15 ms·

Blockchain isn't about democracy and decentralisation – it's about greed

170 points by jrepinc 8y ago

wbazant 8y ago
Georgia is pretty democratic. Also: food, wine and parties there are fantastic. And the mountains are epic. Hi Georgians!
brink 8y ago
All you need to do is spend 10 minutes on CryptoTwitter to figure this out. It's immediately apparent that it's a relatively unregulated stock market on steroids. Glorified gambling. For every 1 part honest decentralization, it's 9 parts greed.
- paulsutter 8y ago
  According to Sturgeon's law, that's almost unremarkable ;) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law "Using the same standards that categorize 90% of science fiction as trash, crud, or crap, it can be argued that 90% of film, literature, consumer goods, etc. is crap. In other words, the claim (or fact) that 90% of science fiction is crap is ultimately uninformative, because science fiction conforms to the same trends of quality as all other artforms"
  - simias 8y ago
    That's not really the same thing, the parent says that all cryptocurrencies are 90% greed, not that 90% of cryptocurrencies are only about greed. If it turns out that even 10% of cryptocurrencies are actually not crap it will be huge news. I'm not holding my breath.
    - jmull 8y ago
      Yes... in sci-fi (and other arts and media and consumer goods) you can mostly recognize the crap when you see it and avoid it without doing a lot more than ignoring it. That's why the 90% crap doesn't matter. With bitcoin though -- and other crytocurrencies and blockchain products generally -- you can't ignore that almost everyone around you is trying their best to get your money. With sci-fi you can separate the good from the bad without too much trouble. Not so with blockchains.
- MrEfficiency 8y ago
  Bitcoin needs to disconnect from the 'cryptocurrency' and 'blockchain' buzzwords. Like it or not, Bitcoin is already used worldwide and is relatively stable if not positive. (No need to tell me of bandwagoners who bought at All Time Highs) IMO Bitcoin needs to store value to be useful, not necessarily increase in value. Altcoin mania is greed.
  - simias 8y ago
    Look at any forum discussing any cryptocurrency (including bitcoin). Everything is discussed through the filter of "will it pump the value and make us rich?" and there's hardly any in-depth technical discussion because most participants are here to become rich, not to learn about technology or economy. It also means that any criticism of the technology will be immediately attacked as being "paid shills" with an ulterior motive. It's hard enough to have constructive discussions online, it's almost impossible when people have a financial incentive to defend their position to the bitter end.
    - dlubarov 8y ago
      > any forum discussing any cryptocurrency A counterexample would be http://ethresear.ch/ http://ethresear.ch/, though it's the exception that proves the rule.
      - simias 8y ago
        This actually looks interesting for a change, thank you for linking that!
      - nybble41 8y ago
        > though it's the exception that proves the rule Just FYI: The full version of that phrase is the exception that proves the rule false. The idea that the existence of exceptions prove a rule true is, of course, utter nonsense. A rule which is true in some cases but not others is no rule at all.
    - swift532 8y ago
- rmrfrmrf 8y ago
  All stock markets are glorified gambling.
  - tim333 8y ago
    Normal stock markets facilitate investment in real ventures that provide goods and services to customers with some gambling as a side effect. It remains to be seen if crypto provides much beyond the gambling.
    - BLKNSLVR 8y ago
      That's how they should be, or how they used to be. It seems that has has reversed (in the 80's?) where stock markets now facilitate gambling with investment in real ventures that provide goods and services to customers as the side effect.
jankotek 8y ago
Yet blockchain is the only way to transfer money in "paradises" such as Venezuela.
- exitcode00 8y ago
  Exactly, you only need to look as far as Dash's effort in Venezuela to realize how crypto can benefit society, and if you trust governments not to turn the global stock markets into a glorified casino then look up the terms CDOs, HFT, "Dark pools", ZIRP, bail-ins, etc... https://www.dashforcenews.com/dash-adds-aggressive-venezuela-marketing-push-to-comprehensive-merchant-support/ https://www.dashforcenews.com/dash-adds-aggressive-venezuela...
  - SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
    > glorified casino Are you saying that this isn't the case for crypto?
    - exitcode00 8y ago
      I suppose the stock market would be more like a "rigged casino" since the government's central banks can print money and confiscate funds (see Cyprus), but with pretty much all market leading crypto such things are impossible if you dont store you money on exchanges.
      - pjc50 8y ago
        Keeping your cryptocurrency in your own wallet guarantees nothing about its exchange value, though; the "price level" of cryptocurrency absolutely is set by the fraudulent practices of the exchanges even if you don't go near them yourself.
        exitcode00 8y ago
        There are "fraudulent practices" in the real world exchanges - look at how LIBOR was/is rigged (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libor_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libor_scandal). And I certainly hope its "exchange value" isn't exactly the same as a government currency as that would defeat the purpose of having something different in the first place...
loourr 8y ago
No, it isn't. It operates in an environment of intense greed and crypto economics is about trying to make systems that are antifragile to greed.
- mindfulplay 8y ago
  Which cryptobook is this nuance from? Cryptodefenders have ready-to-go wisdom and complicated words to defend their BS....
  - sremani 8y ago
    Any one talking Crypto and Anti-fragile in same sentence seems to have read the book, "The Bitcoin Standard". To be honest, it is one of the best books that makes case for Crypto specifically Bitcoin or its ilk from historic currency stand point. Let us not forget the President of United States has the right to mint a Trillion Dollar Coin, and some very intelligent people asked him to do that no too long ago (4 years ago?), when there was debt crisis looming in Washington.
    - mindfulplay 8y ago
      Again, all this sounds super complicated economics. There are a ton of facts I can cook up that are legitimate but are meaningless. The president of the USA can also legally fart in an elevator with CNN and MSNBC reporters in that elevator... But I would guess the president probably won't do that even if they are entitled to.
  - rmrfrmrf 8y ago
    There's not much nuance here; the "difficulty" aspects of proof-of-work are one of the core features of Bitcoin.
johndevor 8y ago
It's both.
dragontamer 8y ago
Blockchain was once about using technology to solve a problem in a new and exciting way. Then people started to make money off of it. Lots of money. Then it became greed, and the technological progress halted. Hopefully, enough people lose money so that the technical aspects can return to focus.
- nwah1 8y ago
  That is curious, because with every other exciting new technology, having gobs of money thrown at it generally helps it get realized. Makes you wonder if there's something more fundamentally wrong about the assumptions going into it.
  - trab 8y ago
    Yes curious like the money that got poured into the .com tech in 2000 helped it get realized.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - Fradow 8y ago
