Satoshi's spare change? - page 3. | Bitcointalksearch.org

BitterTea

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Quote from: syn on May 25, 2011, 10:49:10 AM

Quote from: BitterTea on May 25, 2011, 10:17:07 AM

Can you show us your proof that Satoshi (or anyone else) controls 20% of all BTC?

There is no proof, except I believe Gavin himself in an interview said that btc was running for a year in a private network with just a few people involved, so we are left with conjecture and innuendo. I believe he said this on that web show he did, or maybe it was that presentation.

You can see the historical hash rate/difficulty here: http://bitcoin.sipa.be/speed-ever.png

Let's assume that satoshi was the only one generating between 2009-01-03 (the genesis block) and ~2009-12-30 (first difficulty increase), which I think is doubtful considering that he announced Bitcoin to the world 8 days after genesis. Let's also assume that he generated 1 block every 10 minutes, which as you can see from the dip in hash rate isn't the case.

That means he generated 51984 blocks, or 2,599,200 BTC, which is about 12% of the 21 million total.

Keep in mind that this scenario is very unlikely, I'm fairly certain there were others mining during that time period, and that a block was not created every 10 minutes during this period.

Steve

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One of the things that 20% of bitcoins could be used for is to help dampen the price swings. You wouldn't want to try and control the long term trajectory of bitcoin prices (the 20% would rapidly become 0% if you tried that), but you could smooth out a lot of the volatility. You could make it trying and hug the 30 day moving average for example (while also adjusting for significant events that cause a radical and permanent departure from the moving average).

In any case, the points you are contemplating are a legitimate concern and something everyone should consider IMO. That is a large percentage of bitcoins and is a significant concentration of power (within the bitcoin economy and if things go well for bitcoin, a large amount of power in an absolute sense). And I think large concentrations of power are a thing that many here seek to avoid by using bitcoins. So, people should certainly factor this into their assessment of the value of bitcoins (just as you are doing).

syn

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Quote from: BitterTea on May 25, 2011, 10:17:07 AM

Can you show us your proof that Satoshi (or anyone else) controls 20% of all BTC?

There is no proof, except I believe Gavin himself in an interview said that btc was running for a year in a private network with just a few people involved, so we are left with conjecture and innuendo. I believe he said this on that web show he did, or maybe it was that presentation.

BitterTea

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Can you show us your proof that Satoshi (or anyone else) controls 20% of all BTC?

syn

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Quote from: luv2drnkbr on May 25, 2011, 07:08:34 AM

Quote from: mcdett on May 25, 2011, 01:09:31 AM

yes, but the current structure has served me well. I work hard, pay my taxes, and expanding my family.

The current system provides much maturity and predictability. The current system doesn't provide a reasonable possibility of some unknown entity with no transparency holding 20% of the market.

btc has documented prof of almost 20% of the early generated btc being held by a hidden entity (Satoshi or whatever it is)

This mandates this currency to an amount of unpredictability that many people will not buy into. People may ask for a schism of the block over this.

(Assuming you're from the USA)... uh did you not see two years ago when the Fed refused to release the records of where two hundred billion dollars went??? And when it finally was, most of it was redacted...

the point is that the fed while doing this (I believe it was a mistake) was acting in a way to perpetuate the current financial system (as much as we may not like it). We all have a certain amount of confidence (predictability) that the US gov, and the fed will server to keep the system working mostly as is (don't read this as me endorsing this). This allows me to plan financially for the long haul (even if I don't like the way the system is working).

With btc we have no idea how this %20 could come out. What if the original group has a political ideology that we'll call polX

for people on the right polX == communist, redistribution, maoist philosophy
for people on the left polX == neo con, big business, racist, stomp the little man

If the original group decided to leverage 20% of the economy to server polX agenda we could be setting ourselves up to being slaves to a more terrible master then the current system.

luv2drnkbr

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Quote from: mcdett on May 25, 2011, 01:09:31 AM

Quote from: kjj on May 25, 2011, 12:27:11 AM

A major government already controls 100% (and more!) of the world's primary reserve currency. Lose any sleep over that recently?

yes, but the current structure has served me well. I work hard, pay my taxes, and expanding my family.

