Hacker News Reader

Comment by once_inc | Hacker News Reader

Bitcoin having an unfair wealth distribution isn't a problem beyond just that; early adopters were heavily subsidised for the risk they were taking. Unlike under a Fiat standard, that uneven distribution doesn't benefit them beyond having many Bitcoin; they can't use those Bitcoin to create more Bitcoin, increasing the gorge between rich and poor.

Even the most hard-core hodler from the 2010 era will eventually start spending his/her coins, at which point the distribution evens out. Also; many of the coins from that era are lost because the keys are lost.

View on HN

> early adopters were heavily subsidised for the risk they were taking

This is amusing. I mined eight bitcoins in the very, very early days using my standard off-the-shelf windows PC with no GPU. It was agonizingly slow, but it worked just fine. There was zero risk. It was a fun thing to do, silly even, which is why I didn't even bother backing up the disk those BTC were on, so I'm in the keys-are-lost category.

But risk? Each BTC was worth pennies, where was the risk?

It could have died out, and the volatility was extreme in those times.

The risk varies with how much you invest. If you invest sensibly, then the risk is low. If you buy on leverage, you end up bankrupt.

It doesn't even have to die out in order to ruin you. As you mentioned, you can go bankrupt from insolvency. You don't even have to directly use leveraged trading to purchase the Bitcoin to get bit by this. It just has to become a too-large proportion of your assets on your balance sheet, and the space it occupies feeling comfortable enough that you can take out as many loans as you want for other things you need.

"Because no way am I killing my golden goose, but I might as well enjoy life"

(PSA: Pay off your loans when you can, it may occasionally look like this bull run can never end. It will always end!)

Man, even considering the current downturn, that is a lot of money (roughly $150,000 at the time of writing).

> Unlike under a Fiat standard, that uneven distribution doesn't benefit them beyond having many Bitcoin; they can't use those Bitcoin to create more Bitcoin, increasing the gorge between rich and poor.

Yes, they can.

If anyone wants to use Bitcoin in transactions, since there is a finite supply of it, they have to go to someone who already has it. That person can be willing to lend them some, but will probably will ask for interest. So the rich Bitcoiner will get their original pile back and some extra.

This is similar to the gold-based economy (and monetary Gold Standard): they who have the gold make the rules. If someone doesn't want you participating in the economy, they can restrict your access to currency since they own so much of it.

Having a fixed/finite amount of money in an economy is a bug, not a feature:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Bullion_Famine

If someone doesn't want me to participate in the Bitcoin economy, he won't sell me bitcoins. But he doesn't consist the entire economy.

Similar to gold, it's always possible to acquire some, if you're living in a nation that is free market friendly.

You can’t make dollars from dollars in any way that you cannot also do with BTC.

Perhaps you should check out the Cantillion effect, and research fractional reserve banking. Both are clear financial systems that greatly benefit the extremely rich.

Is the point you are trying to make that neither of those apply to cryotocurrencies? Because that is not true as the history of hard fork and failed exchanges demonstrates.

Which hard forks have disadvantaged the poor? One that pops to mind is Ethereum's expensive staking requirement, but Bitcoin is apparently more in touch with the community.

Which exchange failures have disadvantaged the poor?

Well, the new change in ethereum fixed that "problem"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com