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Comment by bdcravens | Hacker News Reader

Most Bitcoin users struggle with the basic concept of Bitcoin then. While you can "be your own bank", most coins (no reference, just surmising) are in exchanges rather than wallets owned by the end user. So despite the marketing copy, there's a ton of Bitcoin stored in what are essentially "banks".

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> most coins (no reference, just surmising) are in exchanges rather than wallets owned by the end user.

Are you saying there are 7+ million BTC stored on exchanges? I disagree based on two data points: Bistamp's reserves were 180K in November 2013 and MtGox's were 850K (with 650K of them missing) at the time of its death.

Even if you add BTC-E, Chinese exchanges, Coinbase and LocalBitcoins, it most likely won't exceed 2-3 million which means the remaining 80% is owned by end users directly.

Honestly, I don't know. I'm thinking mostly of "active" coins, not those that haven't moved in years. I personally think that Satoshi's coins will never move.

So even if it's a minority at 20%, that's a pretty substantial number, and I can't imagine why it won't grow. Bitcoin's success depends on mass adoption, and I can't imagine a scenario where Jane Public would rather learn the technical skills to secure a local wallet versus trusting a company like Coinbase or Circle.

Can be your own bank, not "is and always be completely devoid of any kind of banking institute"

America is a free country, but not everyone in America is free (some are in prison, for instance).

Absolutely. I was addressing the idea that Bitcoin is automatically decentralized, which is very much untrue for a significant number (though perhaps I was incorrect in saying "most" - I don't have those numbers, but neither does anyone else it would seem)

most coins (no reference, just surmising) are in exchanges rather than wallets owned by the end user.

Wrong.

And this is why these Bitcoin debates are so annoying and repetitive.

For some reason everyone feels entitled to their little doomsday speech without bothering to research even their most basic premises.

There's a difference between making an educated guess and "have no clue what you are talking about". I first mined in 2011, and have purchased through numerous exchanges since then. An increasing number of users aren't geeks who give a damn about crypto: they want to get into Bitcoin with the easiest on-ramp.

edit: Did you totally change your reply? From the time I started my comment to hitting submit, your comment completely changed.

But to your point, you're presuming I have no clue, that I own no Bitcoin, that I'm not a regular participant in communities like Bitcointalk and /r/bitcoin. You believe there's a world where everyone has paper wallets and Trezors and ASICs. No: the early adopters are becoming a smaller percentage of the Bitcoin world. People are buying via Coinbase and Circle, and if they're really advanced, they sweep to a hosted wallet on Blockchain. Even many miners aren't immediately sweeping their coins, instead, leaving them on the pools. Do you really think it's going the opposite direction, towards less centralization?

There's a difference between making an educated guess and "have no clue what you are talking about"

...

See the comment by qnr.

If you're going to keep changing your comments, please mark them with "edit".

I don't have the numbers, but guess what, you don't either. I'm going on mostly anecdotal evidence: Bitpay's growth, Circle's growth, Coinbase's growth, etc. I may be wrong about "most", but in the face of hard numbers (which many companies like Coinbase don't provide), how could any observation of the community not lean towards a conclusion of increasing centralization?

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