The large holders will eventually spend their coins (houses, cars, food, entertainment) or loose them etc. This your opportunity to get more bitcoins by providing something of value to the world.
Don't get bogged down with envy and wishing for wealth redistribution (we all know what the welfare state gets us by observing our current experience). With bitcoin there is nobody with a gun or a club standing over the net producers and forcing them to give to the net consumers.
Did early adopters get alot of coins? Yes, sometimes they did. And they took the risks, made the efforts before anyone really knew it would take off. You could have done so too, but you didn't.
If you want more bitcoin, don't go home crying to your momma...
Go out and get some using your own energies! Invent, create - This makes the world a better place.
Topic: Distribution of bitcoin wealth by owner - page 32. (Read 153396 times)
I think if Bitcoin is to become what some hope will be some sort of new paradigm the transition away from the old understanding of legal ownership of money must occur. All current legal money ownership implies an authorization from the government for you to own it. That's the definition of legal ownership. But that also must mean you don't really own it and only own it by permission from said government. You can't really be free if your freedom is permitted by government. Bitcoin exposes the true reality that governments attempt to obfuscate with fiat laws in that he who controls it owns it much like any fiat in your pocket isn't owned by you since you don't really control it. It is much the same as real estate which comes from the word "real" as in "royal" permission to occupy said land. Your ownership comes with a slip of paper authorizing you to own it by the government so who really owns it and who's just visiting? In bitcoin the reality is brought forward. There is no need to allow or even bother to define ownership since the natural world doesn't function that way anyways. You control it and it needs nothing more.
Just having the key does not count if the coins are not yours.)
If you have the key, the coins are yours aren't they? I think this will lead to some exciting court cases in the future
Anyway: Is the consensus now that only 1150 individuals own >1k BTC? (I'm not one of them btw
). This seems quite low to me. If this is true the Bitcoins holdings are already much less centralized than I suspected. 
But it will not be credited to FBI before they own it. (I decided to employ the rule-of-the-law principle in accounting. Just having the key does not count if the coins are not yours.)
Of course you do, otherwise (assuming it's true you never "had a bitcoin wallet" and therefore don't hold any keys yourself), you wouldn't own any bitcoins
.One a side-note: it has been argued (I don't recall by who) that it's at least challenging to even be able to "own" bitcoins in a legal sense, since they're just ledger entries. In the end the crucial part is who has control over the spending of the coins (access to the key)? Should push come to shove, some notion of "ownership" expressed within some legal framework might provide less leverage than actually knowing the key and being able to move the money.
I wonder how the FBI controls access to the key to that one address they moved the DPR funds to. Did they subcontract some bitcoin-savvy lawyer-dude to or give that job to inhouse IT? Did they develop a process for this? How are they managing access to the key?
I also wonder why the put the whole stash into one address.
Anyway, not to nitpik: I think using rule-of-law-principle for ownership is applicable here.
Also, rpietila: I tremendously enjoy the results of the extremely productive state you seem to currently be in. Thanks for all your thought, it's pretty substantial!
How do you know which several addresses a person has?
The methodology is dissected in the thread: number and size of addresses is not any part of the model itself, but it was used along other metrics in the estimation of parameters.
How do you know which several addresses a person has?
The fbi is near the top now after getting 144k more from dpr.
Yeah, this is something like 4th largest known stash (after Satoshi, DPR's remaining coins, and MagicalTux).
But it will not be credited to FBI before they own it. (I decided to employ the rule-of-the-law principle in accounting. Just having the key does not count if the coins are not yours.)
Now since we have the numbers, it is time to discuss the implications.
I am quite stoic myself. Bitcoin distribution is a product of a free market process built on top of a carefully thought-out mining model. For years already it has been possible to buy bitcoins in the exchanges as well as sell them, and (to some degree) to exchange them for goods and services. What results from individual liberty and free market is, by definition, good and right. (If it wasn't, the discontented one could buy or sell to adjust his balance.)
