[loceng]

So I'm copying and pasting part of someone's comment I saw on mobile - which has since been flagged and removed for including their referral URL - because I wanted to reply to it.

They said: "I've earned around 0.0060 BTC so far (~$50), mostly through airdrop offers -- without taking into account the airdropped crypto itself."

What I wanted to reply was, no, you earned ~$50 if you sold it off immediately, however otherwise you earned "~$50" MINUS whatever "profit" earlier adopters earned, the wealth unreasonably/unnecessarily reallocated weighted toward the earlier adopters; e.g. that could be $50 minus $30 because you're paying for/legitimizing/realizing/covering the difference of their purchase price and their sale price. They know of course they can't dump it, however they don't care if the Pyramid-Ponzi scheme takes 10-20+ years to allow them to realize $100s of billions, or even potentially trillions of dollars, worth of "profit."

[wakeywakeywakey]

By this logic, it would be fair to say:

'When I get my paycheck, I earn my salary MINUS whatever "profit" my employer made from my work.'

This is disingenuous by ignoring risk and presupposing that (in this case) I have the same reach/clout/contacts/sales and marketing channels as my employer.

[loceng]

I don't think that's a fair comparison at all.

The profit your employer makes from your work isn't coming from an increase in demand [in the use of a transactional layer] causing the perceived value of a crypto-asset [USD] to go up, and therefore they also are profiting from that increased value -- that'd be "double-dipping" profit in a sense if that's the case, if they're also making money on the increase in demand of the currency.

Profit from what someone is willing to pay above actual cost vs. "profit" derived simply from an increase in perceived value because of demand are two different things; this is why I put profit in quotes to differentiate.

If you're paid in USD, USD being relatively stable and balanced with other fiat currencies, then you're not going to profit from fluctuations -- there are currency traders of course, however banks and governments try to limit this. It would be great to have a single global currency, where everyone is aligned, however

If you held onto your paycheck and didn't cash it for 5 years (assuming the check is still valid then), and the USD went up by 400% -- once you cashed it, that 300% difference in your buying power that you're depositing is getting covered by everyone else now (for no more work done by you). At the surface of it, does that sound fair? And that cash they were paid, it wasn't an investment.

If you're paid in USD, USD being relatively stable and balanced with other fiat currencies, then you're not going to profit from fluctuations -- there are currency traders of course, however banks and governments try to limit this, they decide how much the other currencies are worth in comparison (the exchange rates). It would be great to have a single global currency, where everyone is aligned, however not through reallocating wealth weighted to the earliest adopters -- you're taking advantage of the majority of society then.

The issue is whether reallocating resources/wealth unreasonably/unnecessarily is acceptable or not. I argue it's not. The incentivized structure is one way to get people working together, collaborating - at least to begin with - however at a certain "tipping point", let's say it's 50% -- everyone who adopts or must adopt the incentivized crypto-asset then is covering/realizing the cost of everyone who bought before. E.g. Their buying power is shifted weighted towards the earlier adopters, and if this is allowed then there will be a point where they will be forced to adopt it (and early bad actors are heavily incentivized to reach this goal).

One problem with incentivized crypto-assets is that USD isn't destroyed, instead it's being exchanged - given to someone in return for a digital crypto-asset. If USD was actually destroyed or rather transferred into a crypto-asset blockchain, that would be solving part of the problem.

If you see problems with what I'm writing, I would greatly appreciate hearing more of your thoughts - rarely do people engage with this line of thought on here, I seem to get enough downvotes though (to counter the upvotes I initially get).

[hndamien]

It seems you have a problem with other people having large pieces of pie, rather than the more important point that all people that have pie have it grow.

[Retra]

Let's hear you say this next time you try to run a political campaign against someone who can outspend you a thousand times over.

You'll lose, and they'll have everything they need to take whatever scraps of pie you have on your plate.

[loceng]

Interestingly my comment here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16867880 - ties into the concern you voiced.

[hndamien]

What are you referring to?

[loceng]

I really don't see how you could make either of those assertions from what I wrote.

If I steal $100 from you, and now I have $100 and you have $0 - would you have a problem with that? That's a generally asinine accusation to make..

Isn't the most important part that something happens fairly - or is your argument that collaboration at all costs is okay?

All people having the pie and wanting it to grow (it's what we technically have now, except capitalistic for-profit structures suffocate distribution of and capture the majority of the value), that may be the case in the initial stages because of everyone "profiting" from the increase in value because of demand, however then that's totally forgetting or ignoring the long-term impact once you reach the "tipping point" - that everyone after "50%" now are subsidizing all of the previous "profits" that will want to be realized by the earlier adopters --- and the value can't keep going up unless you have unlimited people to scale it to, which there isn't. Late adopters won't be incentivized to collaborate, as they're not earning "profit" from the incentivized crypto-assets.

Also, your statement seems to be a straw man fallacy, whether you meant it to be or not.

[hndamien]

I have no idea what you are talking about. People that buy crypto currencies are exchanging money for digital rights (which some believe are better forms of money). How that relates to you stealing $100 from me is beyond my comprehension.

People that hold USD have their pie diluted, and they are even lied to about it by using a CPI figured calculated from consumer goods and not a more rounded figure of all asset prices (or actual new money injected/ removed).

[loceng]

Sorry, that was a bad example, and that I didn't explain - making even less comprehensible. It was an attempt to counter your assertion that I "have a problem with other people having large pieces of pie" - which is as ridiculous, as if I stole $100 from you [which gives me more money than your $0], and asking if you're okay that I stole $100 from you. Your accusation was completely baseless/shallow, I should have just said that.

Re:"People that hold USD have their pie diluted"

Ah ha! I think we can get somewhere now. Early adopters, their pie piece gets bigger, and late adopters -- their pie gets diluted (because they're covering the cost of bigger pieces of pie of the earlier adopters).

If USD is bad because the pie gets diluted (because of monetary policy/governance etc), then why isn't it equally bad for the late adopters that their pie is diluted too? Or you only are thinking/care about the early adopters?

Does this make sense to you now? You understand how late adopters are covering the early adopters "profits"?