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> About 95% of Bitcoin is controlled by just 2.4% of the accounts Bitcoin doesn't have accounts. It was txouts, which have addresses attached. AFAICT they're c
by petertodd 6y ago
> About 95% of Bitcoin is controlled by just 2.4% of the accounts
Bitcoin doesn't have accounts. It was txouts, which have addresses attached. AFAICT they're counting this by address, which is silly: most wallets use each address once. So in practice, this means an average person who uses Bitcoin regularly will have lots of small value txouts as coins get split up. There is no reliable way to associate addresses to individual people.
On top of that, there have been spam attacks in the past that created large numbers of very small value txouts.
- runako 6y ago> There is no reliable way to associate addresses to individual people. That may be true in general, however in the US there are several large companies that manage Bitcoin wallets for consumers that are public or trying to get public. So the US regulators will likely have been able to get aggregate statistics like this for some time. The more nexus crypto has with the traditional regulated finance system, the more ability of regulators to get opaque data from the network.
- sennight 6y agoThey've been scrounging for a long time now, but have had little to show for it. Years ago I'd arbitrage between a handful of exchanges, keeping fiat only on those where I'd have a chance of legal recourse - and the bitcoin only showed up just in time to execute the order. So over the years a bunch of those exchanges have gotten popped by hackers, which means those transaction histories got sold on the carding forums. Interestingly enough, the only impact that had on me was a few Wall Street outfits reaching out to buy large blocks off-exchange. How'd they get my number, ya think?