[arcticbull]

I mean, look, the point is that you can't compare when bitcoin first opened up to an asset, it was a toy that surprisingly people pay for today even though it's being propped up by Tether and Bitfinex. It's akin to comparing the par value (1/10th of a cent) per share that the Uber founders received at formation - a 5,000,000% return. That makes the returns quite comparable. Starting something can be lucrative.

It is by no means the best performing asset. Anyone with shares from the formation of a startup has outperformed.

[chrisco255]

Yeah but the difference is the founders had to put in sweat equity while Bitcoin is a passive investment.

[arcticbull]

Equity is passive investment once you own it whether you remain employed or not. It's capital gains once you own the shares, not ordinary income. You can also include anyone you want in the cap table at formation, not just employees -- if you wanted, you could easily issue your advisory shares at that time.

Not to mention, at formation, you're more than welcome to pay market salaries to your founders, that's your perogative as a founder.

[chrisco255]

Not a startup. They don't just go from seed round to IPO on idle. The founders had to invest thousands of hours and immense stress to get it to IPO. Meanwhile a holder of 1000 BTC from 2012 probably continued to work their day job until 2017 when they incidentally became multi-millionaires.

[phatfish]

This is the reason bitcoin will never be more than a way to move funds illegally and for a few gamblers to trade it online.

Society is fine with startup founders and "employee number 5" making their fortune because they put in actual effort to build a company.

The bitcoin millionaires happened to mine a few coins in 2011 before most people knew about it and then just did nothing as you said. Zero contribution to society from making that paper (or bit) fortune.

Why on earth would everyone else not on the right internet forum in the early 2010s make the few that were fabulously rich?

Investing in stocks is a similar passive income, but at least in that case the investors money is going towards some business that pays a wage to workers or provides some net benefit to society (hopefully).

[arcticbull]

A start-up is just any company that's founded, usually with aspirations, and what I'm saying is that, technically, you can throw anyone you want on your cap table at formation [note]. I'm not saying it's typical or common, just that it's fundamentally possible. Same with founder compensation.

Bitcoin as a "passive investment" is such a lame comparison because it does, literally, nothing, just like hanging onto some beanie babies. Beanie babies, but much more wasteful.

[note] Anyone who's an employee or an accredited investor.

[chrisco255]

There were thousands of people who participated in Bitcoin's early days, tens of thousands by 2012. And back then they were giving away Bitcoin on faucets. You could also mine it with a basic graphics card.

It's not a lame comparison at all. If you bought Bitcoin in 2010, you've seen a 8,900,000% ROI. The asset may go up another 10-1000x from here. Bitcoin will outlast Uber. And if you're still comparing it to Beanie Babies 11 years later, it's likely you don't understand finance or blockchain, and you haven't been paying attention to what's happening in the past few years.

[arcticbull]

> The asset may go up another 10-1000x from here.

Or it may go down to 0. Your assertion is as likely as mine, and you’re not basing it on anything it all. Past performance != future performance.

> Bitcoin will outlast Uber.

Ok, that doesn’t mean it’ll be worth anything. Or if it does that doesn’t mean anyone will have their keys haha. Every random walk down the timeline results in 100% of keys lost haha.

> And if you're still comparing it to Beanie Babies 11 years later, it's likely you don't understand finance or blockchain, and you haven't been paying attention to what's happening in the past few years.

It’s because I’ve paid attention. Citing the divine scriptures of satoshi isn’t sufficient dismissal.