Topic: The ultimate bitcoin taboo topic - page 3. (Read 10194 times)

OK, that part was just meant to provoke a response from those who define communism in different terms from mine. Having lived under a communist party rule, and having never been involved with the communist party in any way, I like my definition better.  But we stray from the topic.
Again, as others have pointed out, with fiat we have practically infinite, monopolized supply of money. With Bitcoin, we have a fixed, democratic, consensual, and mathematically exact supply. Distribution of wealth in these two scenarios has a different meaning, and straight-forward comparison is meaningless.
I fail to see a problem. Bitcoin works and allows me to represent, store, and exchange value in ways never before possible. Alice, Bob, Satoshi, and Mugabe can do with their coins as they please, and Gaddafi may have taken half a million brain-walleted coins with him into the grave. Seriousy. It's not like you'd have a clue. Some people do have lots of coins, some people did have lots of coins, and yet here we are, and world hasn't ended.

My signature expains it

To sum up, I think that power that rich bitcoiners may get over us is orders of magnitude less than power than current states already has. Don't be afraid of Satoshi, be afraid of street cop.

QFT

sarchasm apart, my point was, how in hell can you guys be so sure Nakamoto is an actual person, and libertarian as opposed to a NSA puppet. I would be the first person to be happy if we had a "libertarian billionaire", but lots of stuff makes me feel not that confident. Last thing I want is a new fascist regime with total control over our finance.

Still, it is nice to see so many optimistic people, but doesn't make me feel any safer.

Why isn't Satoshi Nakamoto protecting his investment?

Satoshi owns approximately 1 million bitcoins, or about $100,000,000 worth.  He could use a fraction of his wealth to invest in bitcoin companies and projects and give bitcoin an even greater push forward.  To my knowledge, he has never moved any of the coins that he is suspected to have mined.  Why would he do this?

1. He is dead and the private keys of his bitcoins died with him.

2. He is saving them for an emergency.  If an attacker was 51% attacking bitcoin, it's likely that the attacker would only attack with just enough hashing power (or a little bit more) to minimize their costs.  If Satoshi wanted to, he could increase the mining reward back to 50 bitcoins per block or even higher by including huge fees in his transactions.  Could this encourage a lot more people to get back into mining and overpower the attacker at least for a little while?  With 1 million bitcoins, he could return the reward to 50 bitcoins every block for about 9 months.

3. He is a malicious actor.  Because we don't know who Satoshi is, we don't know his current motives.  There has been speculation that Satoshi is Jed McCaleb, creator of the Ripple system.  Or he could be a creator of another altcoin. If he had a higher percentage of his new coin than bitcoin, once his new coin is in a good position, he could slowly (or quickly) tranfer his bitcoin wealth to the new coin.  Creating a seemingly perpetual bitcoin bear market and a perpetual altcoin bull market.

4. He has faith that bitcoin will succeed on its own power.

5. He is already wealthy independent of bitcoin and using the currency he already has to do this investing instead of selling his bitcoins.

america != world

Where do you get this fact? The largest traditional holder of assets of any form holds 100% of the entire world's money supply, that is FED. Every dollar ever created belongs to FED, which consists of a bunch of private reserve banks

How long do you think that one person would continue to have that power if he went against the interests of his wealthy and powerful backers? About 5 seconds. He is a puppet, albeit a willing and enthusiastic one.

No, money isn't power. But it helps.

I have a lot of agreement with libertarian ideals, but the individualism and love of guns that seems to often come with it seem a bit weird to me, and may not mix well with huge wealth. I wouldn't count on the politics of those holding power to prevent its abuse. Usually, the people that are the surest of the goodness of their own intentions cause the most trouble for everyone else.

But yeah, agreed that basically, whatever. Its not like a high price would last all that long if all of a sudden kazillions of sleeping bitcoins started moving. The point at which it would (ie. the bitcoin economy is MUCH bigger than now) is a long long way off, and may never be reached. A lot can happen between now and then, and I think, all said, this is one of the less urgent threats to freedom facing most people right now.

I think Nakamoto's point about bitcoin being a way to "gain a new territory of freedom for several years" is a good one to remember. Power will always fuck people over when it gets established. The point is to keep knocking it down before it does. Right now, bitcoin might be part of the way to do that. At some point, just maybe, if it works out, it could itself be a problem. Whatever. We'll just have to work it out.

Nakamoto is. DPR is. Peter Tiel is. Heaps of early adapters are.

And even this imaginary worst case is much better than our current case. The democracy you support gives most of world's power to one single person. BTW, this person is considering new invasion right now. Would starting a war become easier for him if % of libertarians in US Senate changes from current state to, say, % of libertarians in this forum?

Great, some ethics. Others may have also.

Wow! A noble person come in our stinking bitcoin den!

How do you know the people with most coins are "from libertarian circles"? There are lots of hints pointing to the opposite, and until we know the truth I rather assume the worst case.

This is exactly what I'm saying. I do have some coins, and I will be in the elite if it gets "to da moon". But unlike most people around here, I would not let money buy my dignity and beliefs. Is not envy. It is genuine concern about the future of democracy.

Nope.  This is a common misconception.  You can't change Bitcoin because you can't stop the existing network from running.  All you can do to is create a fork.  I find it hard to believe the masses would choose the "inflat-a-coin" fork over the tried and true real Bitcoin.  Of course those with massive wealth would pound down the value on the new fork by selling into any rallies and dumping massive quantity at market.  Still given the overall chaos and loss of confidence by there being two supported but incompatible networks called "Bitcoin" it is highly unlikely no controversial fork will ever be successful.  Then again we never know for sure.

Don't shiver. Money is not power. Weapon is. With money you can't buy if the seller not willing to sell. While with weapon you can just take whatever you want, no money required.

And what percentage of world's military power are currently in hands of one person? Most of it! One silnge person (his name starts from "O") controls an army that is stronger than all other armies in the world, combined. Not 2%, but over 50%. And not buyin "power", but direct military force.

It's bad, IMO, but still no Armageddon have happened. So why are you expecting it to happen from mere 2% of non-military power?

IMO, existence of BTC-trillionaires would improve current situation. Early bitcoin adapters are mainly from libertarian circles, so they will likely use their money to fund projects that will reduce power of states over people. In fact, bitcoin is one of such projects. I want more of it!

Cool down. If you have a coin or more, in a few years you might be on the other side of this envy divide.

satoshi may have 10% of the currency supply but it will only become as valuable as you are making out if bitcoin manages to break the current monetary cartel. so we would be replacing a group of people with the ability to print an infinate amount of money with someone who has 10%. clearly an improvement and the 10% is his reward for so dramatically improving the situation.

I still shiver at the idea that most people don't give a damn if somebody will have a nearly unprecedented level of power, as long as they can have a little slice of the riches. That let me think to those disgusting orks doing all they can to let lord Sauron have the world, as long as they are in the winning side. No matter if the world is going to hell.

There seems to be an infinite supply of n00bs with an infinite supply of trollish threads and comments. Somebody is getting butthurt by the direction of the discourse round these parts 

There are an infinite number of possible crypto currencies.   Bitcoin's share of the market is already shrinking.  With an infinite supply, I'm not sure why people expect crypto currencies to be deflationary for the long run.