It was knocking about the cypherpunk mailing list for a couple months before launch.
The only people who could possibly have been interested at that time.
Anyone who was anyone could have mined and contributed from day one or even before.
That doesn't make it a fair launch. Satoshi was able to mine one million bitcoins himself.
I'm a crypto supporter but the fact that one guy owns such a large percentage of bitcoins scares off new investors. This whole thing looks like a giant ponzi scheme from the outside.
You realize that those are worn out talking points that really attempt to skew BTC history, and even if bitcoin has not achieved some kind of "fair launch" in your abstract sense of "fairness," it largely seems that satoshi's coins are completely gone to history (in the archives) and never to be part of the bitcoin's circulation. Even if satoshi's coins do become part of the system, it seems that bitcoin was about as fair of a launch that there could have been - and certainly people who know about technology and find out about bitcoin still have opportunities to get into bitcoin during what seems to be "still early days."
Good luck to you Dig Bicks, and hopefully you are not so dumb as to NOT be buying and accumulating BTC, even though you are talking it down, here.
Are we still not rich?
Well being a millionaire these days isn't rich. Have to be a billionaire now if you want to be considered truly wealthy.
O.k. I will bite, Dig Bicks.
I agree with you that a million is not the same as it was in the past, and that is called inflation - however, there is no reason that guys (and gal) cannot choose for himself/herself the level of "rich" to aspire, and the standard of living that would come from such "rich."
Living within your means is one way that allows your level of necessary rich to come down, and perhaps being able to do whatever the fuck you want is a kind of level of rich, and that is going to depend upon what you want, exactly - which remains individualized.
Of course, in the non-western world, a level of rich can be achieved with less than $1million - and likely in the west, there may also be expectations that cause a few million to be necessary for a person living there to at least begin to feel in the "rich" territory and satisfying all wants.
A billion dollars would not necessarily be necessary, unless wants include being able to boss around other people and perhaps get away with crimes by buying off people.. It seems that most people would not need anywhere near $1billion to feel some semblance of fuck you power which does seem to largely start in the $1million arena depending on individual resourcefulness and subjective wants....