I have never mined any coins, or even had a bitcoin client. Still I am among the larger holders, even this is possible. Someone else may have mined 100,000 bitcoins and sold them all when the price went up 400x (to $1/BTC). Can't really blame him, many would do the same.
Large holders are important as power centers that can provide jobs and credit, promote culture, act as spokespeople, innovate, organize and take risks. When private equity is not allowed to be concentrated, poverty will result in many levels.
What we need now is that an increasing number of the large holders step up and increase their efforts in bitcoin real economy, and cooperation between each other.
I am quite stoic myself. Bitcoin distribution is a product of a free market process built on top of a carefully thought-out mining model. For years already it has been possible to buy bitcoins in the exchanges as well as sell them, and (to some degree) to exchange them for goods and services. What results from individual liberty and free market is, by definition, good and right. (If it wasn't, the discontented one could buy or sell to adjust his balance.)
I have never mined any coins, or even had a bitcoin client. Still I am among the larger holders, even this is possible. Someone else may have mined 100,000 bitcoins and sold them all when the price went up 400x (to $1/BTC). Can't really blame him, many would do the same.
Large holders are important as power centers that can provide jobs and credit, promote culture, act as spokespeople, innovate, organize and take risks. When private equity is not allowed to be concentrated, poverty will result in many levels.
What we need now is that an increasing number of the large holders step up and increase their efforts in bitcoin real economy, and cooperation between each other.
It really does not matter if a few people are hoarding large amounts of bitcoin.
What is more important is commerce.
If someone only ever has 1 bitcoin in his wallet, but has bought clothes, jewelry and music online with bitcoin, and bitcoin flows in and out of his wallet, that is what is more important.
Bitcoin is not just a way to speculate and store wealth, but really is a medium of international, borderless exchange.
What is more important is commerce.
If someone only ever has 1 bitcoin in his wallet, but has bought clothes, jewelry and music online with bitcoin, and bitcoin flows in and out of his wallet, that is what is more important.
Bitcoin is not just a way to speculate and store wealth, but really is a medium of international, borderless exchange.
sr. member
Activity: 294
Merit: 250
This bull will try to shake you off. Hold tight!
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That is completely unnatural ...
This quote about is the core of every issue I disagree with libertarians.
What's natural? Be naked, living in caves, dying with 45, loosing you teeth with 30, rape innocent women, killing your neighbour, eating raw meat, being in a state of allday war ...
Being natural has in no way any value. The opposite. Everything we call civilization is a product of human genius to overcome things that are natural.
I just think it would be better, if the coins are distributed more equal. Too much money in one hand is dead money. It destroys the ability of money to build wealth in the same degree as the equalification of the state.
If this is fair or not, is another story. It depends if you define "fairness" by mechanism or outcome.
It is natural in the same sense that any random sample of numerical data has about 30% of numbers having 1 as the most significant digit.
This can be used to reveal fake/colluded transactions, if the launderer uses another distribution (such as all numbers are equal).
Number of bitcoins a person has is not a stable quantity, rather it is a product of a dynamic economic process, a sum of all the choices that an individual has made concerning money. Even the governments have not found a way to increase someone's wealth, yet preserve his right to squander it.
Even dead money contributes to the economy in several ways, for example I derive great pleasure from the knowledge that Satoshi owns the largest stash, yet even that is only 5% of the total. This gives me confidence to purchase more myself. There are other matters such as autoregulation of the rate of interest etc. that can be researched from the gold standard era and applied here after fiat loses its grip.
