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Well said. Wealth is built through control, while a distributed ledger rejects control by design. Now distributed ledgers have utility, but that does not neces

Well said. Wealth is built through control, while a distributed ledger rejects control by design. Now distributed ledgers have utility, but that does not necessarily mean they will create business value for entrepreneurs and investors. It's almost like how regulation has value in society, but regulation is decidedly not profitable and businesses usually reject it.

platz 9y ago
> distributed ledger rejects control by design Assuming you convince 1) 100,000 miners your blockchain has value, such that 2) the distribution of control is spread out among those miners uniformly. Both of which is a pretty big assumptions.
- Semaphor 9y ago
  More and more newer projects don't need those miners. It's still in question if they really offer the same security, but between masternode chains (security by having the "mining" done by people having to hold a large share of the coins so tanking its value would hit them hardest), dPoS (delegated Proof of Stake, every coin is a vote and you vote for a pool of "miners"), DAG where everyone has to do PoW for other txs to confirm their own, and other ideas, there are some interesting things. (I say "miner" but for those newer ones, the proof of work is often minimal to non-existent.)
  - platz 9y ago
    If you can boil that down into an understandable statement appropriate for airing to on the radio or a finance television show, i'd be interested. Otherwise, it seems like you just tried to do a "grapeshot" with tech jargon & lacking a main point.
    - Semaphor 9y ago
      There are alternatives to requiring a massive amount of miners. Some alternative cryptocurrencies implement those alternatives. Happy? ;)
      - platz 9y ago
        I imagine that exactly wouldn't be very convincing to those audiences now, would it?
        Semaphor 9y ago
        I can either give you entry points for what to search for or I can give you the gist of it. If you want neither maybe you should ignore my comment instead.
        platz 9y ago
        My point is that your point in it's current from is essentially un-communicable, to non-advanced technical users.
em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
> "Wealth is built through control" Centralised wealth is built through centralized control. Distributed wealth is built through distributed control.
- 0wing 9y ago
  Distributed how? Produced how? by work? Bitcoin distributed the vast majority of its wealth to aprox less than ~1000 individuals. Best estimates are that there are about one million holders of Bitcoin; 47 individuals hold about 30 percent, another 900 hold a further 20 percent, the next 10,000 about 25% and another million about 20%, with 5% being lost. So 1/10th of one percent represent about half the holdings of Bitcoin and 1 percent close to 80 percent (http://www.businessinsider.com/927-people-own-half- of-the-bitcoins-2013-12). The concentration of Litecoin ownership is similar (http://litecoin-rich-list.blogspot.com). Most of the big wallets have been in place from early on, so sitting back and watching your capital grow has been a very successful strategy. The distribution of Bitcoin holdings looks much like the distribution of wealth in North Korea and makes the China’s and even the US’ wealth distribution look like that of a workers’ paradise https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/86/is-it-possible-to-estimate-the-gini-coefficient-for-bitcoins-and-if-the-trend-is https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/86/is-it-possibl... http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-inequality-2014-1 http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-inequality-2014-1 More to the point, assuming a currency medium has a finite supply - once produced and distributed, all future generations are at a catastrophic disadvantage simply for arriving at the wrong time. It should also be noted the term deflationary is often used to represent Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies when in fact the supply continually inflates every 10 minutes. What many advocates conveniently omit from disclosing is the algorithm produced the supply very rapidly for very low effort to the early adopters. Not only does the production supply require more work for later adopters, but more users compete for the limited block rewards which decrease as time goes on. It's not exactly Ponzi scheme, or a Pyramid scheme. It's a Satoshi Scheme ... or a "Nakamoto Scheme" https://prestonbyrne.com/2017/12/08/bitcoin_ponzi/ https://prestonbyrne.com/2017/12/08/bitcoin_ponzi/
  - CryptoPunk 9y ago

platz 9y ago

> distributed ledger rejects control by design Assuming you convince 1) 100,000 miners your blockchain has value, such that 2) the distribution of control is spread out among those miners uniformly. Both of which is a pretty big assumptions.

Semaphor 9y ago
More and more newer projects don't need those miners. It's still in question if they really offer the same security, but between masternode chains (security by having the "mining" done by people having to hold a large share of the coins so tanking its value would hit them hardest), dPoS (delegated Proof of Stake, every coin is a vote and you vote for a pool of "miners"), DAG where everyone has to do PoW for other txs to confirm their own, and other ideas, there are some interesting things. (I say "miner" but for those newer ones, the proof of work is often minimal to non-existent.)
- platz 9y ago
  If you can boil that down into an understandable statement appropriate for airing to on the radio or a finance television show, i'd be interested. Otherwise, it seems like you just tried to do a "grapeshot" with tech jargon & lacking a main point.
  - Semaphor 9y ago
    There are alternatives to requiring a massive amount of miners. Some alternative cryptocurrencies implement those alternatives. Happy? ;)
    - platz 9y ago
      I imagine that exactly wouldn't be very convincing to those audiences now, would it?
      - Semaphor 9y ago
        I can either give you entry points for what to search for or I can give you the gist of it. If you want neither maybe you should ignore my comment instead.
        platz 9y ago
        My point is that your point in it's current from is essentially un-communicable, to non-advanced technical users.

em3rgent0rdr 9y ago

> "Wealth is built through control" Centralised wealth is built through centralized control. Distributed wealth is built through distributed control.

0wing 9y ago
Distributed how? Produced how? by work? Bitcoin distributed the vast majority of its wealth to aprox less than ~1000 individuals. Best estimates are that there are about one million holders of Bitcoin; 47 individuals hold about 30 percent, another 900 hold a further 20 percent, the next 10,000 about 25% and another million about 20%, with 5% being lost. So 1/10th of one percent represent about half the holdings of Bitcoin and 1 percent close to 80 percent (http://www.businessinsider.com/927-people-own-half- of-the-bitcoins-2013-12). The concentration of Litecoin ownership is similar (http://litecoin-rich-list.blogspot.com). Most of the big wallets have been in place from early on, so sitting back and watching your capital grow has been a very successful strategy. The distribution of Bitcoin holdings looks much like the distribution of wealth in North Korea and makes the China’s and even the US’ wealth distribution look like that of a workers’ paradise https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/86/is-it-possible-to-estimate-the-gini-coefficient-for-bitcoins-and-if-the-trend-is https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/86/is-it-possibl... http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-inequality-2014-1 http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-inequality-2014-1 More to the point, assuming a currency medium has a finite supply - once produced and distributed, all future generations are at a catastrophic disadvantage simply for arriving at the wrong time. It should also be noted the term deflationary is often used to represent Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies when in fact the supply continually inflates every 10 minutes. What many advocates conveniently omit from disclosing is the algorithm produced the supply very rapidly for very low effort to the early adopters. Not only does the production supply require more work for later adopters, but more users compete for the limited block rewards which decrease as time goes on. It's not exactly Ponzi scheme, or a Pyramid scheme. It's a Satoshi Scheme ... or a "Nakamoto Scheme" https://prestonbyrne.com/2017/12/08/bitcoin_ponzi/ https://prestonbyrne.com/2017/12/08/bitcoin_ponzi/
- CryptoPunk 9y ago