The current system provides much maturity and predictability. The current system doesn't provide a reasonable possibility of some unknown entity with no transparency holding 20% of the market.

btc has documented prof of almost 20% of the early generated btc being held by a hidden entity (Satoshi or whatever it is)

This mandates this currency to an amount of unpredictability that many people will not buy into. People may ask for a schism of the block over this.

(Assuming you're from the USA)... uh did you not see two years ago when the Fed refused to release the records of where two hundred billion dollars went??? And when it finally was, most of it was redacted...

Pieter Wuille

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I believe Gavin has the alert key now.

error

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Quote from: doublec on May 25, 2011, 05:35:11 AM

Quote from: Mike Hearn on May 25, 2011, 03:16:28 AM

Who knows. Maybe one day when the whole thing is over and the world has moved on, he will pop up, sign a message with the genesis key and say, here I am. Thanks for taking part everyone.

Does Satoshi still have the capability to send an alert out to clients to shut them down in case of a network emergency? Or have clients changed that?

There's alert code still in Bitcoin, though I can't find any source that does anything other than print the alert message on screen.

sirius

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I think I saw Bitcoin connect to tor nodes even in the early days.

doublec

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Quote from: Mike Hearn on May 25, 2011, 03:16:28 AM

Who knows. Maybe one day when the whole thing is over and the world has moved on, he will pop up, sign a message with the genesis key and say, here I am. Thanks for taking part everyone.

Does Satoshi still have the capability to send an alert out to clients to shut them down in case of a network emergency? Or have clients changed that?

BitterTea

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Quote from: Mike Hearn on May 25, 2011, 03:16:28 AM

Who knows. Maybe one day when the whole thing is over and the world has moved on, he will pop up, sign a message with the genesis key and say, here I am. Thanks for taking part everyone.

I've heard the the singularity disparagingly called "nerd rapture", though I quite like the term.

I hereby proclaim the prophecy of the Mikehearn to be "crypto-rapture", and I eagerly await the return of satoshi, the One True Hacker.

smooth

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Quote from: Mike Hearn on May 25, 2011, 03:16:28 AM

Besides, I doubt his identity is that bulletproof. In the early days Bitcoin didn't work over Tor at all. By the definition of a P2P network the first node has to be able to receive connections. So whilst he always sent email over Tor I guess at some point he must have been exposing at least one IP address linkable to him.

If he wanted to be careful he could have used a public WiFi or some such.

marcus_of_augustus

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Eadem mutata resurgo

Quote from: mcdett on May 25, 2011, 01:25:50 AM

Quote from: Garrett Burgwardt on May 25, 2011, 12:15:31 AM

Even if someone did dump a massive amount of coins into the market, it's just a chance to get cheap coins. The price would adjust but overall things would continue as is.

I'm not too worried of someone hurting the market by dumping all of their holdings (the market would shift (I'd buy a shit ton of btc at a low price) and we would recover). I actually think this may be the best possible thing for the future of btc. If the original holders used their btc to invest heavily in the community (dump their holdings in 24 months) then this would solve the problem.

Until then, a market that has 20% of it's value in a underworld-crypto unknown, will pay a heavy price to insure (READ PREDICTABILITY), which could negatively effect an adoption of btc for anything of large value.

In 18 months time, that'll be less than 12.5% of the economy and decreasing ... assuming that they don't spend any of it into "circulation".

Edit: I think that was me who sent a hat-tip 0.01 to satoshi's genesis block address but I can't remember for sure if I actually did it ... thought it would be neat thing to point at in block chain ... there's my bitcoin sitting in the first ever address ... can't see that he will ever move it ... or will he?

Edit2: Nup, wasn't me, weird someone had exactly the same idea and actually did it ...

Mike Hearn

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Quote from: Garrett Burgwardt on May 24, 2011, 11:52:40 PM

My guess is that Satoshi existed on a virtual machine (possibly inside another virtual machine), and the whole disk was scrubbed once he decided to move on.

Satoshi once said, why would anyone ever delete a wallet? I doubt he'd delete the genesis keys, there are too many cases where that'd be useful to have.

Besides, I doubt his identity is that bulletproof. In the early days Bitcoin didn't work over Tor at all. By the definition of a P2P network the first node has to be able to receive connections. So whilst he always sent email over Tor I guess at some point he must have been exposing at least one IP address linkable to him.