If bitcoins would be distributed equally to all, it would not take long to reach the optimal distribution. The beauty in the current model is that the optimal distribution can be reached in concert with the process that proves that Bitcoin is money and ripple is not.
rpietila, thanks for your great piece about gold/silver.
might be off-topic here, but still, found this on /r/bitcoin:
might be off-topic here, but still, found this on /r/bitcoin:
Quote from: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1p7ks4/us_government_is_now_one_of_the_top_70_holders_of/
As of October 4, 2013, the US Government was one of the top 500 holders of Bitcoin in the world. See:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1nr36r/us_government_is_now_of_the_top_500_holders_of/
With today's seizure (discussed here: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1p7cl7/fbi_says_its_seized_285_million_in_bitcoins_from/), we can update the math and conclude that the US Government is now one of the top 70 holders of Bitcoin in the world:
Total BTC in circulation: 11,900,675 BTC (from http://blockexplorer.com/q/totalbc)
Total BTC in address thought to contain seizure of Silk Road users' coins: 29,657 BTC (from https://blockchain.info/address/1F1tAaz5x1HUXrCNLbtMDqcw6o5GNn4xqX)
Total BTC in address thought to contain seizure of some of DPR's coins: 144,336 BTC https://blockchain.info/address/1FfmbHfnpaZjKFvyi1okTjJJusN455paPH
11,900,675 / (29,657 + 144,336) = approximately 68
Thus, the US Government is now, at worst, the 68th largest holder of Bitcoin in the world
Again, this worst case rank occurs if there an even distribution of BTC across the top 68 BTC holders. Of course, this is not the case, so the US Government is likely ranked much better than 68.
Another way to look at it: The US Government now holds 1 out of every 68 Bitcoins currently in existence!
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1nr36r/us_government_is_now_of_the_top_500_holders_of/
With today's seizure (discussed here: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1p7cl7/fbi_says_its_seized_285_million_in_bitcoins_from/), we can update the math and conclude that the US Government is now one of the top 70 holders of Bitcoin in the world:
Total BTC in circulation: 11,900,675 BTC (from http://blockexplorer.com/q/totalbc)
Total BTC in address thought to contain seizure of Silk Road users' coins: 29,657 BTC (from https://blockchain.info/address/1F1tAaz5x1HUXrCNLbtMDqcw6o5GNn4xqX)
Total BTC in address thought to contain seizure of some of DPR's coins: 144,336 BTC https://blockchain.info/address/1FfmbHfnpaZjKFvyi1okTjJJusN455paPH
11,900,675 / (29,657 + 144,336) = approximately 68
Thus, the US Government is now, at worst, the 68th largest holder of Bitcoin in the world
Again, this worst case rank occurs if there an even distribution of BTC across the top 68 BTC holders. Of course, this is not the case, so the US Government is likely ranked much better than 68.
Another way to look at it: The US Government now holds 1 out of every 68 Bitcoins currently in existence!
Let's see it from the other side. Could the distribution become fair?
Can you compare it with 2009 / 2010 / 2011 / 2012 Rptiela?
Can you compare it with 2009 / 2010 / 2011 / 2012 Rptiela?
It is possible to reconstruct the distribution in any past (or future, for that matter!) date with this model. After all the parameters are estimates anyway with wide tolerances. If somebody would take the time, we would have a nice series on how the coins are being distributed over time.
As for fairness, I assume you would like the coins to be distributed in a much more equal way than they are. That is completely unnatural and not observed in any economy. It is somewhat possible to equalize the income of people and the governments are doing it as much as they can (not that they cared about the poor but it is an end-all to be able to control as much economic activity as possible, which can nicely be achieved by excessive taxation and redistribution). But it is totally impossible to equalize people's wealth, since most people are unwilling/incapable of wealth accumulation and will therefore always own almost nothing, regardless of income. Even governments cannot do anything to the distribution of wealth, which is by nature a logarithmic phenomenon, obeying its own distribution. If governments aggressively go after private wealth, they aggravate the inequality, since the wealth is just collected in even larger stashes and middle class is destroyed.
Bitcoin distribution is the fairest when people have easy access to buy and sell them without hindrances. Then everybody can own as many as they deem fit. Satoshi will still own a million and most (currently: 99.99%) will own zero.
Yes, your're right, I would like the coins to be distributed in a much more equal way than they are. I didn't talk about fairness.
Quote
That is completely unnatural ...
This quote about is the core of every issue I disagree with libertarians.
What's natural? Be naked, living in caves, dying with 45, loosing you teeth with 30, rape innocent women, killing your neighbour, eating raw meat, being in a state of allday war ...
