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Comment by jorgem | Hacker News Reader

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jorgem

>> the less single individuals can influence or manipulate the price

972 people control half of all bitcoins, right now.

What makes you think things will get better?

source: http://www.businessinsider.com/927-people-own-half-of-the-bi...

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927 people controlling 50% of all BitCoins is better than it was at the beginning, with 1 person controlling 100% of all BitCoins. So it already has gotten better. I see no reason to believe that BitCoins won't diffuse further, given the recent growth of the network and trading volume.

I'd say that's on par or better than most corporations...

So? Corporations aren't pitching their stock as a currency. A currency isn't something that's meant to be hoarded by a few people. That causes deflation and deflationary currencies are poisonous to the economies because they discourage spending.

How many people do you think are spending their coins vs how many are holding them hoping they will be worth more?

At least more people are buying coins, and more and more merchants are accepting bitcoins. This is going to be a very long and gradual process to critical mass where it then becomes a viable currency. Right now it's a speculative investment. Perhaps that is a viable route towards becoming a currency, who knows. This is Darwinian and no one can predict what will happen and no one can know how it "should" happen. All we know right now is "something is happening" and you're either on board or you're on the sidelines watching.

In my opinion the word "currency" is about as stupid as that thing in your pocket people still keep calling a "phone". It's best approximated legacy words we have to express ideas about something which it doesn't entirely fit. More interesting, for me, is a comment I read on HN a few days back where someone said "I could be carrying a million dollars on this thumb drive and no one would even know.", a distributed ledger, the script language in the bitcoin protocol, etc. these things transcend the word "currency" as we ordinarily use it.

I like your phone analogy, it rings true

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