Hacker News Reader

Comment by bogomipz | Hacker News Reader

>"The reason fiat money works is because at the end of the day if you run into trouble you have the legal system to make things right. And if the perpetrator of the crime doesn't listen to the legal system, there are people with guns/violence to back that up. That's why the whole system works -- because of the threat of violence."

How many people were prosecuted for the 2008 financial crisis though? Neither did the "threat of violence" nor the legal system prevent or even deter those perpetrators.

View on HN

Exactly. The people who benefit the most from the current system are the already rich, who can afford to the legal fees and come up with creative defenses.

Crypto also benefits the rich (like everything), but not as disproportionately as the current legal system.

This debate reminds me of the nature vs nurture debate in biology. It's a mirage. In reality, it's nature via nurture. Similarly, there is no inherent divide between government and crypto. One can extend the other.

> Crypto also benefits the rich (like everything), but not as disproportionately as the current legal system.

Are you sure? The WSJ says that 0.01% of all holders control 27% of Bitcoin, vs. the top 1% of households who control about a third of all U.S. wealth.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoins-one-percent-controls-l...

You're missing the point. The point is that the poorest Bitcoin wallet is as secure as the richest wallet.

Whereas in legal-land, the more money you have, the better your lawyers (and whatnot) you can hire.

> The point is that the poorest Bitcoin wallet is as secure as the richest wallet.

I stand by my point that crypto disproportionately benefits the rich far more than fiat.

In my view that extends to wallet management, since the rich have security staff dedicated to keeping their Bitcoin secure.

You don’t need a security staff to keep a bitcoin wallet secure, that is a very odd comment.

Cryptocurrencies are not about making poor people rich and rich people poor. It is about having the a ability to do frictionless, uncensorable financial transactions among many other things.

> You don’t need a security staff to keep a bitcoin wallet secure, that is a very odd comment.

The "Bitcoin rich" are vaulting their BTC in tens or hundreds of wallets, mostly cold (hardware and paper), and those have to be managed, backed up, and secured.

> Cryptocurrencies are not about making poor people rich and rich people poor.

Agreed, crypto culture leans to wealth redistribution from suckers to grifters.

That article (from the URL) appears to be about Bitcoin, not "crypto"

And the distribution of Bitcoin might be skewed because one of the largest holders (Satoshi) is possibly dead, and many others would be custodial addresses (centralized exchange addresses, and large funds like microstrategy).

Furthermore, many of the addresses being considered would be inactive addresses by people who have moved on to new addresses. In that case, you have many addreses with "dust" balances which are not claimed by anyone, perhaps as much of 80% of addresses which have ever been used. I have gone through at least 6 such addresses myself, and I no longer use the Bitcoin network (or have funds on it)

It's a lot different than the dataset used for considering wealth distribution among a known population number, whose monetary declarations are necessarily exposed to a government which can publicize this kind of data in a more accurate way.

That's trading "some people being protected better" to "nobody is protected"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com