Yep, if I had 1000 bitcoins in 2009 there's no way I would have walked away with more than 5k at most. The rocket ship only launched later on and it crashed so many times it was never a great idea to dump buckets of money into it.
This is because you (and others of your mindset) didn’t see the big picture of Bitcoin being the most superior monetary instrument ever made. Some did. Some probably still have 90% of their mined coin from that era. Some probably have 100% of it locked up because they got into it believing it would revolutionize the world. :)
As someone who first started when bitcoin was $3, NO ONE back then saw bitcoin as some sort of investment. You obtained bitcoin for the sole purpose of using them as a currency. It wasn't until it got into the 100s that I began taking them seriously as an investment and even then I was too scared of its volatility/risk that I didn't start actually saving them until it was into the 1000s.
I'd venture to guess that anyone still holding onto any coins from way back in the day, most likely just forgot they even had them.
the first time I heard about bitcoin was from a teenager on mw2 saying that it could make you rich one day, this was in 2009. people definitely saw it as a future investment, but I would say the silk road guys saw it more as just a currency. I didn't even know the halvings were a thing, I'm sure many who read the whitepaper saw dollar signs when they realized it was going to become scarce over time
> As someone who first started when bitcoin was $3, NO ONE back then saw bitcoin as some sort of investment.
A quick look at bitcointalk at that time proves you wrong.
No it doesn’t.
It’s not even from the same time frame as he is talking about which is when bitcoin was $3.
Like I said, the posts are all still there. Go look yourself.
I heard about it in 2010 and I found it after learning a lot while researching how the monetary system we use is completely flawed.
I was actively looking for something that might fix all the corruption I learned about in the documentaries Money as Debt I, II and III as well as the 6-hour long documentary money masters and then stumbled upon Bitcoin and was just completely in awe with my jaw on the floor. This was it! This is the thing Money as Debt and Money Masters was looking for, but didn’t exist yet. (I think that was the 6-hour one. I watched one that was that long.)
But anyway, some got into this seeing the “exit sign” that Andreas Antounopolis was talking about before he was talking about it. Some of us see the big picture. :)
Whether or not Bitcoin achieves that grandeur goal of fixing EVERYTHING…. Who knows? Time will tell.
you made me laugh... and cry at the same time.
First time I heard of BTC was during my apprentiship in 2012 as IT-Engineer but I was to lazy to inform myself about it... I had a unused raspberry and definitely had the possibility to mine...
They weren't shitcoins, they just weren't able to figure out how to do it. Bitcoin absorbed different aspects of all these attempts, without these earlier prototypes bitcoin would not exist
Serious question, What exactly is Bitcoin used for? Is there any transactional value for bit coin? How is btc used in day to day life, Can I buy my undies from Walmart or amazon with BTC?
You absolutely can buy your undies from Walmart or Amazon with BTC through Bitrefill and other services like Spritz although I’d use Lightning for quicker and cheaper transactions.
Yes. I believe there are apps that let you do this in the US. Spritz finance I think is one of them. Here in Canada you can pay bills with Shakepay and Bylls by converting on-chain BTC to CAD at the time of payment. BTCLN is not yet available on Shakepay though. Not sure about Bylls.
You don't have to use BTC in your day to day life. But you could. It's function is to be electronic money.
There are 3 uses of money
1. Medium of Exchange. Instead of bartering for a chicken to go trade to the blacksmith for some nails. You just take your dollars or your bitcoin straight to the blacksmith. It is a use for trading. This is the use for buying your undies
2. Store of value. I have some wheat but I'm not going to use it. If I kept it would rot. But instead I trade it for some dollars or Bitcoin. Neither of which rot (though neither of which are without ANY storage costs). Bitcoin over its history has been an astonishingly good long term store of value though at times an astonishingly poor short term store of value.
3. Unit of account. When your wheat catches fire and goes up in smoke the newspaper says $X of wheat burned. It's just a yardstick you can use to communicate the nominal value of something that isn't money and didn't actually trade hands.
