[PragmaticPulp]

It’s amazing that the popular narrative is that the average person will somehow benefit if we switch to a currency that is majority owned by a small handful of early adopters.

I’m not a fan of the current inflationary economic policy, but in no way would a Bitcoin economy be a win for the average person. Early adopters and Bitcoin whales would love it because they hold the vast majority of Bitcoin. They want nothing more than to see everyone else forced to buy it from them at ever increasing prices if they want to join the Bitcoin economy.

The average person loses in this scenario, though.

[rawtxapp]

A lot of the early adopters have either permanently lost their coins or sold it local maximums, very few people would have hold on to it that long. And you can argue that if they had that kind of strong belief, they should receive some rewards for it.

It's like saying by the time a company IPOs, early VCs have benefited the most, while that is true, you could also argue they deserve it because of the risk they took.

[PragmaticPulp]

> A lot of the early adopters have either permanently lost their coins or sold it

If the balance of a Bitcoin economy relies on the assumption that certain people have lost their money, something is seriously wrong.

Regardless, a hypothetical Bitcoin economy would require much further buy-in from here, making current holders the early adopters.

> It's like saying by the time a company IPOs, early VCs have benefited the most, while that is true, you could also argue they deserve it because of the risk they took.

The VC analogy isn’t good at all. VCs invest to fund the creation of something. What did early Bitcoin investors fund? More mining and more hype?

From another angle: Imagine if PayPal created a new payment system that used shares of PayPal as the currency. Anyone who wants to use the tool must buy some shares of PayPal, because that’s the currency. And oh by the way, most of those shares are owned by PayPal founders and early adopters, who will gladly sell them at a massive gain.

Is Bitcoin supposed to be a speculative investment? Or a stable currency for a new economy? We can’t just pick and choose from either definition as convenient for the argument.

[anythingdude321]

There is no alternative for the monetization of an asset. Gold was the same. Some people believed in it, many didn't, and as it monetized over time those that believed in it early benefited most.

The same is the case with anything valuable that might become money, including the USD, if you consider that it was originally distributed in a manner that was pegged to gold and that gold was monetized in the same way as described above. The idea that you could materialize a money in any other way is unsupported by history.

[tromp]

Gold did not emit half of all supply in the first 4 years. Bitcoin's emission is nothing like Gold's.

[rawtxapp]

It was considered worthless at the time so many weren't careful with it. People are going to be a lot more careful when their coins are priced at 44k+.

[PragmaticPulp]

Doesn’t matter. Most of the coins have already been mined. New entrants must buy from old entrants.

[rawtxapp]

Old entrants that may have bought it because they believed in it pushing it to mainstream.

How do you feel about the government that's about to print 1.9 trillion dollars, therefore devaluing your money?

[PragmaticPulp]

Bitcoiners bring up inflation as if our only two options for investment are cash under the mattress or buying Bitcoin.

I keep my investments in companies and assets like most other investors. The economic stimulus might devalue the <1% of USD cash I keep around for transactions, but my actual investments will likely benefit from the stimulus. As a bonus, I get to operate in an economy that has been buffered against the effects of COVID.

It’s amazing that Bitcoin proponents only ever want to talk about the USD (or other local currency) value of their Bitcoin, yet they want us to ignore the fact that Bitcoin isn’t the only option for investing cash.

[elhudy]

>while that is true, you could also argue they deserve it because of the risk they took.

they didn't take any risk though, they just "mined bitcoins", which were more abundant then.

[rawtxapp]

Well if the price increased at 1$, and you didn't sell any, you risked it going back to 0$. From that perspective, there's a risk holding on to it.

[PragmaticPulp]

Investments are made to fund value creation.

What value did they create?

If the underpinnings of an economy accrue value purely to speculators while devaluing (in BTC-relative terms) actual assets and value creation, it has a major incentive problem.

What’s the one and only thing Bitcoiners want you to do with Bitcoin? Buy. That’s it. Any other use, including spending, is actively discouraged.

[rawtxapp]

The value they created is a currency that's not controlled by a select few people.

[SideburnsOfDoom]

1) Not a currency, 2) Debateable that it's value at all, and 3) "controlled by a select few people" is a remarkably paranoid/conspiracy way to frame that central banking is a necessary function of government.

[elhudy]

That is not a "risk" in the sense of adverse outcomes. Anyone can throw bitcoins in a wallet and forget about them for 10 years. There is no risk of adverse outcome involved in doing so, and people should not be rewarded it.

[SideburnsOfDoom]

It's the "bitcoin is good because I have it" narrative.

That doesn't make it an equitable or even workable economic system.

[PragmaticPulp]

Bitcoin is like an MLM for nerds.

Just get in at the ground floor and then promote it to everyone you know. They’ll invest, which makes money for you, and they’ll tell friends, who will invest...

[bustin]

I can't disagree.

I'm not convinced that your average tax paying American will benefit from this - if anything the difficulty in taxing wealth and loss of ability to print/control money granted to Americans by American guns could lead to a noticeable decrease in quality of life for them.

That being said, there is a tremendous demand from people in many countries to defend their wealth from less stable environments that seek to control their ability to freely transact/store wealth.

No idea how it ends, or even if these cryptos deliver on their potential. Any idiot can see there are many roadblocks, and I personally think that Bitcoin's price is wildly manipulated (and most likely a ponzi).

However, as someone who has 2nd hand experience with poorly run govs stripping peoples' wealth for political reasons, I'm very excited by these possibilities in spite of some of the negatives.

For the record I have no Bitcoin, but I do run a node for another crypto I find interesting.

[nickysielicki]

> I’m not a fan of the current inflationary economic policy, but in no way would a Bitcoin economy be a win for the average person.

Don't confuse the cause and effect. If there's massive inflation and bitcoin becomes highly relevant, you're losing if you hold USD, no matter what! The arrogant central bankers are the cause. Nobody is cheering for that. Bitcoin is just a hedge.

If you're afraid of stagflation and you want to park your money in something that holds value, what should you buy? Precious metals, which have been manipulated for decades? Property, in the context of yet another housing bubble?

[mpfundstein]

the early adopters don't control the network. they are just actors on it. Even the richest btc holder can't freeze your wallet or prohibit you from spending/trading/sharing it.