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Comment by losteric | Hacker News Reader

Why bitcoin instead of doge or any of the other digital golds?

Network effect, first-mover advantage, and fair launch that did not pre-mine coins for insiders. It's the only "pure" one because it was first and honest.

Satoshi ninja-mined in the beginning for themselves. If they had posted about Bitcoin further in advance and had many more people mining, that would’ve been different.

Satoshi embedded the day's newspaper headline in the genesis block, as proof that he did not ninja-mine in the beginning for himself.

There were only few others mining, so they mined many blocks for themselves through information asymmetry.

Would’ve been different if there were way more miners from the beginning

Every human endeavor since the beginning of history has had some form of information asymmetry. Not everyone can be lucky enough to buy AAPL in 2001 or BTC in 2009. Apple management and Satoshi both announced what they were doing publicly to anyone who would listen, but not everyone was listening. Unless you can conjure up a method to deliver every piece of information globally to everyone on earth instantaneously, you'll just have to accept that as a fact of life. It's not bitcoin's problem to solve. Complaining on the internet about how life is unfair certainly won't solve it.

>Satoshi ninja-mined in the beginning for themselves

completely and provably false

There might’ve been only 2-4 others mining so yeah, they mined for themselves through information asymmetry

Doge has unlimited supply, so there is an infinite amount of Doge.

Investing into something which has an infinite amount that will get created for free by the system (and therefore reduce the value of your investment) ?

Because more people have confidence in Bitcoin than the other digital golds because it has been in the news the most over the years.

Also, the price won't be as volatile as the other coins (even though it is much more volatile than dollars) because if someone decides to sell $50 million worth of Bitcoin, the price barely budges because $50 million is such a small fraction of the $2.2 trillion worth of Bitcoin in existence.

The price will move (down) until the sell is fulfilled - if there are not $50MM worth of buyers at that price point then the price will drop until buyers are found.

The 'market cap' of Bitcoin is irrelevant here, only the price sensitivity of buyers. Given there is no underlying income stream from bitcoin, there is no real floor. If nobody wants to buy it, a 50MM sell will go to zero pretty quick.

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