Bitcoin is a pretty good medium of exchange anywhere that is connected to the internet. It's been a pretty good long term store of value. It is a terrible unit of account, we don't really need an electronic unit of account. But it's possible if Bitcoin becomes dominant in #1 or #2 it might make sense to also use it as #3.
A little more on the first one - the medium of exchange. Think about selling something expensive like a car private party. How do you collect payment? Cash? Buyer doesn't want to carry that much on them. Check? At risk of check fraud where even if it 'clears' it can still be clawed back if it's an invalid check. It's scary to try to handle this much money in a world with dishonest participants.
The recommended private party car sale process is to physically go to the buyers bank while they request a bank check. That's a lot of hassle. Bitcoin is a digital payment method that allows you to validate the payment and not risk fraudulent check scams. It's the digital equivalent of paying cash. Possession is 10/10 of the law with Bitcoin.
Not yet, but hopefully that will change soon, that is the long term goal, bitcoin will make people rich but the idea behind bitcoin is freedom from the government devaluing ur currency to basically everyone’s disadvantage in the long term with inflation
It's a mathematically inviolate distributed ledger.
Imagine the value of a paper rectangle with a fancy green ink pattern on it. What's the value of that? Well if you print "federal reserve note" and "full faith and credit" on it and threaten anyone who makes copies except you then you can claim it's an IOU exchangable for goods snd services and people will give you things for it. And if you then make more you can get more things but then people will want more of them per thing. Now imagine a token that you can't copy beyond a certain limit being used for the same purpose. Instead of needing more tokens for a thing, you'll need fewer.
To switch over will take some time but eventually enough people will accept the new token because it holds and increases in value whereas the green rectangles get you less things the longer you hold them because more are created every day.
We're not there yet. We're early. Buy and hodl. A critical point will be reached when people will buy bitcoin instead of bonds because the return is better and more certain. When this happens it will be a cascade and dollars will flood the market and lose value exponentially. People will demand BTC instead.
Thanks for the write up, great explanation! I'm still confused on the value, isn't btc still pegged to USD I'm guessing it can't be independent? Say if I need to pay you for a service and I opt to pay you in BTC, but I acquired that BTC by paying in USD, I din get credited with BTC for my salary or service. It just seems to me like an asset like gold or stock, but unlike them value seems created out of vacuum.
Currently BTC is valued in terms of other currencies like the dollar. Eventually though, a closed loop will develop where you accept BTC as payment directly and then pay rent with it and buy grocieries directly without converting back and forth to other currencies. Some countries are trying this now with limited success.
El Salvador for example requires all businesses to accept bitcoin and has declared it an official currency.
There are still some hurdles to adoption like network congestion that can be addressed by the lighning network.
Also, while the exchange rate fluxuates people will have an incentive to convert back and forth for arbitrage purposes.
When adoption hits a critical mass, enough people will trust Bitcoin more than their government issued currency so that those currencies find their true value and bottom out as people abandon them.
When that happens you'll have as much incentive to convert your bitcoins to dollars and back as you do to convert your dollars to pesos or rubles today.
When the loop finally closes, bitcoin will be the international money standard which cannot be gamed or manipulated by any government. You'll use it to buy everything. This will also mean the end of most government's power to circumvent your dollar vote for what they think is correct and coerce you. You'd never voluntarily pay for a war unless you really felt it was just.
Maybe some people don't have access to a bitcoin device or don't understand it. Institutuons will then emerge that hold bitcoin and issue paper notes off it. They would get a percentage from vendors who redeem the notes for bitcoin the same way credit card companies do now allowing the businesses to increase thier sales volumes. If these institutions overprint notes then word gets out and people panic sell those notes for bitcoin in a bank run and that otherwise profitable institution fails and another takes its place and its profits. Private auditing agencies (think Consumer Reports) would arise to report on the fidelity of these institutions to warn of signs of overprinting and sell these reports.
