6 ms·

I wouldn't call the coin distribution fair if the creators can allocate arbitrary amounts to themselves, which the Worldcoin creators appear able to do. Then a

by tromp 5y ago

I wouldn't call the coin distribution fair if the creators can allocate arbitrary amounts to themselves, which the Worldcoin creators appear able to do. Then again, even PoW coins with no premine can be unfair if most of the long-term supply gets distributed in just the first few years, leaving only crumbs for late adopters.

EMM_386 5y ago
> I wouldn't call the coin distribution fair if the creators can allocate arbitrary amounts to themselves, which the Worldcoin creators appear able to do. I'm certainly not defending any of this … however, it should be noted that "creators can allocate arbitrary amounts to themselves" is a typical thing even in regulated markets. Notice how Trump's new social media became a public company through a SPAC? The man behind that move has two degrees from MIT. If you want to go down that rabbit hole, go for it. But people become very wealthy, very fast, via allocating "arbitrary amounts to themselves" even in regulated markets. Financial shenanigans. If you haven't heard of the $100 million deli in New Jersey, feel free to Google that one.
- djbusby 5y ago
  This one: https://www.complex.com/life/new-jersey-deli-valued-at-100-million-is-shell-company https://www.complex.com/life/new-jersey-deli-valued-at-100-m...
  - EMM_386 5y ago
    That's the one. Why I'm at -1 at the moment for that comment is beyond me. It could be because I am commenting on a site where VCs play similar games. I only deal with facts.
gruez 5y ago
>Then again, even PoW coins with no premine can be unfair [...] It's "fair" if you're referring to equal opportunity, not equal outcomes.
- mempko 5y ago
  It's not even fair in opportunity since not everyone starts from the same place. For example, It's based on your already existing resources (computing power).
  - fleddr 5y ago
    Computing power, or capital to buy the coins. But I don't think this level of "fairness" is productive to discuss. Every human being on the planet having the exact same amount of wealth is an impossibility.
    - groby_b 5y ago
      I'll buy "undesirable", for the sake of the argument. But I'm really not clear why you think it is "impossible". We have had repeated instances throughout history of groups of people practicing common ownership, and they do seem to work reasonably well. (I completely grant they aren't super-popular, but, again, I'm not advocating change, I'm trying to understand why you think this qualifies as "impossible") What do you think prevents this on a planet-level scale?
      - throw10920 5y ago
        > We have had repeated instances throughout history of groups of people practicing common ownership We also have repeated instances throughout history of groups claiming to try to implement common ownership, and instead killing millions and installing tyrannical governments (see: most communist revolutions), of consistently larger scale (orders of magnitude) than the successes. Historically, it's far more probable that such a common ownership experiment will result in death and tyranny (and not actual common ownership!) than a success - and, given the relative difference in scale between the successes and failures, there's a strong argument to be made that as the scale goes up, the probability of tyranny goes up. This is one of the justifications for it being impossible in a practical sense (yeah, it's annoying that there's more than one definition for "impossible"). It's a fact that power attracts corruption, and it's also a fact that planet-level-scale common ownership would require more power to implement than any government has achieved so far. So, while not "impossible" in the hard-science sense, it's improbable (with a correspondingly large chance of a catastrophically bad alternative) to the point that it's not reasonable to attempt. That said, your comment is a measured and thoughtful answer to a potentially-inflammatory topic, and I hope that my response is equally thoughtful.
