Topic: Scaling bitcoin to world economy is unrealistic. - page 6. (Read 10167 times)

I would also point out that money is merely an accounting system.  Some people are not good at producing wealth.  They lack the skills, discipline, creativity, etc to accumulate significant wealth.  Hell many people even in developed nations have a negative net worth.   Bitcoin doesn't change that.  Lets ignore Bitcoin for a second.

Tomorrow you could do a global wealth reset.  Blam everyone in the world has exactly the same amount of wealth.  Within 10 years you would see the distribution pattern being reformed.  Within 2-3 generations it would look remarkably similar to the situation today. 

I'm still trying to wrap my head around what it is you find objectionable about an uneven distribution of wealth in general.  Please tell us, what is perfection for a currency in your mind? Should everyone have the same amount at all times? Or does everyone start with the same amount? By what standard would you consider this "flaw" resolved?

Once again this idoitically assumes the distribution of coins will not change as the value rises.  The value only rises as more people enter the system thus some of the "bitcoin elite" will sell of huge chunks of coins at say $20 per BTC, $100 per BTC, $1,000 per BTC, $5,000 per btc $25,000 per BTC, $100,000 per BTC etc, etc, etc.   The idea that someone dollar poor and BTC rich would refuse to sell off any coins as BTC rises from $2 to $3M just so they could own 1% of the worlds economy is just laughably stupid.  Of course they would sell.  

Money =/= wealth.  Money can be exchanged for wealth.  There is no reason to hold money except to store future purchasing power.  As the value of their currency holdings increase there will be a temptation to exchange it for goods and services (either directly or indirectly BTC->USD->goods).

No, no it would not be better.
The bitcoin elite would not need to press money since they would already be top dog and there would be nothing in the world capable of contesting their position.
Things will not even out magically.
It will replace current elite with bitcoin elite and you're just happy that you're part of it.

So you think nobody who owns coins today will ever sell a single one to a "new users"?  If they will then it doesn't really matter what the value of Bitcoin is in some future date.  You can't look at the wealth distribution based on future prices and today's ownership. 

Your assumption is that the value switches overnight.  By your logic Bitcoin shouldn't even be functioning at all.  For the first year or so Bitcoin was mined collectively at less than 5 MH/s.  At most that was a dozen nodes.  Those dozen users accumulates as many coins as the thousands of users who joined in the next year.  The "thousands" should have said "wait those early dozen already accumulated ~10% of all the coins.  We shouldn't join now we should build our own currency".   Likewise the tens of thousands in the third and fourth years were at a time/opportunity disadvantage to the thousands in the second year and the dozens in the first year.

My guess is that most bitcoin holders are not looking for $3M per BTC before they sell a single coin.  The base can keep growing while the price keeps rising.   The idea that 100 years or 200 years from now 50% of the coins are still owned by users (or their direct decendants) who joined the network prior to 2013 is just laughably silly.

I don't think Bitcoin will be a one global currency but your reasons for why are just silly.   Personally if Bitcoin grows to a network that rivals say PayPal (~$100B in transactions annually among millions of users) that would be a major accomplishment.

It's a lot better than what we have now. At least the Bitcoin elite do not have the authority to maintain their elite status through control of the money creation process. Eventually things will even out. Fiat currency based capitalism has no such option.

Sooo... you give an half-full glass to share amongst 99.9999% of the world population.
I like your bullish sentiment.

over 50% of the Bitcoin is not in anyone's hands yet. Come get some.

In bitcoinland a few thousand people out of 7 bilion people already own half the possible amount currency.
That puts half the possible wealth is in hands of 0.0001% of the people.
The current situation in bitcoinland is much much worse than in fiat so..

What was your argument again?

I kind of agree that having the top 1% owning almost all the wealth makes me lose faith in the currency. That's why the USD will fail and Bitcoin will prosper.

Aah, the technocrat argument

Yes, and that's why i'm against all this idealistic bullshit people spew.
It's an idealized, sterile and abstract way of thinking about how the world should fuction.
It has little bearings to how the actual real world functions of could function.
 

Bitcoin also could be very strong in the hands of a trustworthy government.
But:
1) show me a completely trustworthy government, or to put it differently, how many completely trustworthy people are there in the world.
2) The temptation of governments would be not to print but to 'save' (not invest in the world but hoard and not spend). So with all this temptation to not make the world go round the incentive of bitcoin is flawed.

