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In cryptocurrencies this coin was essentially a pre-mine which is done specifically to enrich the creators without any expense to themselves. Say what you want

In cryptocurrencies this coin was essentially a pre-mine which is done specifically to enrich the creators without any expense to themselves. Say what you want about bitcoin, but Satoshi Nakamoto earned his coins fairly (even though he may never access them) and created a fair and level playing field for everyone who started mining alongside him. Further the vague wording about the supply size means it is unlikely that it would hit bitcoins level of value because there is no scarcity.

crypt1d 9y ago
huh? btc was premined by Satoshi and early contributors too. while nobody can confirm which of the early wallets are his, the value of the premined btc coins is likely higher than the Ethereum premine. this is the nature of all the PoW coins. The early contributors take the most risk and the most reward (if the coin succeeds).
- nope96 9y ago
  > btc was premined by Satoshi No, Satoshi did not "premine" bitcoin. Premine means on day zero you have created currency for yourself already. The only block we know Satoshi did mine cannot be spent. There is also zero evidence that Satoshi mined additional blocks once the network got up and running. (It took days for the second block to be found.)
  - Erlich_Bachman 9y ago
    Since no one can actually prove (or, rather, no one has been able to do that yet) who Satoshi is, your statement of whether there is evidence of him (her?them?) mining or not mining in the beginning is rather baseless.
    - celticninja 9y ago
      He would have had to mine initially to keep the network alive. In the early days people mined on their desktop CPUs, it wasn't common to mine consistently 24/7 so Satoshi likely mined for the first 6 months at a minimum. He was not the only miner but he would have been the miner of last resort. Some analysis has been done on the blockchain from the time and work done to tie some of the early addresses to known addresses of Satoshi (payments to more public early adopters). So whilst it is correct to say no one knows who he is we do know that there is a high likelihood that he mined and that he probably mined around 1m BTC. Those coins haven't moved but they are probably watched by thousands of people.
- cryptodogemoon 9y ago
  Early miners are exerting less energy and less work to produce more coins. The difficulty curve often further benefits early miners to be taking minimal risk when the design is reverse logarithmic.
- superbrama 9y ago
  Risk is defined by what can be lost. If you bought a $200 video card early on and spent $200 on electricity mining than your risk was $400. Contrarily someone right now buying a single bitcoin is going to be risking a lot more than just that.
  - celticninja 9y ago
    Yes, but you could just buy $400 worth of bitcoin and the risk is the same.
    - superbrama 9y ago
      No, the previous poster said the earliest adopters take the most risk. In actuality, whoever pays the most for their btc takes the most risk. Early adopters invested almost nothing compared to the amount of money moving around now (at risk on a speculative investment). Their risk was negligible and certainly far less than folks getting into the game now, coin for coin. You’re right that if one buys 0.05 btc today for $400, it’s the same risk as someone investing $400 years ago to mine hundreds or even thousands of coins, but real investors aren’t buying 0.05 btc.
cryptodogemoon 9y ago
Satoshi actually used a manipulative log curve for his minting algorhythm which effectively created a ponzi style distribution scheme. The majority of BTC was produced to the small userbase for minimal effort, whereas time passes the computational work and wattage required to produce coins for late adopters increases as presumably more users discover the system. Satoshi easily could have chosen a linear algorithm anticipating additional work input with more users, instead he designed a system to exploit late adopters. The aspect of Bitcoins having a limited supply is mostly ineffective, as all the features of Bitcoin are now available in other service networks which are including more advanced features and better ASIC resistant algos.
- JauntyHatAngle 9y ago
  >Satoshi easily could have chosen a linear algorithm anticipating additional work input with more users, instead he designed a system to exploit late adopters. Are you suggesting he provides a bigger reward for work as time goes on, thereby providing more currency later in the piece? That would be counter-intuitive to the idea of bitcoin as a fixed store of wealth (strong libertarian influence, anti-bank ethos being kinda the cornerstone of the origins of bitcoin). His plan was that the transaction fees would be what sustains the miners due to bitcoin being worth a lot once the block reward was low. The deflationary nature was not "manipulative" in the way you are implying, it was done in order to slowly wind down the reward and currency generation so eventually the transaction fees were the purpose for mining. >The aspect of Bitcoins having a limited supply is mostly ineffective, as all the features of Bitcoin are now available in other service networks which are including more advanced features and better ASIC resistant algos. Whether or not this is true is neither here nor there, the effectiveness is non consequential when it comes to the intent. He was not attempting to exploit late adopters.
  - cryptodogemoon 9y ago
    >Are you suggesting he provides a bigger reward for work as time goes on, thereby providing more currency later in the piece? Yes. The minting design Satoshi choose merely granted a few users the majority of the supply for the least amount of work. They can then horde and hope to sell at a profit to late adopters. >That would be counter-intuitive to the idea of bitcoin as a fixed store of wealth No, the total supply remains the same. Distribution and production is the issue. The linear curve should align to match the energy and work input, assuming that is representative of additional users joining the network. Fixed store of wealth is even more difficult to achieve, as users must trust the design to be desirable.
Erlich_Bachman 9y ago
"Without any expense"? What do you call the technical expertise and man-years of work put into the network?
- celticninja 9y ago
  That's effort not expense, regardless don't you think that Satoshi Nakamoto put in the same, if not more, effort and didn't pre-mine BTC.
  - Erlich_Bachman 9y ago
    I'm not sure why I would compare the two. If OpenOffice team gives out their software for free, does it mean that Microsoft is somehow morally evil for selling their own Office package? Difference between effort/expense does not seem to be important here, the point is that Ethereum developers put something real into it (work, resources, etc - quantifiable and provable), for which they claim that they should be reimbursed in form of a pre-mine. This information is publicly available, and known by most network participants, who still voluntarily participate in it. I don't see any problem here.

