Topic: Are bitcoiners better people than the current rich? (Read 2454 times)

Hookers aren't immoral at all -.-

What do you mean by 'BETTER', mentally or in the other ways?

I don't think all of them are better but there are a few differences between bitcoiners and bankers

Bankers can .create infinite money with their banking scam and this gives them power to control even governments. Bitcoiners can't do that. Once you're out of bitcoin you have to earn yourself some new ones.

Early bitcoiners are mostly very techie and are not afraid of taking risks.

Bitcoiners mostly want more freedom and equal rights/chances for everyone, unlike bankers who don't even service large parts of the world, and demand high fees for poor people. And worst of all, bankers have their own privileges.

So I'd say the new rich will be better in general, but not everyone will be a nice person.

You seem to assume that value must be if not equal, but at least close to costs. Which is not the case. If a multimillion jet cannot fly it's value may fall 100-fold, to the price of scrap metal. But we can recover original value by replacing a 10-cents fuse.

Our financial system and our whole economy is such non-flying jet. It's very inefficient and wasteful.
And Bitcoin is the 10-cents fuse that can fix the multimillion jet.

It can (partly, at least) fix our economy's inefficiency and thus increase it's total value. The total value of the whole world economy. And the value of bitcoin payment system should be measured by this increase, rather than by costs of creating it.

How can the value grow if amount of "tangible goods, services, resources, and other capital" is not increased?  By more efficient allocation of the same resources. By decreasing waste of this resources. And by faster growth of these resources. If your capital can produce 6% instead of 3%, it's the same as having two capitals for the price of one.

This is the new wealth created by the bitcoin and the major part of this wealth will not be in the hands of early adopters, because worth of all resources is much bigger than amount of all money. Therefore the benefits of bitcoins will be enjoyed by the whole population, rather than by small circle of hodlers. That's exactly why people will switch to bitcoin: because it gives them some value. Every single person that'll switch to bitcoin, will do it because of an extra value that that bitcoin will give to her.

tl;dr; Bitcoin is 10-cents fuse that fixes multimillion jet. It is (mostly) new wealth given to all, rather than old wealth taken by few.

it still depends on the people who own the currency. Because he's the that will evaluate himself to the society, in a good way or bad way.

I disagree. You seem to be conflating currency movements with wealth movements. Currency is just a flexible measure of wealth. Yes, the bitcoin holders will enjoy a comparative purchasing power advantage over the fiat holders. But the amount of actual wealth (e.g. tangible goods, services, resources, and other capital) is not affected by such relative currency movements.

Due to this, your example is an example of wealth transfer, not of wealth creation.

I don't think we need an in-depth analysis to show that the wealth creation due to bitcoin financial services will be dwarfed by the wealth represented by the monetary value of bitcoin. Let me try another route.

The bitcoin financial services are the arteries through which bitcoin monetary value flows. Yes, it takes capital - human and resources - to create these arteries. In the process of this creation, the value of the resulting financial services will -- if intelligently implemented -- exceed the value of the human and resources capital that went into their creation. IOW, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. It is this difference that is the wealth created by the bitcoin financial services. This wealth will be earned and enjoyed by the people that create these services.

But all this is for naught if there is not a much greater pool of bitcoin, that will flow through these arteries.

In any scenario where bitcoin 'succeeds' in any meaningful measure, there will be a much greater number of people who passively use bitcoin -- to store value and/or to use as a medium of exchange -- than the number of people who create the aforementioned arteries. These passive users of bitcoin, should they HODL more than spend in the early days (years), will be the beneficiaries of a great transfer of wealth from fiat holders.

If the bitcoin wealth owned by the passive users does not completely dominate the created wealth of the bitcoin financial services buildout, then the entire system is woefully inefficient. IOW, it has failed spectacularly in its claimed mission to be a money.

I rather think it fail succeed spectacularly. I will harbor no guilt about the fact that I was early to detect the seeming inevitability of this great transfer of wealth.

Your fiat doom scenarios, while instructive, seem to me to be tangential (or maybe I have not yet seen the relevance). These problems are all self-inflicted by the fiat system, which repeatedly confuses an increase in the currency used to measure wealth (ignoring the subsequent devaluation) for an increase in actual wealth.