Being natural has in no way any value. The opposite. Everything we call civilization is a product of human genius to overcome things that are natural.
I am the last to say everybody in the world should have the same amount of money or coins. I don't mind if satoshi has millions and others have bitcents, and I don't want the state to take your bitcoins and give it to me. This could be the goal of sovjetcoin.
I just think it would be better, if the coins are distributed more equal. Too much money in one hand is dead money. It destroys the ability of money to build wealth in the same degree as the equalification of the state.
If this is fair or not, is another story. It depends if you define "fairness" by mechanism or outcome.
Minimum number of all users, or minimum number of users in the top brackets? Because we know we've had over 100,000 bitcoin users since Summer of 2011.
I need your (plural) help in estimating the current number of users. It is a subtask much better suited to someone else than me.
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I'm one of those early ones. I read the original paper, thought about it for a few hours and decided that this is going to become bigger than Jesus. Bought a lot of mining equipment (took a lot of risk with my money, at this point there was not any kind of marked price/exchange or anything) and mined like there was no tomorrow. I have not sold many coins, had to sell a few to prove to my wife that I was not completely insane, she was not satisfied until she saw USD appear in her account. I have no plans to sell anytime soon, I'm fairly certain this is only the beginning. Sure there will be ups and downs but in the end I would be very surprised if the price didn't reach several thousand USD per coin or more. In which case i will be in the global 0.000001% for sure. I also gave away about half of my coins to a friend and a few to other friends. I was pretty well off even before this, very close to independently wealthy, but the bitcoin's have definitely tipped the scales. I'm not in this to become rich and buy a lot of "things", from the very start I was politically motivated, as are many others of the very early adopters although with a little bit different alignments. I have a conviction that bitcoin will be the liberator for the worlds poor giving them access to the global marketplace on a scale never seen before. If bitcoin can give market access to that many people the entire planet will experience an upswing comparable to the industrial revolution, only stronger. I will save my coins until the price is of such a magnitude that I can begin investing in freestate projects enabling such a future to become reality. Buying a nice car or house is not even tempting, i have that already, what we are talking about here is how the world my children will grow up in will look like and making us a space faring species - nothing else will suffice selling out towards. This is as far as I can see the best shot in my lifetime to contribute towards this reality, if it turns out to go to zero i will not regret holding on to the end. This is all or nothing. Governments have spent hundreds of years fighting for power with little other than misery to show for it. Politicians preach altruism for the masses convincing them to sacrifice their lives for the greater good which always turns out to be a monster. Bitcoin is for the people by the people. Revolution is at hand (i hope).
wow
New base case, with the following parameters:
- Number of large holders is small (no "hidden premine" by Satoshi's friends, governments, malicious entities etc.)
- Number of bitcoin users is moderate (350,000, an educated guess after consulting many sources with low precision)
- Distribution model as previously
- I will update these to the OP also
- Number of large holders is small (no "hidden premine" by Satoshi's friends, governments, malicious entities etc.)
- Number of bitcoin users is moderate (350,000, an educated guess after consulting many sources with low precision)
- Distribution model as previously
- I will update these to the OP also
| #People | #Bitcoins | #TotalBitcoins |
| 50 | BTC10k+ | 2.9M |
| 1100 | BTC1k-10k | 3.1M |
| 12k | BTC100-1k | 3.3M |
| 58k | BTC10-100 | 1.8M |
| 110k | BTC1-10 | 0.4M |
| 110k | BTC0.1-1 | 0.1M |
| 57k | BTC0-0.1 | 0.0M |
It's funny because if you go back and read old threads from 2010 and early 2011 you'd think the categories would be:
BTC500k+
BTC100k-500k
BTC50k-100k
BTC10k-50k
BTC1000-10k
BTC0-1000
My experience has been that most miners don't really believe in bitcoin. I met a guy who had mined thousands of coins and sold almost all at $1. He doesn't have even a single coin now.