    The problem is that it's not money thrown at it directly. When you pay a company, they can use that money directly. When you buy some coins, the developers/the company generally do not benefit directly. Some developers don't even have stake in the coins they create to avoid conflict of interest. Who profit then? People who already have some of those coins, because you drive up the valuation, and they can resell their coin for higher. Those people can be scammers (pump & dump scheme), cryptocurrencies, your average joe, or the devs, if they got some. You could say, apart from the last category, that they add nothing of value. Some cryptocurrencies try to have a part of the generated currency pay toward development effort, but that's not the standard.
  - ballenf 8y ago
    The fallacy with your argument, imo, is that cryptocurrencies are only marginally about technology. They aren't a new battery chemistry or transistor fab tech. They are a pretty simple alternative solution to a longstanding societal need. But one that needs critical mass and low volatility to succeed (arguably).
f055 8y ago
Well to be honest all human history can be described down to greed - all wars, conquests, colonisation, banking, investing, stocks and more. It's all about making profit. Whatever bad you can say about blockchain and coins, one is undisputed - it's the first time in hundreds of years when an individual can print money and not be called a criminal. And that's a big shift of power. To elaborate: thanks to blockchain there's nothing stopping you to create a coin for your group, your neighbourhood or your town - or the internet - that if adopted, will be accepted. And thanks to blockchain that coin actually works, is hard to forge, crack or counterfeit. And the mainstream electricity argument is short-sighted. Humans need energy to evolve (fyi Kardashev scale). Bitcoin et al is the best incentive to actually create innovative, powerful and cheap energy sources.
- dragontamer 8y ago
  > Well to be honest all human history can be described down to greed - all wars, conquests, colonisation, banking, investing, stocks and more. It's all about making profit. Blockchain's early history was basically crypto-nerds trying to find a new application of cryptography. Back then, people would give away Bitcoins for free in "Bitcoin fountains", and discussion focused on protocol issues and other aspects of building the technology. Greed came into the picture long afterwards.
  - f055 8y ago
    Well this scenario applies to so many fields. Social media was a fun way to interact with friends. Then people started to show off professionally and endorse products for cash. Greed. "Greed is good" ;)
    - dragontamer 8y ago
      I think "Greed can be good" is really what people should realize. Greed is bad in many situations. But if you design your system SUCH THAT Greed is good, then the system will survive. Bitcoin has a bit of "greed is good" built in: the bitcoin miners are the mechanism that provide timestamps to the whole system. But higher-levels of greed were not accounted for (ex: ASICs farms using up so much electricity that the carbon footprint of BTC is HUGE now).
mcs_ 8y ago
I wonder if publishing in read-only mode the banks databases will stop this feeling that blockchain will solve the world economy.
charlesdm 8y ago
I stopped reading when I saw Nouriel Roubini. He's a smart economist and while I think he has good points on certain things that are wrong with crypto, the way he fundamentally delivers his views in this matter are ridiculous and bitter. He's been overly passionate (and aggressive?) on trying to make sure he's right. He's shouting it from the rooftops. He keeps repeating it's all a bubble. All good and well, and it very well might be, BUT that in itself doesn't give him credibility. You can say the same thing about the stock market, and once every economic cycle when we see a major correction, you'll be right. A broken clock is also right twice a day. At the same time, economists usually aren't very wealthy people.. maybe they are overly sceptical of new developments.
- dubya123 8y ago
  Shocking, people that dedicate themselves to research don't end up very wealthy. Whoda thunkit.
  - go_blue_13 8y ago
    Usually people who research a field are masters of that field. A poor economist...
    - Synaesthesia 8y ago
      Being an economist doesn’t mean you are in the business of accumulating huge amounts of money. It means you study economic systems.
    - adamch 8y ago
      Are all the AlphaGo engineers also top-level Go players?
      - scabarott 8y ago
        Or doctors the healthiest, fittest, most disease-free individuals?
- 8y ago
hulton 8y ago
You mean to tell me that humans positively and negatively exploit? Never knew. I'm glad the guardian is here to set things straight.
sremani 8y ago
>>> A few self-serving white men (there are hardly any women or minorities in the blockchain universe) pretending to be messiahs for the world’s impoverished, marginalised and unbanked masses claim to have created billions of dollars of wealth out of nothing. >>> I do not agree with the entire statement, but the amount of "self-congratulatory" shit that goes in Blockchain conferences is mind boggling. I went Ethereum Devcon 3, and its not hyperbole when I say ONE entire day of 4 days of conference was about patting on the back.
- MrEfficiency 8y ago
  I have been explaining to newcomers that there is a difference between Bitcoin and everything else. Bitcoin has become a man-made institution, similar to fiat, marriage, courts, religion, etc... There are people around the world that believe in the 21,000,000 Bitcoin to store value. The leading idea is that local governments print money and Bitcoin cannot be changed. Alt coins are trying their best to promote themselves so people early to the market can make money. These are the people attending those conferences. They speak of using blockchain to store data, but this seems inappropriate given that blockchain cannot handle a large volume of transactions. I would guess many are failed/wannabe programmers jumping on a bandwagon.
- liquidise 8y ago
  At risk of tangenting the conversation, comments like that from the guardian continue to drive me nuts. I understand that an identity-driven narrative suits their politics. But to say the crypto community is started by "white men" really rolls up a ton of geographical and cultural diversity between even the founders of the top few coins: Bitcoin (unknown), Ethereum (Russian), Litecoin (Asian-American).
  - tobr 8y ago
    I guess you could say that Bitcoin is pseudonominally Japanese.
  - pochamago 8y ago
    The comment in the article is itself tangential. It's just a pointless bit of racist vitriol against the dreaded White Man, and has nothing to do with any of the substantive criticism
interfixus 8y ago
> A few self-serving white men How nice for Guardian readers and writers alike to have a safespace where certain varieties of blatant racist sexism can thrive.
- ravenstine 8y ago
  Serious question, what exactly is stopping women and non-whites from creating a blockchain currency and having their own crypto conventions if that's what they wanted? One can do this immediately by sitting at home in one's underwear and forking an existing coin on GitHub.
  - interfixus 8y ago
    No idea. Ask my downvoters.
  - MCrekt 8y ago
    Nothing at all. My black ass did just that, minus the convention. There are enough of those.
- rmrfrmrf 8y ago