Apart from bubble crashes and wars we can try to estimate the other component of bitcoin financial services value: regular (in/de)flation.
Fiat inflation is around 3%. What would be bitcoin inflation? After a couple of halvings bitcoin emission will reach 2%pa. But if it replaces fiat, the demand will grow at a rate of world GDP, which is, say 7%. So bitcoin purchasing power will grow at about 5% after following halvings going to 7%. That is instead a dollar that goes down 3% pa, user will have bitcoin that goes up 7% pa. That's 10% pa difference. Which capital gives such profit? For an average person real, inflation adjusted investment is 5%. 10/5=2. That is it's the same as if for each dollar you exchange for bitcoin you would get, as a bonus, two "virtual" dollars that give you 5%pa each.

tl;dr: At the switch from fiat to bitcoin, wealth created will be twice as big as wealth transferred. (And it's just a part of total Bitcoin payment system value).

What is the (future) value of bitcoin financial services? I'm not sure how to measure it, but there must be some ways to estimate it. For example, Austrians believe that  business cycles are caused by current financial system. If true, then value of new financial system should include cost of busts/depressions/stagnations it's preventing.  How much the dotcom crash did cost? How much the Great Depression did cost? And the following (and partly caused by it) WWII?

You seem to imply that the monetary value of Bitcoin will never be much greater than the sum of the value of the financial services of the network. I disagree. In any shoot the moon scenario whatsoever, the monetary value will completely dwarf the financial services value.

The financial services value is indeed a wealth created. However, the monetary value is wealth transferred. Ergo, as the monetary value dwarfs the financials services value, the vast majority of Bitcoin wealth will be wealth sucked away from fiat holders into the pockets of the Bitcoin holders.

If the financial services value of the network dominates, Bitcoin will have failed spectacularly as a money.

Yes, some wealth transfer will happen. But major wealth of bitcoiners will come not from wealth transfer, but from wealth creation. Economy is not a zero-sum game, right? Bitcoin as a payment system is an institution of huge value. This value is being created right now and getting distributed between coinholders. Just like wealth of Google stockholders is result of value creation, rather than wealth transfer.

Is that  what kids these days call hookers now

To me, anything that is purely consensual is moral. OTOH, using the violence of the state to prevent someone from engaging in consensual behavior is clearly immoral.


While I've never paid for sex (at least in monetary, prostitution sort of meaning), I don't find it pathetic. Is it pathetic to pay the staff at the auto oil change place for the professional service they render?

Depend or not you consider destroying your body with harmful substance or engaging in a denigrating and sexist trade "morally  acceptable".But I guess it's really up to you. IMO, I always thought paying for sex is quite pathetic, regardless of the moral debate concerning the purported profession.

No, immoral behavior would be advocating the use of the violence of the state in order to prevent (or punish) purely consensual behaviors.

Well you can't look at all bitcoiners since there are more of them than rich people (the recent list gives you a number).
If you pick out a handful of people here, they are most likely better than most if not all of the current rich people.

I think you would be hard pressed to find anyone who isn't a better person than the current rich.

I don't believe anyone is better than any other person it is all to do with environment and how you are raised with morals etc. Bitcoin focuses itself on exploratory ideas and freedoms.

1.  Poverty predates money.  As far as I can think of, every single society that has ever existed, since there have been what we call societies, have had a small wealthy elite control a much larger, poor\middle class\whatever you want to call it.  It isn't a bitcoin thing, or a fiat thing, or a currency thing in general. 

2.  In order for there to be a wealthy elite, there must be a working poor.  For one thing, if a small, wealthy elite is going to be able to syphon off wealth without producing, that wealth has to come from somewhere else.  But more importantly, if we all have the same amount of wealth, I can't very well pay you to do my work for me now can I? 

3.  Considering that this inevitably happens all over, in every society that has ever existed, I think it is fairly obvious a basic characteristic of humanity itself, and not some condition that only effects a small minority of people. 

The distribution on wealth in the bitcoin economy is even worse than the current fiat problem! Even less than 1% own a massive part of bitcoin.