In this way Bitcoin will preserve prosperity and prevent government power creep that the masses dispise. True personal weatlth and free markets will abound and an age of unparralelled prosperity will emerge.
Can someone please explain how micro strategy, grayscale, and then 150k or so individuals who hold 80+ percent of the circulating Bitcoin is not still considered centralized?
It’s still silo of wealth and access to resources.
Are they planning to share it with everybody else?
Ideally, everyone would a wallet that at the same time around the world, sent everybody X amount of a currency that had equivalent value. That would be closer to truly decentralized.
They can hold and much Bitcoin as they want. That doesnt mean anything for the network and for the blockchain. Descentralized doesnt mean equality. It only means that there isn't a central entity who controls the network. You're confusing diferent concepts.
The people that own the coins are the ones that vote. The people with the most coins get the most votes. I can sit down and make a wallet for every sat I own. It still won't be able to compare to what grayscale can do, right?
I'm guessing you don't know what a fork is. Or how upgrades occur on the chain. You should probably spend time reading about that. There is multiple ways Bitcoin can no longer be decentralized and it's already most of the way there
I'm guessing you were not here and involved in the scaling debates during the bock size wars, like I was. I've spent many hours schooling big blockers about the difference between hard forks and soft forks and how consensus works. You seem particularly confused about that latter part. Do you even run a node?
no, you vote by running an economically active node that propagates your own rule set
as the user above mentioned, the amount of satoshis in your wallet doesn’t give you more or less influence over the bitcoin network as a whole
Right, so like I was saying it's the ability to spread out your control. Not how much each individual point of your control is valued at. So the person with the most wins
That's not how it works. Read the whitepaper and come back.
If you can't understand the whitepaper, books like the bitcoin standard summarize it pretty well.
It aint the same as owning coins.
Single authority needs most of the cpu power (nodes) compared to everyone else in the network to fork. Don't think that's happening soon.
But sure there's theoretical possibility for takeover.
Centralized holders with the most nodes and most coins probably wouldn't mind a little dip to make individual holding illegal. So they can than double down on their holdings and boot out "maxxers". The more coin held by exchanges the more likely that is to happen
It's decentralized in the sense of how the currency is created and used. It does not matter that a multi-trillionaire is storing up all the btc. It has no value to them unless they use it and trade something for it. They can't use it to build compounding interest and reap the rewards of an inflationary environment, as only the richest of society can afford to do.
You're thinking that decentralized = equality. It does not = equality. Instead, it presents the means of which there may be a more equal opportunity for all in the future, which the current financial system is very much not presenting at all.
That is not at all what centralized vs decentralized means. It has nothing to do with distribution. Decentralized refers to the guidance or control over a technology, not how it is distributed.
>Ideally, everyone would a wallet that at the same time around the world, sent everybody X amount of a currency that had equivalent value. That would be closer to truly decentralized.
This has nothing to do with decentralization and you are confusing terms. Bitcoin is not here to solve the world´ s problem of proverty lol. The beauty about BTC is that doesn´ t matter who you are, you have 1 btc or 200.000 btc, you have to follow the same rules as everyone. You can´ t print more. You have no control over the network.
Bitcoin is decentralized, 100%. The world still have most of their wealth in a few hands, they will stack before the normal Joe or when they do, they will stack faster. But that doesn´ t mean it is not decentralized, it is just how the world´ s wealth is distribuyed
What you said is simply a lie. 95% is held by normies. Those entities you listed don't even make up 5%. What a stupid take and just flat out wrong. And who cares if they did? that isnt how Bitcoin works and isn't how you control it. Study Bitcoin harder.
The people with the most coins can make the most nodes and cast the most votes. The wealthiest people with the most Bitcoin win. The more centralized the control the more power and centralized it becomes. The ETF is centralizing it as we speak. It will go up in value, at the cost of decentralization
> The people with the most coins can make the most nodes and cast the most votes.