  I don't view those statements as racist or sexist, but I do think that calling a technology racist and sexist by citing a few white male benefactors is incredibly lazy and ultimately damaging to the goal of bringing equality to all.
Synaesthesia 8y ago
When bitcoin came out I was excited at the prospect of s free, egalitarian money. While it is free there’s not really anything egalitarian about it unfortunately, and I don’t see it solving huge problems like poverty. Maybe a coin which is evenly distributed among the population to start would be better.
- tomjen3 8y ago
  Such a coin wouldn't be evenly distributed for long, unless you banned free exchanges with it.
  - Synaesthesia 8y ago
    No but it would still be an interesting experiment.
- tim333 8y ago
  I spent a while trying to figure how you could issue some token to everyone on the planet. It's hard to get the database and contact them all to give them private keys, as it were.
- thelasthuman 8y ago
  Egalitarian means equality between classes, implying that class based hierarchy still exists. Not really something to aspire to IMO.
  - Synaesthesia 8y ago
    Yeah I just meant equality between everyone, period
rmrfrmrf 8y ago
From a socialist lense, this article reads like a neoliberal greatest hits piece: * Conflating anarchism and libertarianism * Calling a technology racist and sexist * Russiophobia * A full-throated support of big banks and the privacy rights of the enterprise. Furthermore, there are some outright flaws in the piece itself: * Conflating usage of cryptocurrency in vivo with blockchain as a technology * Claiming that decentralization of the ledger is a lie because big crypto traders control most of the economy * Claiming that you can "just fork" the blockchain to fix programming errors, when in reality (at least with Bitcoin) you need a majority to do that (there are initiatives to chang Bitcoin that have failed, afterall). * Calling an electronic ledger an Excel spreadsheet without any mention of the data integrity benefits. Really at the end of the day, the author claimed to be attacking blockchain but really just ended up attacking cryptocurrencies.
- haroldp 8y ago
  From a libertarian lens, I find blockchain technically interesting, and see some promise in it's usefulness, but I own zero bitcoins (etc) because the whole cryptocurrency landscape looks immature, treacherous and fraught with peril. Each of your points seems absolutely spot-on. I think readers of any political point of view should be able to spot this as a notably poor article.
maxxxxx 8y ago
Blockchain reminds me a little of the history of the internet but worse . The internet started with good intentions but then in the late 1990s it was all about greed and it took much longer for the value to really show. The main problem with blockchain is that they jumped straight to greed and get-rich-quick schemes before it showed any real world use.
- scabarott 8y ago
  One thing though, the internet was/is solid technology. Underneath the internet bubble was something that worked. Blockchain is promising technology but without solving the scaling issue it will always be just that.
  - tim333 8y ago
    The scaling issue is close to solved - there are a number of rival solutions, time will tell what wins out. There are other issues though such as money laundering regulations.
    - TeMPOraL 8y ago
      So we've been told for the past couple years now. I expect that the problem won't be solved, and instead we'll get a formal proof that you can't build a fully decentralized, trustless system without Proof of Work, at which point I hope Bitcoin & others will get labeled for what they are: crimes against climate and sustainable energy economy.
erikb 8y ago
I technology is not about anything. There are people who try to use it for good of humanity and there are people who try to use it for their personal gains on the cost of others. It's always like this. And if we wouldn't develop technology, they would still use the old ones (e.g. horse riding).
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  Technology by definition makes some tasks easier at the expense of making some other tasks more difficult. A spoon will help you eat, but it won't help you play football. A gun will help you project power and kill, but you won't eat soup with it. Similarly, the blockchain is a technology that makes it easier to a) burn through shit ton of electricity, b) propagate scams and get-rich-quick schemes. It doesn't seem to make easier any task that's worth doing and already not better done with another technology.
  - erikb 8y ago
    The goal of a spoon is to make soup eatable. The goal of a blockchain is not to burn through a shit ton of electricity. Therefore I'd argue that your points a and b are mostly side effects, and not even side effects of blockchains. If you run high quality computer games on your system you will also burn through a shit ton of electricity. If you go to another unregulated market you also get a lot of scams and get-rich-quick schemes. Blockchains not even necessitate crypto coins, they can live without it. If you for instance like Kafka but don't like that it's centralized, you could run it on a blockchain as well. PS: I'd argue that, depending on the type of gun you use, eating soup with a gun is still easier than eating completely without any tools. And does having a spoon really makes you worse at soccer? I'm not sure the intial thesis holds. A tool can make X easier and not make Y harder.
ruffrey 8y ago
To me, cryptocurrency is about greed to the same extend money or stocks are about greed. There just aren't as many regulations yet.
dumbfoundded 8y ago
It's great how much the potential of cryptocurrency depends on the market cap. The scariest part to me about cryptocurrency is not the greed, lies and manipulation. It's a centralized cryptocurrency by a major government. Imagine if instead of cash, you had to pay for everything with a digital currency controlled by the US Govt. It'd be all the immutability of cryptocurrency with the monetary policy of the Fed Reserve. I'd bet the IRS and NSA would love the additional data.
eaenki 8y ago
I don't really get it. Are the people commenting about how useless and stupid Bitcoin and Ethereum are, really putting themselves above Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz and Peter Thiel's predictions? I mean. At most, you could be skeptical. Thinking that it's a joke when even those kinda guys (First successful browser, first cloud computing, first online payment service) are all-in it's mind blowing. I remember reading the same comments on HF when I was a kid. And even before, about LR. Guess who found (and will find) himself on the wrong side of history?
- ballenf 8y ago
  It doesn't require comparing one's own intelligence to those guys. One can pick any number of Warren Buffetts who think cryptocurrencies are not good investments. Even though I think Buffett's at least partially wrong on this subject, in a vacuum I'd trust him over all the guys you named combined. But that's just personal preference. (I have no idea what 'HR' or 'LF' are.)
  - tomjen3 8y ago
    Buffett has always preferred businesses that he can understand, so on that one alone I can see why he doesn't like crypto. Secondly, I don't think crypto is good as an investment (as opposed to a vehicle for speculation) but I see all sort of opportunities in killing the middle men of banks. No more boom and bust because the fed won't read Hayek; No more having to beg and scrape to be allowed to send a transaction through the archaic inter-bank transfer system; No more inflation forcing people to put savings in riskier and riskier businesses to keep up with the printing; No more dirt poor refugees who have to leave every thing behind; No more hyperinflation because dictators needs to be the sole source of food.
