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