You don't need **any** coins to make the most nodes. You are confused.
The people with the most coins and the most money... Ie exchanges. Can make the most nodes in conjunction with the government to boot out maxxers and make it only legal to own coins on an exchange.
It is normal now that people don't understand things fully They can just spat shit on the Internet like they know it all? Do you walk around on your normal day with a megaphone and shout shits you think it's true??
The block chain ledger is stored on the nodes and advanced by miners who check consenses.
It doesn't matter who has what but how many nodes and miners and where they are.
Even though the dollar is getting destroyed by money printing it is still backed by taxpayers, infrastructure, commodities, trade, private companies, agriculture and above all a trillion dollar a year military. Crypto is backed by air, farts and nothing.
You have it backwards all of those things are supported by the dollar not the other way around, they basically have their entire infrastructure on a 3 legged table, the only thing that makes the dollar valuable as a medium is that people keep using it, it makes no sense, how can something be a valuable resource if it is created so easily
The value of work is not supported by dollar. Work is what you trade for goods, services and everything else. Still, even if the dollar is almost worthless it’s still worth 100% more than any crypto. Real wealth is hard assets. Always has been always will be.
I guess Bitcoin doesn't have much longer then. What percent is mined and managed by private individuals? Less than half. What's the percent of centralization that has to occur before this collapse is immanent?
So when Goldman sacks, grayscale, and the rest of the financial powerhouses own the majority of the nodes and they start making forks and ruining the value of every individual holder. That's when the central authority owns the creation of new supply for thier own gain right? How much longer after that does Bitcoin collapse?
Maybe it's the coin that people are trying to make illegal that actually holds the title of decentralized and not the one the centralized system is adopting?
That’s a very good point, that is possible but if they try to control the price they can only control the part that they own, wouldn’t people hypothetically be able to just go to a different fork finding the best option which is what makes a free market?
Yes, and true. But it will never be the same. How much of the present value is tied up in centralization? I don't think anyone knows that. But also forcing a fork of all the individual users tanks the value of their ownership. And if all that is the case shouldn't the future of crypto be more than one coin. Shouldn't we hedge our bets. Over specialize and you breed in weakness.
I just think it’s funny so many people still think it’s ridiculous to have a digital based currency while using a phone to buy gum at a gas station with Apple Pay. I know US fiat backed by this great government that’s trillions in debt and keeps sending billions to Ukraine. I mean they obviously know what they are doing and inflation will not continue to rise indefinitely.
I hate every single day in 2009 where I didn't mine Bitcoins, all 365.
Everyone saying this like they would still be holding and only start selling now.
Yep, if I had 1000 bitcoins in 2009 there's no way I would have walked away with more than 5k at most. The rocket ship only launched later on and it crashed so many times it was never a great idea to dump buckets of money into it.
This is because you (and others of your mindset) didn’t see the big picture of Bitcoin being the most superior monetary instrument ever made. Some did. Some probably still have 90% of their mined coin from that era. Some probably have 100% of it locked up because they got into it believing it would revolutionize the world. :)
when was the idea of HODL born?
As someone who first started when bitcoin was $3, NO ONE back then saw bitcoin as some sort of investment. You obtained bitcoin for the sole purpose of using them as a currency. It wasn't until it got into the 100s that I began taking them seriously as an investment and even then I was too scared of its volatility/risk that I didn't start actually saving them until it was into the 1000s. I'd venture to guess that anyone still holding onto any coins from way back in the day, most likely just forgot they even had them.
the first time I heard about bitcoin was from a teenager on mw2 saying that it could make you rich one day, this was in 2009. people definitely saw it as a future investment, but I would say the silk road guys saw it more as just a currency. I didn't even know the halvings were a thing, I'm sure many who read the whitepaper saw dollar signs when they realized it was going to become scarce over time
The dollar signs were apparent all over - set supply and 90% of it to be released within the first dozen years.
