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I don't quite see why the existence of very rich people make a currency unfair, or non-democratized. I don't think the selling points for populists included "..

I don't quite see why the existence of very rich people make a currency unfair, or non-democratized. I don't think the selling points for populists included "...and everyone will have roughly the same amount of money, too!" The best I can think of are the possible governance challenges if the major holders have interests that run counter to those of small spenders, say, when arguing over block size or other structural changes.

PragmaticPulp 6y ago
It's not about the existence of very rich people, it's that wealth is (was) allocated based on luck and being in the right place at the right time to speculate on cryptocurrency. > I don't think the selling points for populists included "...and everyone will have roughly the same amount of money, too!" That wasn't the point at all. It would be one thing if we introduced a cryptocurrency alternative to existing wealth in a 1:1 ratio. However, that's not possible with Bitcoin. The only way to get some Bitcoin is to trade your existing wealth for whatever amount of Bitcoin can be purchased on the open market. That value has changed by literally 30,000X over the course of a few years. Migrating to a Bitcoin economy would be a massive wealth transfer from late adopters to early adopters. We're obviously not going to replace current money with Bitcoin, but if we did it would mint billionaires out of people who invested trivial amounts of money in 2010. However, no new value is created in the process. So where does the billionaire-level wealth of early adopters come from? It comes from late adopters. Moving bit by bit to a Bitcoin economy is a great way to transfer wealth to early adopters and make everyone else pay for it. Bitcoin people won't admit it, but that's a huge part of the draw of Bitcoin speculation and the reason why so many Bitcoin holders are pushing for a Bitcoin economy.
- MockObject 6y ago
  > So where does the billionaire-level wealth of early adopters come from? It comes from late adopters. That's an interesting thought experiment. Suppose we convert to a bitcoin economy today. My bank account gets converted over, and my next paycheck will be in bitcoin. Did I lose any money today?
  - walterbell 6y ago
    If you are bidding for goods and services against an early bitcoin holder, yes.

PragmaticPulp 6y ago

It's not about the existence of very rich people, it's that wealth is (was) allocated based on luck and being in the right place at the right time to speculate on cryptocurrency. > I don't think the selling points for populists included "...and everyone will have roughly the same amount of money, too!" That wasn't the point at all. It would be one thing if we introduced a cryptocurrency alternative to existing wealth in a 1:1 ratio. However, that's not possible with Bitcoin. The only way to get some Bitcoin is to trade your existing wealth for whatever amount of Bitcoin can be purchased on the open market. That value has changed by literally 30,000X over the course of a few years. Migrating to a Bitcoin economy would be a massive wealth transfer from late adopters to early adopters. We're obviously not going to replace current money with Bitcoin, but if we did it would mint billionaires out of people who invested trivial amounts of money in 2010. However, no new value is created in the process. So where does the billionaire-level wealth of early adopters come from? It comes from late adopters. Moving bit by bit to a Bitcoin economy is a great way to transfer wealth to early adopters and make everyone else pay for it. Bitcoin people won't admit it, but that's a huge part of the draw of Bitcoin speculation and the reason why so many Bitcoin holders are pushing for a Bitcoin economy.

MockObject 6y ago
> So where does the billionaire-level wealth of early adopters come from? It comes from late adopters. That's an interesting thought experiment. Suppose we convert to a bitcoin economy today. My bank account gets converted over, and my next paycheck will be in bitcoin. Did I lose any money today?
- walterbell 6y ago
  If you are bidding for goods and services against an early bitcoin holder, yes.