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Personally, I don't find 5% ownership of a currency as a justifiable "deserved" fortune to any one person. That's trillions on the scale of existing currencies.
by just2n 14y ago
Personally, I don't find 5% ownership of a currency as a justifiable "deserved" fortune to any one person. That's trillions on the scale of existing currencies. That's enough to buy a world power.
Is the idea so novel that it can't be re-booted in a manner that has better protection of anonymity and which isn't amenable to being mined for years by just a handful of people (to the point that they own a huge % of all available coins)?
The guy who owns all of the gold mines is more than happy to back gold as a currency, after all.
- jjs 14y agoReboot? Anonymity (and liquidity!) seems more feasible with multiple viable cryptocurrencies coexisting. e.g. using an exchange site (which has legitimate reason to exist), sell Bitcoins for Litecoins, then sell Litecoins for Bitcoins of different provenance.
- Evbn 13y agoMoney laundering. National governments will not tolerate this unregulated. This might work for a little while on Tor, but not on Time Warner internet.
- Devilboy 14y agoTrillions? I think you're being just a little over optimistic about the future of bitcoin here.
- DennisP 14y agoTotal dollar M0 is about $1 trillion (as of 2009), so if Bitcoin were to match it then 5% would be a Bill Gates-level fortune. MO seems the appropriate measure since it's the hard currency, without the multipliers of fractional reserve. M2 is around $10 trillion.
- runeks 13y agoIf you consider PayPal or a bank transfer as valid payment (and I suspect you do), then M0 is not an accurate representation of money supply. M2 or M3 would be more accurate, as most payments and deposits are electronic these days.
- DennisP 13y agoI agree but I'm thinking more in terms of what share Satoshi (or whoever) would end up with. If Bitcoin were to reach the dollar's market value, it seems to me there's a good chance that we'd still have fractional-reserve banking, so the extra $9 trillion would be made from bitcoin-denominated loans instead of being actual bitcoins. In that case Satoshi would still have $50 billion. But maybe we'll go down a different path. Maybe an economy based on equity instead of debt, backed by colored coins. Then Satoshi becomes the richest human in history, if he hasn't diversified before then. (Or maybe another cryptocurrency takes over and Bitcoin goes back to ten cents a coin, who knows.)
- rayiner 13y agoWelcome to the endemic problem of deflationary currencies! People get undue credit just for being there first.
- gyom 13y agoYou could say the same thing about land or real estate in big cities.
- rayiner 13y agoYes you can! Consider Manhattan: young people cannot today afford the same kind of house in the city that their parents could afford doing the exact same job at the same age. Their standard of living is lower (either living in the city and living in a much smaller place, or commuting in from outside the city) than their parents, in the area of housing, simply by virtue of the fact that their parents go there first. Imagine extrapolating the injustices of the NYC housing market to the whole economy...
- crusso 13y ago* People get undue credit just for being there first* simply by virtue of the fact that their parents go there first Lots of parents didn't choose to go there at all. Some parents chose to buy residences in better parts of Manhattan, some in worse. Some chose better buildings, some chose worse. Some parents took out big loans betting on their future to own real estate, some preferred to spend that money on vacations. In your mind, what investments that appreciate over time are not "undue credit"? Do you have a certain amount of gain that we can all know is fair, deserved, or not lucky?
- rayiner 13y ago> In your mind, what investments that appreciate over time are not "undue credit"? Do you have a certain amount of gain that we can all know is fair, deserved, or not lucky? Investments generally appreciate over time because they create increased value. If your Apple stock goes up, it's because Apple is making more money each year. That's due credit. Investments that appreciate simply by virtue of fixed supply result in undue credit to older generations.
- stfu 13y ago* justifiable "deserved" fortune to any one person* Very disappointing to see those kind of entitlement discussions around here. Who are you to tell others what they deserve? If he/she/it founded a project that is so solid, so engaging, so successful, h/s/i absolutely deserves whatever others are willing to pay.
- Evbn 13y agoAnd deserved just as much if then majority of miners decide to void the first million bitcoins. That would be a beautiful anarchocapitalism.