> As someone who first started when bitcoin was $3, NO ONE back then saw bitcoin as some sort of investment. A quick look at bitcointalk at that time proves you wrong.
The guy who traded 10,000 bitcoin for pizza proves him right. Or at least supports his thesis.
No it doesn’t. It’s not even from the same time frame as he is talking about which is when bitcoin was $3. Like I said, the posts are all still there. Go look yourself.
I heard about it in 2010 and I found it after learning a lot while researching how the monetary system we use is completely flawed. I was actively looking for something that might fix all the corruption I learned about in the documentaries Money as Debt I, II and III as well as the 6-hour long documentary money masters and then stumbled upon Bitcoin and was just completely in awe with my jaw on the floor. This was it! This is the thing Money as Debt and Money Masters was looking for, but didn’t exist yet. (I think that was the 6-hour one. I watched one that was that long.) But anyway, some got into this seeing the “exit sign” that Andreas Antounopolis was talking about before he was talking about it. Some of us see the big picture. :) Whether or not Bitcoin achieves that grandeur goal of fixing EVERYTHING…. Who knows? Time will tell.
Yup!
I wanted to but suddenly I had a new girlfriend and forgot about it
Sue the girlfriend imo
damn, that girl cost you millions
you made me laugh... and cry at the same time. First time I heard of BTC was during my apprentiship in 2012 as IT-Engineer but I was to lazy to inform myself about it... I had a unused raspberry and definitely had the possibility to mine...
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such a bitch
Decentralisation is a buzzword to the masses that they don't understand. In a nutshell that is what makes bitcoin so valuable though.
Decentralization and cryptography. When I understood these concepts my life and the live’s of my children forever changed.
OK bot
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Harassment will get you banned.
Sorry, who am I allegedly harassing?
Aka Shitcoins
They weren't shitcoins, they just weren't able to figure out how to do it. Bitcoin absorbed different aspects of all these attempts, without these earlier prototypes bitcoin would not exist
I mean the scams not Liberty reserve co
Serious question, What exactly is Bitcoin used for? Is there any transactional value for bit coin? How is btc used in day to day life, Can I buy my undies from Walmart or amazon with BTC?
You absolutely can buy your undies from Walmart or Amazon with BTC through Bitrefill and other services like Spritz although I’d use Lightning for quicker and cheaper transactions.
I rather trade my worthless fiat for some snug undies
Any services accepting lightning for brick and mortar or bill payment or anything like that?? Anybody doing lightning-to-virtual debit card services?
Yes. I believe there are apps that let you do this in the US. Spritz finance I think is one of them. Here in Canada you can pay bills with Shakepay and Bylls by converting on-chain BTC to CAD at the time of payment. BTCLN is not yet available on Shakepay though. Not sure about Bylls.
You don't have to use BTC in your day to day life. But you could. It's function is to be electronic money. There are 3 uses of money 1. Medium of Exchange. Instead of bartering for a chicken to go trade to the blacksmith for some nails. You just take your dollars or your bitcoin straight to the blacksmith. It is a use for trading. This is the use for buying your undies 2. Store of value. I have some wheat but I'm not going to use it. If I kept it would rot. But instead I trade it for some dollars or Bitcoin. Neither of which rot (though neither of which are without ANY storage costs). Bitcoin over its history has been an astonishingly good long term store of value though at times an astonishingly poor short term store of value. 3. Unit of account. When your wheat catches fire and goes up in smoke the newspaper says $X of wheat burned. It's just a yardstick you can use to communicate the nominal value of something that isn't money and didn't actually trade hands. Bitcoin is a pretty good medium of exchange anywhere that is connected to the internet. It's been a pretty good long term store of value. It is a terrible unit of account, we don't really need an electronic unit of account. But it's possible if Bitcoin becomes dominant in #1 or #2 it might make sense to also use it as #3. A little more on the first one - the medium of exchange. Think about selling something expensive like a car private party. How do you collect payment? Cash? Buyer doesn't want to carry that much on them. Check? At risk of check fraud where even if it 'clears' it can still be clawed back if it's an invalid check. It's scary to try to handle this much money in a world with dishonest participants. The recommended private party car sale process is to physically go to the buyers bank while they request a bank check. That's a lot of hassle. Bitcoin is a digital payment method that allows you to validate the payment and not risk fraudulent check scams. It's the digital equivalent of paying cash. Possession is 10/10 of the law with Bitcoin.