  - eaenki 8y ago
    It's HF and LR, not HR and LF, that alone, shows your efforts. LR stands for Liberty Reserve, HF for HackerForum. Buffet didn't create or invest successfully in anything software-related. If you put the opinion of a guy who made his fortune with Coca Cola and Insurance above the ones who made it with tech -when evaluating the future- that's fine. To each their own I guess? You found yourself on the wrong side of history, and sounds like it'll happen again.
b0bby_tabl3s 8y ago
This entire article is one giant dog turd. Not even polished, just a white-crusty-dog-turd. It's evident the 'author' has little true understanding of the underlying block-chain technology other than what would be naysayers (who themselves are mainly white...ಠ_ಠ ) have all regurgitated in their efforts to seem like saviors of the minorities (who CLEARLY can't think or fend for themselves without some do-good white person making the important decisions for them).
iamgopal 8y ago
Is anybody else wonder, how Bitcoin rise to 10000USD+ align with india's demonetisation.
navigatorSL 8y ago
Another racist anti-White article by The Guardian.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
olivermarks 8y ago
I like Roubini despite his arrogance but surely everything to do with currency speculation is about greed? That's essentially what bitcoin is, it has little practical utility in day to day life. The blockchain world - which as others have pointed out isn't short of cliques and boasters - is more like the early days of the internet IMO. Lots of interesting ideas and ways to leverage new technologies and ideas. Lots of terrible ideas, incompetence, corruption and greed, just like the internet circa 2000...and a few ideas that changed the world
- nickik 8y ago
  Has lots of utility for the people buying drugs.
  - sleepybrett 8y ago
    I'm not sure that's true at all.
AnaniasAnanas 8y ago
I find it annoying how people equate blockchain with cryptocurrencies. GIT repos are basically blockchains, yet they have nothing to do with greed nor cryptocurrencies. > But it has also become the byword for a libertarian ideology that treats all governments, central banks, traditional financial institutions, and real-world currencies as evil concentrations of power that must be destroyed Would you blame them for wanting that though? Admittedly most people who moved to cryptocurrencies only care about greed, but is this not simply the side effect of the whole scheme becoming popular? > there are hardly any women or minorities in the blockchain universe I don't know how true or false this is (especially when considering that there are many cryptocoin farms in china and Russia, as well as the likely Japanese ethnicity of the creator of bitcoin), but I fail to see how this is the fault of cryptocurrencies themselves (with the exception that one already needed money in order to invest in the GPUs).
deleted 8y ago
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andrewla 8y ago
It's strange how much vitriol the author spends against "Blockchain" while being dismissive of its technical merits. In short, I agree -- Blockchain is not the end-all and be-all. It's a natural evolution of the idea of git (and its predecessors) of using a one-sided Merkle tree to compactly store an unforgeable chain of information. But let's take the word "blockchain" out of this. Is the claim really, "Cryptocurrencies aren't about democracy and decentralisation -- they're about greed."? I mean, the set of cryptocurrencies isn't a short story, they're not "about" anything. So let's assume that we're talking about cryptocurrency supporters. "All cryptocurrency supporters are not interested in democracy and decentralisation -- they're just greedy". Okay, better, but let's get rid of absolutes. "Many cryptocurrency supporters are not interested in democracy and decentralisation -- they're just greedy". Okay, now I think we have a statement that is likely true, but is so bland as to be meaningless. His testimony to the Senate [1] makes a lot of similar points, but the one that I find most annoying because I don't know how an economist can say it, is the line about bitcoin being deflationary: > That means if a steady- state supply of Bitcoin really did gradually replace a fiat currency, the price index of all goods and services would continuously fall. This statement, along with so many others talking about Bitcoin is exactly equivalent to saying that "Bitcoin will always increase in value". I'm as big a fan of the potential of Bitcoin as the next person, but even I find this to be ridiculous. [1] https://www.banking.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Roubini%20Testimony%2010-11-18.pdf https://www.banking.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Roubini%20Testi...
writepub 8y ago
> A few self-serving white men (there are hardly any women or minorities in the blockchain universe) pretending to be messiahs When I intended to read the article, I was fairly certain identity politics wasn't an axe the author wanted to grind, but he went straight for the jugular!!! China - which is neither white, and comprises a racial minority in the west, has seen the largest wealth creation in this space. So - the author's statement is technically wrong. Unlike the Guardian - where an opinion piece isn't approved unless 'White Men' are blamed, the blockchain holds no opinions - you're free to start a feminist-coin without the editor of the Guardian thought policing your piffle into narratives palatable to the Guardian's target audience
ehrtt 8y ago
> Gini coefficient of 1.0 means that a single person controls 100% of a country’s income/wealth, North Korea scores 0.86, the rather unequal United States scores 0.41 and bitcoin scores an astonishing 0.88. This was a bizarre section, and I wanted to make some points about it: 1) The distribution of bitcoins among individuals is not known, any claim to the contrary is false. If you want to make estimates, include the massive uncertainties. 2) Assets do not have Gini coefficients, groups of people do. The distributions of helicopters or Google stock are also very unequal. If you care about wealth inequality among crypto hodlers you should measure that. Conflating the distribution of an asset with the distribution of wealth seems meant to confuse. 3) When bitcoins had 0 value they were much more unequally distributed than now. People starting to value them is the mechanism by which they get distributed. The process is gradual. The more people value them, the more value they accrue.
- dumbfoundded 8y ago
  > 1) The distribution of bitcoins among individuals is not known, any claim to the contrary is false. How can this be true? Bitcoin is a public ledger and you see every accounts balance. If anything the publicly available account balances seem like a lower bound for the Gini coefficient as it is very likely people have multiple wallets (especially with large balances) where it's unlikely any group of people shares the same wallet (creating and distributing funds among multiple wallets is more secure and trivial).
  - ehrtt 8y ago
    Lots of people (millions) share the same wallets (technically addresses), as they hold coins on exchanges. The richest bitcoin addresses are the cold storage for the exchanges. https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-addresses.html https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-addresses....
    - dumbfoundded 8y ago
      That's a great point.