Poor people can save all they want but they will be left behind by rich people that have the ability to save at a much faster (absolute) pace. So when (and this is just for illustration) a poor person saves 2 bitcoins a rich person can save 2000 bitcoins.
Relatively poor people would always be able to save less than relatively rich people.
The poor are screwed and the rich get richer.
If anything it would lead to an even bigger divide between rich and poor.
Whaa..?
If they cannot print and lend then the only way left for them to get more is by hoarding.
This point of yours makes no sense whatsoever.
Those are hardly facts and so your conclusion is shaky at best and a complete fantasy at worst.

Isn't that they way it's always been ever since the first caveman used a weapon to bring down dinner or picked all the berries in an area, but only shared them in exchange for services.  Technology is not going to supercede our nature.

Gold did not go away because the US government said it should. It went away as a means of trade because its a bitch to carry around or send across the world.

Gold is however STILL used as a store of wealth and is STILL traded among big central banks and goldbugs. If the US announced tomorrow that all their gold in fort knox was gone, the dollar would likely drop a little.

Bitcoin does not have the problems of golds bulkiness and will become the new "easy" currency - except it is also BETTER, not "just" easier than fiat.

Fiat could be very strong in the hands of a trustworthy government - however with all the temptation in the world to print and no reasons NOT to the incentive model of fiat is flawed.
The incentive model of something might not be technical, but it cannot be changed and is fundamental - and for fiat heavily flawed.

But:
1. Poor people can save up in Bitcoin while in fiat they would loose on inflation (and since they are poor, they have very few other options).
2. The elite cannot print bitcoin and so hoard less.

Given these two facts, I would say Bitcoin is MORE fair and will over time lead to a BETTER distribution of wealth.

I envision a day when large governments will realize the value of bitcoins and begin buying up huge sums of them in an effort to control the wealth.  Then at some point they'll print currencies backed by bitcoins to better protect their stash and to control the rates of exchange as well as provide a means of tracking the bitcoin economy.  When they realize that they've printed too much money and fearing a run on their bitcoins, they will by decree order the citizens to hand over all their bitcoins to the government in the name of national security. Many will follow their patriotic conscience and do as they are told, but many will not.  Fearing that a rogue hoarder will dump a large amount of bitcoins someday that would devalue the governments huge stash, they declare that their printed money is now backed by ... trust in God maybe and happily print ever after.

So, if history repeats itself, bitcoins and bitcoin transactions will go the way of gold and at some point become merely a very valuable curiosity vaulted away till needed.  At that time the size of the block chain and relative value of individual coins will become unimportant.

Technically the Bitcoin network could handle all trade in the world.
It would require some updates, but no hard forks:

1. Swarm client; thought it up myself, allows smaller computers to participate in a VISA+ sized network with no sweat. It can be bridged to the current full node network no problem as the only change is in the communication protocol - a bridge would spread blocks from both networks into the other, with no one being able to see the difference.

2. Ledger update; every 10-20 years the BTC beyond this time would be put in a public ledger and earlier blockchains deleted to save HD space. The BTC would still be there and spendable, but stored in a simpler fashion. 10-20 years to avoid temporary 51% attacks to completely rewrite history in the ledgers. (ala the genesis block)
These clients would still be able to communicate with older clients, but would simply not answer any requests for blocks 10-20 years old.
(This one is not my idea btw)

3. Possible cryptographic breach/ECDSA update due to quantum computers; the protocol already more or less supports new address/key systems, slowly or quickly switching to a safer standard would not require a hard fork.

4. Running out of units; the client can be hard forked to allow more decimal places - however this is such a natural update that I doubt anyone will object when the time comes. (1 Satoshi would no longer be the smallest unit)

Simply put; as long as you are operating within a space sphere of maybe 1 light minute (0.125 AU) in diameter - Bitcoin can last forever and for any size economy. (assuming the current understanding of physics and no practical wormholes)


There may be other cryptocurrencies, but I really think Bitcoin will remain the new "gold standard" for at least a hundred years as it has no weak points and there is no really good reason to use other copy currencies.

The dollar and euro are likely doomed, but I guess people could choose many other things than bitcoin to hedge with/panic to. 100% penetration is unlikely for anything, but Bitcoin could feasibly become the world reserve currency like dollars are today in 20-100 years.

This is an interesting point and i will have to contemplate it.