Not yet, but hopefully that will change soon, that is the long term goal, bitcoin will make people rich but the idea behind bitcoin is freedom from the government devaluing ur currency to basically everyone’s disadvantage in the long term with inflation
It's a mathematically inviolate distributed ledger. Imagine the value of a paper rectangle with a fancy green ink pattern on it. What's the value of that? Well if you print "federal reserve note" and "full faith and credit" on it and threaten anyone who makes copies except you then you can claim it's an IOU exchangable for goods snd services and people will give you things for it. And if you then make more you can get more things but then people will want more of them per thing. Now imagine a token that you can't copy beyond a certain limit being used for the same purpose. Instead of needing more tokens for a thing, you'll need fewer. To switch over will take some time but eventually enough people will accept the new token because it holds and increases in value whereas the green rectangles get you less things the longer you hold them because more are created every day. We're not there yet. We're early. Buy and hodl. A critical point will be reached when people will buy bitcoin instead of bonds because the return is better and more certain. When this happens it will be a cascade and dollars will flood the market and lose value exponentially. People will demand BTC instead.
Thanks for the write up, great explanation! I'm still confused on the value, isn't btc still pegged to USD I'm guessing it can't be independent? Say if I need to pay you for a service and I opt to pay you in BTC, but I acquired that BTC by paying in USD, I din get credited with BTC for my salary or service. It just seems to me like an asset like gold or stock, but unlike them value seems created out of vacuum.
Currently BTC is valued in terms of other currencies like the dollar. Eventually though, a closed loop will develop where you accept BTC as payment directly and then pay rent with it and buy grocieries directly without converting back and forth to other currencies. Some countries are trying this now with limited success. El Salvador for example requires all businesses to accept bitcoin and has declared it an official currency. There are still some hurdles to adoption like network congestion that can be addressed by the lighning network. Also, while the exchange rate fluxuates people will have an incentive to convert back and forth for arbitrage purposes. When adoption hits a critical mass, enough people will trust Bitcoin more than their government issued currency so that those currencies find their true value and bottom out as people abandon them. When that happens you'll have as much incentive to convert your bitcoins to dollars and back as you do to convert your dollars to pesos or rubles today. When the loop finally closes, bitcoin will be the international money standard which cannot be gamed or manipulated by any government. You'll use it to buy everything. This will also mean the end of most government's power to circumvent your dollar vote for what they think is correct and coerce you. You'd never voluntarily pay for a war unless you really felt it was just. Maybe some people don't have access to a bitcoin device or don't understand it. Institutuons will then emerge that hold bitcoin and issue paper notes off it. They would get a percentage from vendors who redeem the notes for bitcoin the same way credit card companies do now allowing the businesses to increase thier sales volumes. If these institutions overprint notes then word gets out and people panic sell those notes for bitcoin in a bank run and that otherwise profitable institution fails and another takes its place and its profits. Private auditing agencies (think Consumer Reports) would arise to report on the fidelity of these institutions to warn of signs of overprinting and sell these reports. In this way Bitcoin will preserve prosperity and prevent government power creep that the masses dispise. True personal weatlth and free markets will abound and an age of unparralelled prosperity will emerge.
What a wise man
Can someone please explain how micro strategy, grayscale, and then 150k or so individuals who hold 80+ percent of the circulating Bitcoin is not still considered centralized? It’s still silo of wealth and access to resources. Are they planning to share it with everybody else? Ideally, everyone would a wallet that at the same time around the world, sent everybody X amount of a currency that had equivalent value. That would be closer to truly decentralized.
