worth of the distributed coins increases with time. In your example, 210,240 produced in the next 2 years is more than double the value of the first 105,120 in the first 2 years if the price of bticoin increases.

You're right.
Distribution model seems fine, there is only one problem - no advertising.
You create new currency/ method of payment that you think will be revolutionary - why don't you create "killer app" that would make it more popular? I understand free market idea, but on the free market there is lot of advertising and bitcoin didn't had any in first 1-2 years of it's life.
For example, Satoshi paid for his domain name using cash sent by post, he knew there is need for anonymous domain registration service, if he would create one and take e.g. 50BTC per domain registration BTC would be much more popular instantly...

[Monetizer]

I am unsure if he did but I do not think the current wealth distribution model is that much of a problem especially when put into terms of fiat.

[bandana]

stoshi nakamoto clearly told that he have no connections with btc.he dont care about it

[BootstrapCoinDev]

I don't think satoshi envisioned people spending so much money/energy on mining coins. In a rational world acquiring coins via mining would cost slightly less than acquiring them via exchanges/trading (due to the effort in getting and running a miner) and the cost of those would keep up with the price of coins, but greedy/stupid people spent too much on miners, and it's going to take a while to sort itself out.

[johnyj]

Due to the fact that those early coins never moved and stored in tens of thousands of wallets, it is very likely they have lost (Satoshi never saved large amount of early experimental coins when they worth effectively nothing during 2009, but he might kept some other coins under his control during 2010)

And, considering that no one complains about continuous imbalance of fiat money ownership (central banks own every newly created fiat money, thus 100% of base money belongs to them originally), why should we care about bitcoin's small imbalance

[odolvlobo]

Four years ago, $43 worth of bitcoins were distributed every 10 minutes. Currently, $7,000 worth of bitcoins are distributed every 10 minutes.

That seems extremely unfair to the "early" adopters.

[tss]

he was quite happy with it as he told early members that they would all be rich

[Possum577]

He did made many posts , starting with the very first post and thread(public) on this very forum
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5.0

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Dude, the thread you link to, while historic, has about 3 posts after Satoshi started it and NONE of the replies or discussion beyond the OP are from Satoshi. Why do you think this offers any insight into what Satoshi thought about the prospective growth of bitcoin and how the potential for wealth inequality?

[Possum577]

Four years ago, $43 worth of bitcoins were distributed every 10 minutes. Currently, $7,000 worth of bitcoins are distributed every 10 minutes.

That seems extremely unfair to the "early" adopters.

This doesn't make sense to me, perhaps you can explain. What's the volume of coins distributed every ten minutes? If it's not the same between the four years ago reference and the currently reference the comparison is meaningless....like comparing apples to horses.