170 points by jrepinc 8y ago

Georgia is pretty democratic. Also: food, wine and parties there are fantastic. And the mountains are epic. Hi Georgians!

brink 8y ago

All you need to do is spend 10 minutes on CryptoTwitter to figure this out. It's immediately apparent that it's a relatively unregulated stock market on steroids. Glorified gambling. For every 1 part honest decentralization, it's 9 parts greed.

paulsutter 8y ago
According to Sturgeon's law, that's almost unremarkable ;) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law "Using the same standards that categorize 90% of science fiction as trash, crud, or crap, it can be argued that 90% of film, literature, consumer goods, etc. is crap. In other words, the claim (or fact) that 90% of science fiction is crap is ultimately uninformative, because science fiction conforms to the same trends of quality as all other artforms"
- simias 8y ago
  That's not really the same thing, the parent says that all cryptocurrencies are 90% greed, not that 90% of cryptocurrencies are only about greed. If it turns out that even 10% of cryptocurrencies are actually not crap it will be huge news. I'm not holding my breath.
  - jmull 8y ago
    Yes... in sci-fi (and other arts and media and consumer goods) you can mostly recognize the crap when you see it and avoid it without doing a lot more than ignoring it. That's why the 90% crap doesn't matter. With bitcoin though -- and other crytocurrencies and blockchain products generally -- you can't ignore that almost everyone around you is trying their best to get your money. With sci-fi you can separate the good from the bad without too much trouble. Not so with blockchains.
MrEfficiency 8y ago
Bitcoin needs to disconnect from the 'cryptocurrency' and 'blockchain' buzzwords. Like it or not, Bitcoin is already used worldwide and is relatively stable if not positive. (No need to tell me of bandwagoners who bought at All Time Highs) IMO Bitcoin needs to store value to be useful, not necessarily increase in value. Altcoin mania is greed.
- simias 8y ago
  Look at any forum discussing any cryptocurrency (including bitcoin). Everything is discussed through the filter of "will it pump the value and make us rich?" and there's hardly any in-depth technical discussion because most participants are here to become rich, not to learn about technology or economy. It also means that any criticism of the technology will be immediately attacked as being "paid shills" with an ulterior motive. It's hard enough to have constructive discussions online, it's almost impossible when people have a financial incentive to defend their position to the bitter end.
  - dlubarov 8y ago
    > any forum discussing any cryptocurrency A counterexample would be http://ethresear.ch/ http://ethresear.ch/, though it's the exception that proves the rule.
    - simias 8y ago
      This actually looks interesting for a change, thank you for linking that!
    - nybble41 8y ago
      > though it's the exception that proves the rule Just FYI: The full version of that phrase is the exception that proves the rule false. The idea that the existence of exceptions prove a rule true is, of course, utter nonsense. A rule which is true in some cases but not others is no rule at all.
  - swift532 8y ago
rmrfrmrf 8y ago
All stock markets are glorified gambling.
- tim333 8y ago
  Normal stock markets facilitate investment in real ventures that provide goods and services to customers with some gambling as a side effect. It remains to be seen if crypto provides much beyond the gambling.
  - BLKNSLVR 8y ago
    That's how they should be, or how they used to be. It seems that has has reversed (in the 80's?) where stock markets now facilitate gambling with investment in real ventures that provide goods and services to customers as the side effect.

jankotek 8y ago

Yet blockchain is the only way to transfer money in "paradises" such as Venezuela.

exitcode00 8y ago
Exactly, you only need to look as far as Dash's effort in Venezuela to realize how crypto can benefit society, and if you trust governments not to turn the global stock markets into a glorified casino then look up the terms CDOs, HFT, "Dark pools", ZIRP, bail-ins, etc... https://www.dashforcenews.com/dash-adds-aggressive-venezuela-marketing-push-to-comprehensive-merchant-support/ https://www.dashforcenews.com/dash-adds-aggressive-venezuela...
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
  > glorified casino Are you saying that this isn't the case for crypto?
  - exitcode00 8y ago
    I suppose the stock market would be more like a "rigged casino" since the government's central banks can print money and confiscate funds (see Cyprus), but with pretty much all market leading crypto such things are impossible if you dont store you money on exchanges.
    - pjc50 8y ago
      Keeping your cryptocurrency in your own wallet guarantees nothing about its exchange value, though; the "price level" of cryptocurrency absolutely is set by the fraudulent practices of the exchanges even if you don't go near them yourself.
      - exitcode00 8y ago
        There are "fraudulent practices" in the real world exchanges - look at how LIBOR was/is rigged (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libor_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libor_scandal). And I certainly hope its "exchange value" isn't exactly the same as a government currency as that would defeat the purpose of having something different in the first place...

loourr 8y ago

No, it isn't. It operates in an environment of intense greed and crypto economics is about trying to make systems that are antifragile to greed.

mindfulplay 8y ago
Which cryptobook is this nuance from? Cryptodefenders have ready-to-go wisdom and complicated words to defend their BS....
- sremani 8y ago
  Any one talking Crypto and Anti-fragile in same sentence seems to have read the book, "The Bitcoin Standard". To be honest, it is one of the best books that makes case for Crypto specifically Bitcoin or its ilk from historic currency stand point. Let us not forget the President of United States has the right to mint a Trillion Dollar Coin, and some very intelligent people asked him to do that no too long ago (4 years ago?), when there was debt crisis looming in Washington.
  - mindfulplay 8y ago
    Again, all this sounds super complicated economics. There are a ton of facts I can cook up that are legitimate but are meaningless. The president of the USA can also legally fart in an elevator with CNN and MSNBC reporters in that elevator... But I would guess the president probably won't do that even if they are entitled to.
- rmrfrmrf 8y ago
  There's not much nuance here; the "difficulty" aspects of proof-of-work are one of the core features of Bitcoin.

johndevor 8y ago

It's both.

dragontamer 8y ago

Blockchain was once about using technology to solve a problem in a new and exciting way. Then people started to make money off of it. Lots of money. Then it became greed, and the technological progress halted. Hopefully, enough people lose money so that the technical aspects can return to focus.