Who knows. Maybe one day when the whole thing is over and the world has moved on, he will pop up, sign a message with the genesis key and say, here I am. Thanks for taking part everyone.

kjj

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Quote from: mcdett on May 25, 2011, 01:09:31 AM

Quote from: kjj on May 25, 2011, 12:27:11 AM

A major government already controls 100% (and more!) of the world's primary reserve currency. Lose any sleep over that recently?

yes, but the current structure has served me well. I work hard, pay my taxes, and expanding my family.

The current system provides much maturity and predictability. The current system doesn't provide a reasonable possibility of some unknown entity with no transparency holding 20% of the market.

btc has documented prof of almost 20% of the early generated btc being held by a hidden entity (Satoshi or whatever it is)

This mandates this currency to an amount of unpredictability that many people will not buy into. People may ask for a schism of the block over this.

I can't think of a better definition of the US Congress than "some unknown entity with no transparency". At least the holder of 20% of the early bitcoins can only spend them once. Congress has been inflating away 20% of our currency every few years.

I wish the dollar was unpredictable. Always going down is very easy to predict. However, it isn't desirable or useful.

mcdett

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Quote from: Garrett Burgwardt on May 25, 2011, 12:15:31 AM

Even if someone did dump a massive amount of coins into the market, it's just a chance to get cheap coins. The price would adjust but overall things would continue as is.

I'm not too worried of someone hurting the market by dumping all of their holdings (the market would shift (I'd buy a shit ton of btc at a low price) and we would recover). I actually think this may be the best possible thing for the future of btc. If the original holders used their btc to invest heavily in the community (dump their holdings in 24 months) then this would solve the problem.

Until then, a market that has 20% of it's value in a underworld-crypto unknown, will pay a heavy price to insure (READ PREDICTABILITY), which could negatively effect an adoption of btc for anything of large value.

shackra

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1 Pedro 3:15-16 (DHH)

Quote from: mcdett on May 25, 2011, 01:09:31 AM

Quote from: kjj on May 25, 2011, 12:27:11 AM

A major government already controls 100% (and more!) of the world's primary reserve currency. Lose any sleep over that recently?

yes, but the current structure has served me well. I work hard, pay my taxes, and expanding my family.

The current system provides much maturity and predictability. The current system doesn't provide a reasonable possibility of some unknown entity with no transparency holding 20% of the market.

btc has documented prof of almost 20% of the early generated btc being held by a hidden entity (Satoshi or whatever it is)

This mandates this currency to an amount of unpredictability that many people will not buy into. People may ask for a schism of the block over this.

there isn't any danger about how have that 20% of BTCs, what is your point exactly? :-|

mcdett

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Quote from: kjj on May 25, 2011, 12:27:11 AM

A major government already controls 100% (and more!) of the world's primary reserve currency. Lose any sleep over that recently?

yes, but the current structure has served me well. I work hard, pay my taxes, and expanding my family.

The current system provides much maturity and predictability. The current system doesn't provide a reasonable possibility of some unknown entity with no transparency holding 20% of the market.

btc has documented prof of almost 20% of the early generated btc being held by a hidden entity (Satoshi or whatever it is)

This mandates this currency to an amount of unpredictability that many people will not buy into. People may ask for a schism of the block over this.

kjj

legendary

Activity: 1302

Merit: 1025

Quote from: mcdett on May 25, 2011, 12:13:51 AM

The problem (or possible risk) is that this can't be proven. If I'm going to invest in this currency I need to know there is some security (read predictability) with 20% of the total value. Let's say that the original group is composed of two dorky guys out of Seattle, and if some major govt. gets to them (which they will if this is ultimately successful) what could happen with 20% of the total btc economy? There are many other scenarios to think of with one secret entity having 20% of the economy.

Think of it. If btc becomes something large there is a anonymous, hidden, secret group that controls 20% of it. That does not play out well with large organizations trying to gauge risk <-- which will be one of the biggest foundations to grow btc.

A major government already controls 100% (and more!) of the world's primary reserve currency. Lose any sleep over that recently?

Garrett Burgwardt

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Even if someone did dump a massive amount of coins into the market, it's just a chance to get cheap coins. The price would adjust but overall things would continue as is.

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