Topic: "What happens if bitcoin succeeds?" - page 3. (Read 563 times)

an article that talks about price all the time and calls that "success" is not worth reading in my opinion. bitcoin's success is not about what price level it is going to reach, the price is only the byproduct of the actual success which is defined as how decentralized bitcoin is and in short how much did it stick to the basic principles that are defined for it
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Principles_of_Bitcoin

I think we should not shy from the fact that it may be a possibility of an increased gap inequality.

Though, it seems to me that unlike other assets where accessibility is not as easy, crypto actually provides some 'higher' means of getting involved than anything else. Take gold for instance, you'd only be able to store gold as valuable asset if you start with a large sum. This is not the same as with crypto where you can start with as little as $10 and where there's so much availability around with lots of platforms.

With BTC and crypto in general, the knowledge is there, the resources are all there to learn, it is only a matter of wanting and doing. This level of accessibility and availability to all has never been around before, not for any assets I know of.

Bitcoin benefits all long-term investors in proportion to their investments unlike fiat currencies which tend to lose value over time. By the way, the investments help the network and the community.   You don't benefit that much using national banks. The rich and the poor use or save on thesame fiat banks, the poor don't benefit from such collective funds unlike Bitcoin. Bitcoin is fairer... That is how a Just financial system should be run without lawlessly, unfairly & forcefully taking funds from the rich to help the poor

I agreed with John Danielsson because there will never total equality in this world and it will be nice if we face this fact and don't lie to ourselves cause only people who make proper use of the opportunities around them will thrive not only in Bitcoin investment but in all investment setting.
Bitcoin will never equalize fiat currency because Bitcoin posed the innovation, potential, liberation, and opportunity every other currency cannot pose.

Well, small pocket players should buy or earn some Bitcoin (could have been much better if they would have done that some more years ago). Mining is not everything. Just imagine the "small players" that simply got a few Bitcoin from faucets.


I has simply re-distributed some wealth. Some wealthy people afford to profit now and it makes everything more visible. But I am sure that some have become wealthy exactly because of Bitcoin and they seem to be conveniently forgotten in this discussion.

Isn't that evident already? While big pocket players are setting up big mining rigs and small players are finding it extremely hard to earn bitcoin. So the inequality between the rich and poor will stay there even in crypto market just the way it happens in the real world economy. There's no way to remove it from our lives!

So I would agree with this statement. Bitcoin didn't help to remove the income inequality from our lives. It certainly made some people richer who had adopted it in its early days but holistically it remained as a big boys' game!

Yeah, well, same old story again. Wealth inequality is wonderful. To this day, all those who advocate wealth equality have done when they have gained power is to distribute hunger equally among the population. Lately I have been hearing speeches like this from people who until recently were dismissive of Bitcoin, saying that it was a scam, that it was going to go to 0...

Now, as they see that it is going to succeed, they come with Wealth Inequality. What they don't tell is that this story ends with an even more extreme Wealth Inequality. Look at Venezuela or Cuba, where the leaders are multimillionaires and the people suffer misery and hunger. There are no countries more unequal than communist countries.

Bitcoin cannot push the wealth inequality more than, for example, lockdowns do. A lot of the things we do today make the gap between the rich and the poor grow even larger. The more we focus on corporations, the more inequality we'll have.

Taking lockdowns as a real-life example here in Romania: small businesses are brutally failing while the massive corporations are cashing in all the money. What this leads to is the poor getting poorer and the wallets of the rich growing like never before. This sunject is as useless imo as the articles complaining about how much electricity BTC mining uses.

If Bitcoin succeeds, then what happens is we just put history on repeat. Some currently rich people go broke while other poor ones will turn into future Bezoses and Musks. There's currently no way we can equally distribute wealth unfortunately, so the best we can do isndecentralize the economy first.

It's funny how some people think that something such as Bitcoin could magically fix wealth inequality. Bitcoin is just like any other asset or equity that ends up going up in price— the people who understand it's importance and potential makes a lot of money, while the people who ignore it miss out.

The thing with bitcoin is, even if it's priced at $1,000,000 right now, people who missed out early on could still use it! Self sovereignty and having true ownership over your wealth is still a great selling point.

Most people that discovered bitcoin are not that dirt poor, they have the technology to access bitcoin accessible to them so I think that the divide didn't really narrowed just because of bitcoin because the people that got their hands on bitcoin has the opportunity unlike the real poor that doesn't even have electricity. We can do something about, trying to help other people even with a little money that you can afford is enough if that little amount is put together, we are just afraid that what little money that we have will be gone in our hands.
Success is a matter of perspective, what you said here can be called a success but for some fundamentalist that thinks that bitcoin should be the currency used by the people instead of fiat, I don't think so.
The reason for that divide is because the people let the cunning ones abuse them, if that wasn't the case in the first place, we might be living in a utopia.

It can bring more of a divide between the wealthy and the rich. But some people weren't that wealthy, but since Bitcoin came, the people believed in it and had shown that it is the technology to become part of that 1%. I doubt there would be justice with this divide, but there's just nothing we can do about it. We cannot control the currency and distribute it equally within every one of us. Twenty-one million cannot accommodate the whole world. Imagine that.

I still believe that Bitcoin has succeeded already. It's being considered as a hedge for USD, so why is it not successful? They even got to one of the wealthiest people in the world, and if that's not considered successful, then what is? How can you consider Bitcoin as successful?

Society has always been divided, but it won't make things worse—just new adaptation or application for financing, etc. The author still believes Bitcoin is a bubble, so I'm just taking it with a grain of salt.

On every kind of "gold rush" some will get rich easy and the vast majority will miss the opportunity. This can be seen as bad, by both those that are already rich and those that have missed the chance. But is it fair the way people get rich? I don't think so. Some are rich from the moment they are born. Is that fair? Some earn millions of dollars for acting or playing whatever sports. Is that fair? Heck, even those that get rich from lottery win are not actually "fair". And the inequality in the society is already there, I don't think that Bitcoin will change much. It would just give the chance to some more smart or lucky people to get a better life.

Is Bitcoin a bubble? Possibly. But it's the one of the very few valuable "things" we can be sure it's indeed scarce. This makes it highly valuable.


Bitcoin's success is a somewhat different story.
I see multiple things necessary for the success and the price is just partly involved in this.
1. It has to have a very secure underlying network. Checked.
2. It has to be valuable, "digital gold". Checked.
3. It has to be 100% fit for worldwide use for payments. Without that it will never be a full success and we are not there yet. But it's work in progress.
4. The "system" should remain working, stable and secure also after the block rewards become insignificant. I fear that this may be tricky, especially after secondary layer(s) will take over most of the transactions.

Bitcoin is not reserved for the elites, bankers, and the royals. You, me, and everyone else have a choice to invest in it or not. This forum proves that you can earn Bitcoin even without investing by providing a valuable service, advertising, etc. Bitcoin will not create inequality in the world, we already had that before. It might not make you filthy rich, but it can help many people to afford things they otherwise wouldn't be able to purchase.

Those who entered the game early have more, assuming they didn't sell or lost their coins. Even though Bitcoin has been around for over 10 years, it's still a new monetary system and it's not to late to get involved.   

I stumbled upon the article "What happens if bitcoin succeeds?" in which John Danielsson, Director of the Center for Systemic Risk at the London School of Economics, argues that the inequality between rich and poor will be further exacerbated.

https://voxeu.org/article/what-happens-if-bitcoin-succeeds



And again, these conclusions are that bitcoin is a bubble, and because it is volatile, it will not be able to equalize with money.
So what are the risks of bitcoin going forward? Is it really capable of seriously dividing society and causing even greater inequality?