nwah1 8y ago
That is curious, because with every other exciting new technology, having gobs of money thrown at it generally helps it get realized. Makes you wonder if there's something more fundamentally wrong about the assumptions going into it.
- trab 8y ago
  Yes curious like the money that got poured into the .com tech in 2000 helped it get realized.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- Fradow 8y ago
  The problem is that it's not money thrown at it directly. When you pay a company, they can use that money directly. When you buy some coins, the developers/the company generally do not benefit directly. Some developers don't even have stake in the coins they create to avoid conflict of interest. Who profit then? People who already have some of those coins, because you drive up the valuation, and they can resell their coin for higher. Those people can be scammers (pump & dump scheme), cryptocurrencies, your average joe, or the devs, if they got some. You could say, apart from the last category, that they add nothing of value. Some cryptocurrencies try to have a part of the generated currency pay toward development effort, but that's not the standard.
- ballenf 8y ago
  The fallacy with your argument, imo, is that cryptocurrencies are only marginally about technology. They aren't a new battery chemistry or transistor fab tech. They are a pretty simple alternative solution to a longstanding societal need. But one that needs critical mass and low volatility to succeed (arguably).

f055 8y ago

Well to be honest all human history can be described down to greed - all wars, conquests, colonisation, banking, investing, stocks and more. It's all about making profit. Whatever bad you can say about blockchain and coins, one is undisputed - it's the first time in hundreds of years when an individual can print money and not be called a criminal. And that's a big shift of power. To elaborate: thanks to blockchain there's nothing stopping you to create a coin for your group, your neighbourhood or your town - or the internet - that if adopted, will be accepted. And thanks to blockchain that coin actually works, is hard to forge, crack or counterfeit. And the mainstream electricity argument is short-sighted. Humans need energy to evolve (fyi Kardashev scale). Bitcoin et al is the best incentive to actually create innovative, powerful and cheap energy sources.

dragontamer 8y ago
> Well to be honest all human history can be described down to greed - all wars, conquests, colonisation, banking, investing, stocks and more. It's all about making profit. Blockchain's early history was basically crypto-nerds trying to find a new application of cryptography. Back then, people would give away Bitcoins for free in "Bitcoin fountains", and discussion focused on protocol issues and other aspects of building the technology. Greed came into the picture long afterwards.
- f055 8y ago
  Well this scenario applies to so many fields. Social media was a fun way to interact with friends. Then people started to show off professionally and endorse products for cash. Greed. "Greed is good" ;)
  - dragontamer 8y ago
    I think "Greed can be good" is really what people should realize. Greed is bad in many situations. But if you design your system SUCH THAT Greed is good, then the system will survive. Bitcoin has a bit of "greed is good" built in: the bitcoin miners are the mechanism that provide timestamps to the whole system. But higher-levels of greed were not accounted for (ex: ASICs farms using up so much electricity that the carbon footprint of BTC is HUGE now).

mcs_ 8y ago

I wonder if publishing in read-only mode the banks databases will stop this feeling that blockchain will solve the world economy.

charlesdm 8y ago

I stopped reading when I saw Nouriel Roubini. He's a smart economist and while I think he has good points on certain things that are wrong with crypto, the way he fundamentally delivers his views in this matter are ridiculous and bitter. He's been overly passionate (and aggressive?) on trying to make sure he's right. He's shouting it from the rooftops. He keeps repeating it's all a bubble. All good and well, and it very well might be, BUT that in itself doesn't give him credibility. You can say the same thing about the stock market, and once every economic cycle when we see a major correction, you'll be right. A broken clock is also right twice a day. At the same time, economists usually aren't very wealthy people.. maybe they are overly sceptical of new developments.

dubya123 8y ago
Shocking, people that dedicate themselves to research don't end up very wealthy. Whoda thunkit.
- go_blue_13 8y ago
  Usually people who research a field are masters of that field. A poor economist...
  - Synaesthesia 8y ago
    Being an economist doesn’t mean you are in the business of accumulating huge amounts of money. It means you study economic systems.
  - adamch 8y ago
    Are all the AlphaGo engineers also top-level Go players?
    - scabarott 8y ago
      Or doctors the healthiest, fittest, most disease-free individuals?
8y ago

hulton 8y ago

You mean to tell me that humans positively and negatively exploit? Never knew. I'm glad the guardian is here to set things straight.

sremani 8y ago

>>> A few self-serving white men (there are hardly any women or minorities in the blockchain universe) pretending to be messiahs for the world’s impoverished, marginalised and unbanked masses claim to have created billions of dollars of wealth out of nothing. >>> I do not agree with the entire statement, but the amount of "self-congratulatory" shit that goes in Blockchain conferences is mind boggling. I went Ethereum Devcon 3, and its not hyperbole when I say ONE entire day of 4 days of conference was about patting on the back.

MrEfficiency 8y ago
I have been explaining to newcomers that there is a difference between Bitcoin and everything else. Bitcoin has become a man-made institution, similar to fiat, marriage, courts, religion, etc... There are people around the world that believe in the 21,000,000 Bitcoin to store value. The leading idea is that local governments print money and Bitcoin cannot be changed. Alt coins are trying their best to promote themselves so people early to the market can make money. These are the people attending those conferences. They speak of using blockchain to store data, but this seems inappropriate given that blockchain cannot handle a large volume of transactions. I would guess many are failed/wannabe programmers jumping on a bandwagon.
liquidise 8y ago
At risk of tangenting the conversation, comments like that from the guardian continue to drive me nuts. I understand that an identity-driven narrative suits their politics. But to say the crypto community is started by "white men" really rolls up a ton of geographical and cultural diversity between even the founders of the top few coins: Bitcoin (unknown), Ethereum (Russian), Litecoin (Asian-American).
- tobr 8y ago
  I guess you could say that Bitcoin is pseudonominally Japanese.
- pochamago 8y ago
  The comment in the article is itself tangential. It's just a pointless bit of racist vitriol against the dreaded White Man, and has nothing to do with any of the substantive criticism

interfixus 8y ago

> A few self-serving white men How nice for Guardian readers and writers alike to have a safespace where certain varieties of blatant racist sexism can thrive.

ravenstine 8y ago
Serious question, what exactly is stopping women and non-whites from creating a blockchain currency and having their own crypto conventions if that's what they wanted? One can do this immediately by sitting at home in one's underwear and forking an existing coin on GitHub.
- interfixus 8y ago
  No idea. Ask my downvoters.
- MCrekt 8y ago
  Nothing at all. My black ass did just that, minus the convention. There are enough of those.
rmrfrmrf 8y ago
I don't view those statements as racist or sexist, but I do think that calling a technology racist and sexist by citing a few white male benefactors is incredibly lazy and ultimately damaging to the goal of bringing equality to all.