You've gotta love this bull though. Wonder if he's Satoshi? http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1bhhjg/any_bitcoin_millionaires_here_on_reddit_if_so/
Quote
I'm one of those early ones. I read the original paper, thought about it for a few hours and decided that this is going to become bigger than Jesus. Bought a lot of mining equipment (took a lot of risk with my money, at this point there was not any kind of marked price/exchange or anything) and mined like there was no tomorrow. I have not sold many coins, had to sell a few to prove to my wife that I was not completely insane, she was not satisfied until she saw USD appear in her account. I have no plans to sell anytime soon, I'm fairly certain this is only the beginning. Sure there will be ups and downs but in the end I would be very surprised if the price didn't reach several thousand USD per coin or more. In which case i will be in the global 0.000001% for sure. I also gave away about half of my coins to a friend and a few to other friends. I was pretty well off even before this, very close to independently wealthy, but the bitcoin's have definitely tipped the scales. I'm not in this to become rich and buy a lot of "things", from the very start I was politically motivated, as are many others of the very early adopters although with a little bit different alignments. I have a conviction that bitcoin will be the liberator for the worlds poor giving them access to the global marketplace on a scale never seen before. If bitcoin can give market access to that many people the entire planet will experience an upswing comparable to the industrial revolution, only stronger. I will save my coins until the price is of such a magnitude that I can begin investing in freestate projects enabling such a future to become reality. Buying a nice car or house is not even tempting, i have that already, what we are talking about here is how the world my children will grow up in will look like and making us a space faring species - nothing else will suffice selling out towards. This is as far as I can see the best shot in my lifetime to contribute towards this reality, if it turns out to go to zero i will not regret holding on to the end. This is all or nothing. Governments have spent hundreds of years fighting for power with little other than misery to show for it. Politicians preach altruism for the masses convincing them to sacrifice their lives for the greater good which always turns out to be a monster. Bitcoin is for the people by the people. Revolution is at hand (i hope).
Wait - I don't read blockchain very often so I'm not entirely sure what i'm looking at here.
Is that 144K Bitcoin and does it all belong to one person? (i.e. the US gvmt)
I don't get the "400 are 1" part, but this address likely is part of the FBI seizure. Address belongs to feds, but the coins belong to their rightful owners unless and until those owners are found guilty of crimes that result in seizure of property.
It is cool - in the current monetary system the money masters see everyone's account, but don't need to divulge their own accounts, and can create money at will. In Bitcoin, the small guys can see and tag the government's accounts, but not the other way round, and nobody can cheat in money creation. I <3 Bitcoin!
Wait - I don't read blockchain very often so I'm not entirely sure what i'm looking at here.
Is that 144K Bitcoin and does it all belong to one person? (i.e. the US gvmt)
New base case, with the following parameters:
- Number of large holders is small (no "hidden premine" by Satoshi's friends, governments, malicious entities etc.)
- Number of bitcoin users is moderate (350,000, an educated guess after consulting many sources with low precision)
- Distribution model as previously
- I will update these to the OP also
- Number of large holders is small (no "hidden premine" by Satoshi's friends, governments, malicious entities etc.)
- Number of bitcoin users is moderate (350,000, an educated guess after consulting many sources with low precision)
- Distribution model as previously
- I will update these to the OP also
| #People | #Bitcoins | #TotalBitcoins |
| 50 | BTC10k+ | 2.9M |
| 1100 | BTC1k-10k | 3.1M |
| 12k | BTC100-1k | 3.3M |
| 58k | BTC10-100 | 1.8M |
| 110k | BTC1-10 | 0.4M |
| 110k | BTC0.1-1 | 0.1M |
| 57k | BTC0-0.1 | 0.0M |
Copied this from another thread. It took 2 hours to write, enjoy! (I have written a book about monetary history in Finnish)
Great, I just started reading this too!
http://www.pdf-archive.com/2011/12/28/creature-from-jekyll-island-by-g-edward-griffin/creature-from-jekyll-island-by-g-edward-griffin.pdf
I need to catch up in history
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