Why was Bitcoin designed in such a way that the rewards from mining decrease over time?
The current system is designed to give a lot to very few in the beginning
and then continue to give less and less rewards as the network grows.
After N years, who makes up the backbone of the network? The first few (assuming they didn't cash out)? Or the thousands or millions of new miners? That's a rhetorical question by the way.
A system in which the reward increases over time (relative) could still be designed in such a way to benefit the early adopters and at the same time spread the wealth among more users (I don't have a specific proposal off the top of my head before someone asks). But maybe such concept was beyond the brilliant mind of Satoshi.
Bitcoins aren't "given" to anyone. Ask any bitcoin miner, and they will tell you that it takes a lot of time, effort, and money to earn just a tiny share of the block reward. It has been that way since the beginning. No miners have gotten rich from mining, and they never will.
The people that have gotten rich are the people that have accumulated bitcoins regardless of whether they mined them, traded for them, or earned them. What you are really complaining about is the fact that some people risked their time and money on Bitcoin, and that they have been rewarded for that risk.
No, I'm not talking about the people who accumulated bitcoins by trading or earning them. I'm talking about rewards from solving blocks. And my point was... it didn't take much time or effort or money to mine blocks # 1, 2, 3...
Yes, NOW it takes a lot of time, effort, and money to mine a small amount a of bitcoin.
So looking at historical data up to this point, one could say, in essence, that the system was setup to:
A) give big rewards for putting minimal time, effort, money into mining
B) give small rewards for putting a lot of time, effort, money into mining
as time went on. Why was time chosen to be a variable?