Synaesthesia 8y ago

When bitcoin came out I was excited at the prospect of s free, egalitarian money. While it is free there’s not really anything egalitarian about it unfortunately, and I don’t see it solving huge problems like poverty. Maybe a coin which is evenly distributed among the population to start would be better.

tomjen3 8y ago
Such a coin wouldn't be evenly distributed for long, unless you banned free exchanges with it.
- Synaesthesia 8y ago
  No but it would still be an interesting experiment.
tim333 8y ago
I spent a while trying to figure how you could issue some token to everyone on the planet. It's hard to get the database and contact them all to give them private keys, as it were.
thelasthuman 8y ago
Egalitarian means equality between classes, implying that class based hierarchy still exists. Not really something to aspire to IMO.
- Synaesthesia 8y ago
  Yeah I just meant equality between everyone, period

rmrfrmrf 8y ago

From a socialist lense, this article reads like a neoliberal greatest hits piece: * Conflating anarchism and libertarianism * Calling a technology racist and sexist * Russiophobia * A full-throated support of big banks and the privacy rights of the enterprise. Furthermore, there are some outright flaws in the piece itself: * Conflating usage of cryptocurrency in vivo with blockchain as a technology * Claiming that decentralization of the ledger is a lie because big crypto traders control most of the economy * Claiming that you can "just fork" the blockchain to fix programming errors, when in reality (at least with Bitcoin) you need a majority to do that (there are initiatives to chang Bitcoin that have failed, afterall). * Calling an electronic ledger an Excel spreadsheet without any mention of the data integrity benefits. Really at the end of the day, the author claimed to be attacking blockchain but really just ended up attacking cryptocurrencies.

haroldp 8y ago
From a libertarian lens, I find blockchain technically interesting, and see some promise in it's usefulness, but I own zero bitcoins (etc) because the whole cryptocurrency landscape looks immature, treacherous and fraught with peril. Each of your points seems absolutely spot-on. I think readers of any political point of view should be able to spot this as a notably poor article.

maxxxxx 8y ago

Blockchain reminds me a little of the history of the internet but worse . The internet started with good intentions but then in the late 1990s it was all about greed and it took much longer for the value to really show. The main problem with blockchain is that they jumped straight to greed and get-rich-quick schemes before it showed any real world use.

scabarott 8y ago
One thing though, the internet was/is solid technology. Underneath the internet bubble was something that worked. Blockchain is promising technology but without solving the scaling issue it will always be just that.
- tim333 8y ago
  The scaling issue is close to solved - there are a number of rival solutions, time will tell what wins out. There are other issues though such as money laundering regulations.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    So we've been told for the past couple years now. I expect that the problem won't be solved, and instead we'll get a formal proof that you can't build a fully decentralized, trustless system without Proof of Work, at which point I hope Bitcoin & others will get labeled for what they are: crimes against climate and sustainable energy economy.

erikb 8y ago

I technology is not about anything. There are people who try to use it for good of humanity and there are people who try to use it for their personal gains on the cost of others. It's always like this. And if we wouldn't develop technology, they would still use the old ones (e.g. horse riding).

TeMPOraL 8y ago
Technology by definition makes some tasks easier at the expense of making some other tasks more difficult. A spoon will help you eat, but it won't help you play football. A gun will help you project power and kill, but you won't eat soup with it. Similarly, the blockchain is a technology that makes it easier to a) burn through shit ton of electricity, b) propagate scams and get-rich-quick schemes. It doesn't seem to make easier any task that's worth doing and already not better done with another technology.
- erikb 8y ago
  The goal of a spoon is to make soup eatable. The goal of a blockchain is not to burn through a shit ton of electricity. Therefore I'd argue that your points a and b are mostly side effects, and not even side effects of blockchains. If you run high quality computer games on your system you will also burn through a shit ton of electricity. If you go to another unregulated market you also get a lot of scams and get-rich-quick schemes. Blockchains not even necessitate crypto coins, they can live without it. If you for instance like Kafka but don't like that it's centralized, you could run it on a blockchain as well. PS: I'd argue that, depending on the type of gun you use, eating soup with a gun is still easier than eating completely without any tools. And does having a spoon really makes you worse at soccer? I'm not sure the intial thesis holds. A tool can make X easier and not make Y harder.

ruffrey 8y ago

To me, cryptocurrency is about greed to the same extend money or stocks are about greed. There just aren't as many regulations yet.

dumbfoundded 8y ago

It's great how much the potential of cryptocurrency depends on the market cap. The scariest part to me about cryptocurrency is not the greed, lies and manipulation. It's a centralized cryptocurrency by a major government. Imagine if instead of cash, you had to pay for everything with a digital currency controlled by the US Govt. It'd be all the immutability of cryptocurrency with the monetary policy of the Fed Reserve. I'd bet the IRS and NSA would love the additional data.

eaenki 8y ago

I don't really get it. Are the people commenting about how useless and stupid Bitcoin and Ethereum are, really putting themselves above Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz and Peter Thiel's predictions? I mean. At most, you could be skeptical. Thinking that it's a joke when even those kinda guys (First successful browser, first cloud computing, first online payment service) are all-in it's mind blowing. I remember reading the same comments on HF when I was a kid. And even before, about LR. Guess who found (and will find) himself on the wrong side of history?

