[anonporridge]

This is not the right way to look at it though.

Bitcoin is not an alternative payment system. People keep getting confused on this point, partly because of how bitcoin was marketed in the early days (there obviously is no marketing team, just passionate people telling their stories about what they thought it was).

Bitcoin is the bedrock of an alternative monetary system. Visas and AmExes will be built on top of it, just like they are built on top of dollars.

And the analogy is not Visa competing with AmEx. It's the dollar competing with the Renminbi or Euro.

[__MatrixMan__]

If only it were in fact an alternative. If only you could look at a BTC-rich person and conclude from their wallet balance that they've made meaningful contributions to society and are therefore deserving of whatever they're trying to pay you for in BTC. That would be cool.

But that's no more likely to be true than for a USD-rich person. Whatever ill-gotten USD gains have occurred in the past are easily transferrable to BTC, which means that its really just an alternative portal into the same monetary system, or perhaps the next evolution thereof. The only difference is that this time it doesn't have anybody behind the monetary-policy steering wheel.

[webinvest]

That’s entirely too pessimistic to assume most rich people gained their riches through ill-gotten means.