wyager 5y ago
> even PoW coins with no premine can be unfair if most of the long-term supply get distributed in just the few years The number of early adopters with “diamond hands”, as they say, who resisted the temptation to sell at $2, $10, $100, … is vanishingly small. History is littered with early adopters who bailed out. Everyone has had years of opportunity to buy into Bitcoin at a fraction of its current value, and if the gamble pays off then people can currently buy Bitcoin at a fraction of its presumptive future value. There’s no unfairness here. Everyone has had equal access the entire time, and Bitcoin people have been doing their best to get as many people onboarded as possible so they’re not left with “crumbs” after a monetary transition. Of course, it’s not totally unreasonable to have believed that Bitcoin wasn’t going to work out, but in that case people have no grounds to complain about unfairness - they simply made a wrong choice (by current appearances).
- shkkmo 5y ago
  > Everyone has had years of opportunity to buy into Bitcoin at a fraction of its current value Making money by buying and selling bitcoin is zero sum. People are only making money because other people are losing out. There is no possible way that everyone buys bitcoins and gets rich from it. Bitcoins depends on the existence of rubes and the continual expansion of the pyramid to make money for "investors".
  - wyager 5y ago
    This is a very common misunderstanding of how monetization works. The actual value of Bitcoin comes from demonetizing other currently monetary assets (dollars, gold, real estate, etc.), plus some additional (partially externalized) value from increased efficiency as a monetary mechanism. People who are long those assets and not adequately hedged with Bitcoin are losing money to people who are long Bitcoin (assuming Bitcoin people are correct and it works out).
    - arcticbull 5y ago
      Well it dramatically decreases the efficiency of the monetary system (requiring 60 days of electricity and 1 iPad of e-waste to scribble a few bytes into the ledger every 10 minutes), and only one of the other assets you pointed out create value, the others are unproductive. Real estate is not a monetary asset, it's a productive asset - because people need a place to live and you can either live in a house yourself or you can rent it to others. This demand doesn't go away through the introduction of Bitcoin. Gold is a commodity, not a monetary asset. While a large amount of its value is attributable to speculation it has myriad industrial uses, and jewelry use. Some of this demand may go away as there's a large overlap between goldbuggery and bitcoin maxis. Dollars have no intrinsic value, but instead their value is derived from demand which is created for them when they enter circulation. They're created via fractional reserve lending meaning that when a loan is issued, new dollars are created but also a debt is recorded - creating demand for those same dollars. That means dollars are 100% backed by demand for those dollars. This demand doesn't go away through the introduction of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is nothing. It has no intrinsic value, it has no demand, it's simply a speculative number-go-up machine. It's not money, that's for sure. You could try and use it as money but that would be an utter disaster from a macroeconomic perspective. So yeah, parent is right, its roughly a pyramid shaped MLM with a negative-sum component - the $60,000,000 per day you have to pay to miners to keep the music playing. [edit] Also note that gold and real estate are not classically defined as "monetary assets" - those are for instance cash, bank deposits, investments in debt capital markets and lease investments. Monetary assets need to have a prescribed value in exact dollar terms.