ballenf 8y ago
It doesn't require comparing one's own intelligence to those guys. One can pick any number of Warren Buffetts who think cryptocurrencies are not good investments. Even though I think Buffett's at least partially wrong on this subject, in a vacuum I'd trust him over all the guys you named combined. But that's just personal preference. (I have no idea what 'HR' or 'LF' are.)
- tomjen3 8y ago
  Buffett has always preferred businesses that he can understand, so on that one alone I can see why he doesn't like crypto. Secondly, I don't think crypto is good as an investment (as opposed to a vehicle for speculation) but I see all sort of opportunities in killing the middle men of banks. No more boom and bust because the fed won't read Hayek; No more having to beg and scrape to be allowed to send a transaction through the archaic inter-bank transfer system; No more inflation forcing people to put savings in riskier and riskier businesses to keep up with the printing; No more dirt poor refugees who have to leave every thing behind; No more hyperinflation because dictators needs to be the sole source of food.
- eaenki 8y ago
  It's HF and LR, not HR and LF, that alone, shows your efforts. LR stands for Liberty Reserve, HF for HackerForum. Buffet didn't create or invest successfully in anything software-related. If you put the opinion of a guy who made his fortune with Coca Cola and Insurance above the ones who made it with tech -when evaluating the future- that's fine. To each their own I guess? You found yourself on the wrong side of history, and sounds like it'll happen again.

b0bby_tabl3s 8y ago

This entire article is one giant dog turd. Not even polished, just a white-crusty-dog-turd. It's evident the 'author' has little true understanding of the underlying block-chain technology other than what would be naysayers (who themselves are mainly white...ಠ_ಠ ) have all regurgitated in their efforts to seem like saviors of the minorities (who CLEARLY can't think or fend for themselves without some do-good white person making the important decisions for them).

iamgopal 8y ago

Is anybody else wonder, how Bitcoin rise to 10000USD+ align with india's demonetisation.

navigatorSL 8y ago

Another racist anti-White article by The Guardian.

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olivermarks 8y ago

I like Roubini despite his arrogance but surely everything to do with currency speculation is about greed? That's essentially what bitcoin is, it has little practical utility in day to day life. The blockchain world - which as others have pointed out isn't short of cliques and boasters - is more like the early days of the internet IMO. Lots of interesting ideas and ways to leverage new technologies and ideas. Lots of terrible ideas, incompetence, corruption and greed, just like the internet circa 2000...and a few ideas that changed the world

nickik 8y ago
Has lots of utility for the people buying drugs.
- sleepybrett 8y ago
  I'm not sure that's true at all.

AnaniasAnanas 8y ago

I find it annoying how people equate blockchain with cryptocurrencies. GIT repos are basically blockchains, yet they have nothing to do with greed nor cryptocurrencies. > But it has also become the byword for a libertarian ideology that treats all governments, central banks, traditional financial institutions, and real-world currencies as evil concentrations of power that must be destroyed Would you blame them for wanting that though? Admittedly most people who moved to cryptocurrencies only care about greed, but is this not simply the side effect of the whole scheme becoming popular? > there are hardly any women or minorities in the blockchain universe I don't know how true or false this is (especially when considering that there are many cryptocoin farms in china and Russia, as well as the likely Japanese ethnicity of the creator of bitcoin), but I fail to see how this is the fault of cryptocurrencies themselves (with the exception that one already needed money in order to invest in the GPUs).

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andrewla 8y ago

It's strange how much vitriol the author spends against "Blockchain" while being dismissive of its technical merits. In short, I agree -- Blockchain is not the end-all and be-all. It's a natural evolution of the idea of git (and its predecessors) of using a one-sided Merkle tree to compactly store an unforgeable chain of information. But let's take the word "blockchain" out of this. Is the claim really, "Cryptocurrencies aren't about democracy and decentralisation -- they're about greed."? I mean, the set of cryptocurrencies isn't a short story, they're not "about" anything. So let's assume that we're talking about cryptocurrency supporters. "All cryptocurrency supporters are not interested in democracy and decentralisation -- they're just greedy". Okay, better, but let's get rid of absolutes. "Many cryptocurrency supporters are not interested in democracy and decentralisation -- they're just greedy". Okay, now I think we have a statement that is likely true, but is so bland as to be meaningless. His testimony to the Senate [1] makes a lot of similar points, but the one that I find most annoying because I don't know how an economist can say it, is the line about bitcoin being deflationary: > That means if a steady- state supply of Bitcoin really did gradually replace a fiat currency, the price index of all goods and services would continuously fall. This statement, along with so many others talking about Bitcoin is exactly equivalent to saying that "Bitcoin will always increase in value". I'm as big a fan of the potential of Bitcoin as the next person, but even I find this to be ridiculous. [1] https://www.banking.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Roubini%20Testimony%2010-11-18.pdf https://www.banking.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Roubini%20Testi...

writepub 8y ago

> A few self-serving white men (there are hardly any women or minorities in the blockchain universe) pretending to be messiahs When I intended to read the article, I was fairly certain identity politics wasn't an axe the author wanted to grind, but he went straight for the jugular!!! China - which is neither white, and comprises a racial minority in the west, has seen the largest wealth creation in this space. So - the author's statement is technically wrong. Unlike the Guardian - where an opinion piece isn't approved unless 'White Men' are blamed, the blockchain holds no opinions - you're free to start a feminist-coin without the editor of the Guardian thought policing your piffle into narratives palatable to the Guardian's target audience

ehrtt 8y ago

> Gini coefficient of 1.0 means that a single person controls 100% of a country’s income/wealth, North Korea scores 0.86, the rather unequal United States scores 0.41 and bitcoin scores an astonishing 0.88. This was a bizarre section, and I wanted to make some points about it: 1) The distribution of bitcoins among individuals is not known, any claim to the contrary is false. If you want to make estimates, include the massive uncertainties. 2) Assets do not have Gini coefficients, groups of people do. The distributions of helicopters or Google stock are also very unequal. If you care about wealth inequality among crypto hodlers you should measure that. Conflating the distribution of an asset with the distribution of wealth seems meant to confuse. 3) When bitcoins had 0 value they were much more unequally distributed than now. People starting to value them is the mechanism by which they get distributed. The process is gradual. The more people value them, the more value they accrue.

dumbfoundded 8y ago
> 1) The distribution of bitcoins among individuals is not known, any claim to the contrary is false. How can this be true? Bitcoin is a public ledger and you see every accounts balance. If anything the publicly available account balances seem like a lower bound for the Gini coefficient as it is very likely people have multiple wallets (especially with large balances) where it's unlikely any group of people shares the same wallet (creating and distributing funds among multiple wallets is more secure and trivial).
- ehrtt 8y ago
  Lots of people (millions) share the same wallets (technically addresses), as they hold coins on exchanges. The richest bitcoin addresses are the cold storage for the exchanges. https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-addresses.html https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-addresses....
  - dumbfoundded 8y ago
    That's a great point.