crypt1d 9y ago

huh? btc was premined by Satoshi and early contributors too. while nobody can confirm which of the early wallets are his, the value of the premined btc coins is likely higher than the Ethereum premine. this is the nature of all the PoW coins. The early contributors take the most risk and the most reward (if the coin succeeds).

nope96 9y ago
> btc was premined by Satoshi No, Satoshi did not "premine" bitcoin. Premine means on day zero you have created currency for yourself already. The only block we know Satoshi did mine cannot be spent. There is also zero evidence that Satoshi mined additional blocks once the network got up and running. (It took days for the second block to be found.)
- Erlich_Bachman 9y ago
  Since no one can actually prove (or, rather, no one has been able to do that yet) who Satoshi is, your statement of whether there is evidence of him (her?them?) mining or not mining in the beginning is rather baseless.
  - celticninja 9y ago
    He would have had to mine initially to keep the network alive. In the early days people mined on their desktop CPUs, it wasn't common to mine consistently 24/7 so Satoshi likely mined for the first 6 months at a minimum. He was not the only miner but he would have been the miner of last resort. Some analysis has been done on the blockchain from the time and work done to tie some of the early addresses to known addresses of Satoshi (payments to more public early adopters). So whilst it is correct to say no one knows who he is we do know that there is a high likelihood that he mined and that he probably mined around 1m BTC. Those coins haven't moved but they are probably watched by thousands of people.
cryptodogemoon 9y ago
Early miners are exerting less energy and less work to produce more coins. The difficulty curve often further benefits early miners to be taking minimal risk when the design is reverse logarithmic.
superbrama 9y ago
Risk is defined by what can be lost. If you bought a $200 video card early on and spent $200 on electricity mining than your risk was $400. Contrarily someone right now buying a single bitcoin is going to be risking a lot more than just that.
- celticninja 9y ago
  Yes, but you could just buy $400 worth of bitcoin and the risk is the same.
  - superbrama 9y ago
    No, the previous poster said the earliest adopters take the most risk. In actuality, whoever pays the most for their btc takes the most risk. Early adopters invested almost nothing compared to the amount of money moving around now (at risk on a speculative investment). Their risk was negligible and certainly far less than folks getting into the game now, coin for coin. You’re right that if one buys 0.05 btc today for $400, it’s the same risk as someone investing $400 years ago to mine hundreds or even thousands of coins, but real investors aren’t buying 0.05 btc.

cryptodogemoon 9y ago

Satoshi actually used a manipulative log curve for his minting algorhythm which effectively created a ponzi style distribution scheme. The majority of BTC was produced to the small userbase for minimal effort, whereas time passes the computational work and wattage required to produce coins for late adopters increases as presumably more users discover the system. Satoshi easily could have chosen a linear algorithm anticipating additional work input with more users, instead he designed a system to exploit late adopters. The aspect of Bitcoins having a limited supply is mostly ineffective, as all the features of Bitcoin are now available in other service networks which are including more advanced features and better ASIC resistant algos.

JauntyHatAngle 9y ago
>Satoshi easily could have chosen a linear algorithm anticipating additional work input with more users, instead he designed a system to exploit late adopters. Are you suggesting he provides a bigger reward for work as time goes on, thereby providing more currency later in the piece? That would be counter-intuitive to the idea of bitcoin as a fixed store of wealth (strong libertarian influence, anti-bank ethos being kinda the cornerstone of the origins of bitcoin). His plan was that the transaction fees would be what sustains the miners due to bitcoin being worth a lot once the block reward was low. The deflationary nature was not "manipulative" in the way you are implying, it was done in order to slowly wind down the reward and currency generation so eventually the transaction fees were the purpose for mining. >The aspect of Bitcoins having a limited supply is mostly ineffective, as all the features of Bitcoin are now available in other service networks which are including more advanced features and better ASIC resistant algos. Whether or not this is true is neither here nor there, the effectiveness is non consequential when it comes to the intent. He was not attempting to exploit late adopters.
- cryptodogemoon 9y ago
  >Are you suggesting he provides a bigger reward for work as time goes on, thereby providing more currency later in the piece? Yes. The minting design Satoshi choose merely granted a few users the majority of the supply for the least amount of work. They can then horde and hope to sell at a profit to late adopters. >That would be counter-intuitive to the idea of bitcoin as a fixed store of wealth No, the total supply remains the same. Distribution and production is the issue. The linear curve should align to match the energy and work input, assuming that is representative of additional users joining the network. Fixed store of wealth is even more difficult to achieve, as users must trust the design to be desirable.

Erlich_Bachman 9y ago

"Without any expense"? What do you call the technical expertise and man-years of work put into the network?

celticninja 9y ago
That's effort not expense, regardless don't you think that Satoshi Nakamoto put in the same, if not more, effort and didn't pre-mine BTC.
- Erlich_Bachman 9y ago
  I'm not sure why I would compare the two. If OpenOffice team gives out their software for free, does it mean that Microsoft is somehow morally evil for selling their own Office package? Difference between effort/expense does not seem to be important here, the point is that Ethereum developers put something real into it (work, resources, etc - quantifiable and provable), for which they claim that they should be reimbursed in form of a pre-mine. This information is publicly available, and known by most network participants, who still voluntarily participate in it. I don't see any problem here.