by tromp 5y ago

EMM_386 5y ago

> I wouldn't call the coin distribution fair if the creators can allocate arbitrary amounts to themselves, which the Worldcoin creators appear able to do. I'm certainly not defending any of this … however, it should be noted that "creators can allocate arbitrary amounts to themselves" is a typical thing even in regulated markets. Notice how Trump's new social media became a public company through a SPAC? The man behind that move has two degrees from MIT. If you want to go down that rabbit hole, go for it. But people become very wealthy, very fast, via allocating "arbitrary amounts to themselves" even in regulated markets. Financial shenanigans. If you haven't heard of the $100 million deli in New Jersey, feel free to Google that one.

djbusby 5y ago
This one: https://www.complex.com/life/new-jersey-deli-valued-at-100-million-is-shell-company https://www.complex.com/life/new-jersey-deli-valued-at-100-m...
- EMM_386 5y ago
  That's the one. Why I'm at -1 at the moment for that comment is beyond me. It could be because I am commenting on a site where VCs play similar games. I only deal with facts.

gruez 5y ago

>Then again, even PoW coins with no premine can be unfair [...] It's "fair" if you're referring to equal opportunity, not equal outcomes.

mempko 5y ago
It's not even fair in opportunity since not everyone starts from the same place. For example, It's based on your already existing resources (computing power).
- fleddr 5y ago
  Computing power, or capital to buy the coins. But I don't think this level of "fairness" is productive to discuss. Every human being on the planet having the exact same amount of wealth is an impossibility.
  - groby_b 5y ago
    I'll buy "undesirable", for the sake of the argument. But I'm really not clear why you think it is "impossible". We have had repeated instances throughout history of groups of people practicing common ownership, and they do seem to work reasonably well. (I completely grant they aren't super-popular, but, again, I'm not advocating change, I'm trying to understand why you think this qualifies as "impossible") What do you think prevents this on a planet-level scale?
    - throw10920 5y ago
      > We have had repeated instances throughout history of groups of people practicing common ownership We also have repeated instances throughout history of groups claiming to try to implement common ownership, and instead killing millions and installing tyrannical governments (see: most communist revolutions), of consistently larger scale (orders of magnitude) than the successes. Historically, it's far more probable that such a common ownership experiment will result in death and tyranny (and not actual common ownership!) than a success - and, given the relative difference in scale between the successes and failures, there's a strong argument to be made that as the scale goes up, the probability of tyranny goes up. This is one of the justifications for it being impossible in a practical sense (yeah, it's annoying that there's more than one definition for "impossible"). It's a fact that power attracts corruption, and it's also a fact that planet-level-scale common ownership would require more power to implement than any government has achieved so far. So, while not "impossible" in the hard-science sense, it's improbable (with a correspondingly large chance of a catastrophically bad alternative) to the point that it's not reasonable to attempt. That said, your comment is a measured and thoughtful answer to a potentially-inflammatory topic, and I hope that my response is equally thoughtful.

wyager 5y ago

> even PoW coins with no premine can be unfair if most of the long-term supply get distributed in just the few years The number of early adopters with “diamond hands”, as they say, who resisted the temptation to sell at $2, $10, $100, … is vanishingly small. History is littered with early adopters who bailed out. Everyone has had years of opportunity to buy into Bitcoin at a fraction of its current value, and if the gamble pays off then people can currently buy Bitcoin at a fraction of its presumptive future value. There’s no unfairness here. Everyone has had equal access the entire time, and Bitcoin people have been doing their best to get as many people onboarded as possible so they’re not left with “crumbs” after a monetary transition. Of course, it’s not totally unreasonable to have believed that Bitcoin wasn’t going to work out, but in that case people have no grounds to complain about unfairness - they simply made a wrong choice (by current appearances).

shkkmo 5y ago
> Everyone has had years of opportunity to buy into Bitcoin at a fraction of its current value Making money by buying and selling bitcoin is zero sum. People are only making money because other people are losing out. There is no possible way that everyone buys bitcoins and gets rich from it. Bitcoins depends on the existence of rubes and the continual expansion of the pyramid to make money for "investors".
- wyager 5y ago
  This is a very common misunderstanding of how monetization works. The actual value of Bitcoin comes from demonetizing other currently monetary assets (dollars, gold, real estate, etc.), plus some additional (partially externalized) value from increased efficiency as a monetary mechanism. People who are long those assets and not adequately hedged with Bitcoin are losing money to people who are long Bitcoin (assuming Bitcoin people are correct and it works out).
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    Well it dramatically decreases the efficiency of the monetary system (requiring 60 days of electricity and 1 iPad of e-waste to scribble a few bytes into the ledger every 10 minutes), and only one of the other assets you pointed out create value, the others are unproductive. Real estate is not a monetary asset, it's a productive asset - because people need a place to live and you can either live in a house yourself or you can rent it to others. This demand doesn't go away through the introduction of Bitcoin. Gold is a commodity, not a monetary asset. While a large amount of its value is attributable to speculation it has myriad industrial uses, and jewelry use. Some of this demand may go away as there's a large overlap between goldbuggery and bitcoin maxis. Dollars have no intrinsic value, but instead their value is derived from demand which is created for them when they enter circulation. They're created via fractional reserve lending meaning that when a loan is issued, new dollars are created but also a debt is recorded - creating demand for those same dollars. That means dollars are 100% backed by demand for those dollars. This demand doesn't go away through the introduction of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is nothing. It has no intrinsic value, it has no demand, it's simply a speculative number-go-up machine. It's not money, that's for sure. You could try and use it as money but that would be an utter disaster from a macroeconomic perspective. So yeah, parent is right, its roughly a pyramid shaped MLM with a negative-sum component - the $60,000,000 per day you have to pay to miners to keep the music playing. [edit] Also note that gold and real estate are not classically defined as "monetary assets" - those are for instance cash, bank deposits, investments in debt capital markets and lease investments. Monetary assets need to have a prescribed value in exact dollar terms.