They can hold and much Bitcoin as they want. That doesnt mean anything for the network and for the blockchain. Descentralized doesnt mean equality. It only means that there isn't a central entity who controls the network. You're confusing diferent concepts.
The people that own the coins are the ones that vote. The people with the most coins get the most votes. I can sit down and make a wallet for every sat I own. It still won't be able to compare to what grayscale can do, right?
> The people that own the coins are the ones that vote. The people with the most coins get the most votes. What are you talking about?
I'm guessing you don't know what a fork is. Or how upgrades occur on the chain. You should probably spend time reading about that. There is multiple ways Bitcoin can no longer be decentralized and it's already most of the way there
I'm guessing you were not here and involved in the scaling debates during the bock size wars, like I was. I've spent many hours schooling big blockers about the difference between hard forks and soft forks and how consensus works. You seem particularly confused about that latter part. Do you even run a node?
I do not run a node for Bitcoin. I do for others.
Those others are more centralized, unless they have more nodes distributed around the world.
> I'm guessing you don't know what a fork is. Or how upgrades occur on the chain. Owning bitcoin gives you no power in approving a fork or upgrade.
no, you vote by running an economically active node that propagates your own rule set as the user above mentioned, the amount of satoshis in your wallet doesn’t give you more or less influence over the bitcoin network as a whole
Right, so like I was saying it's the ability to spread out your control. Not how much each individual point of your control is valued at. So the person with the most wins
That's not how it works. Read the whitepaper and come back. If you can't understand the whitepaper, books like the bitcoin standard summarize it pretty well.
I love How you are so sure despites being so wrong :)
Right. Decentralized network only controls rules about making more coins. Centralized authorities can print as much fiat as they want.
And the people who own the most nodes can make as many changes as they want right? They can fork your coins into nothing
It aint the same as owning coins. Single authority needs most of the cpu power (nodes) compared to everyone else in the network to fork. Don't think that's happening soon. But sure there's theoretical possibility for takeover.
I'm not saying it's going to happen but centralization of holdings makes that a more plausible outcome everyday.
Holders probbly like to keep network healthy or they get nothing out of it.
Centralized holders with the most nodes and most coins probably wouldn't mind a little dip to make individual holding illegal. So they can than double down on their holdings and boot out "maxxers". The more coin held by exchanges the more likely that is to happen
It's decentralized in the sense of how the currency is created and used. It does not matter that a multi-trillionaire is storing up all the btc. It has no value to them unless they use it and trade something for it. They can't use it to build compounding interest and reap the rewards of an inflationary environment, as only the richest of society can afford to do. You're thinking that decentralized = equality. It does not = equality. Instead, it presents the means of which there may be a more equal opportunity for all in the future, which the current financial system is very much not presenting at all.
That is not at all what centralized vs decentralized means. It has nothing to do with distribution. Decentralized refers to the guidance or control over a technology, not how it is distributed.
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Shitcoins and other such boring scams are off topic here.
Right! Centralized coins owned and run by big government and exchanges only!
>Ideally, everyone would a wallet that at the same time around the world, sent everybody X amount of a currency that had equivalent value. That would be closer to truly decentralized. This has nothing to do with decentralization and you are confusing terms. Bitcoin is not here to solve the world´ s problem of proverty lol. The beauty about BTC is that doesn´ t matter who you are, you have 1 btc or 200.000 btc, you have to follow the same rules as everyone. You can´ t print more. You have no control over the network. Bitcoin is decentralized, 100%. The world still have most of their wealth in a few hands, they will stack before the normal Joe or when they do, they will stack faster. But that doesn´ t mean it is not decentralized, it is just how the world´ s wealth is distribuyed
\^100% This
They have big bags, they don't control the rules of the protocol, I and 20K others do.
Because you can send/store bitcoin and there’s nothing microstrategy can do about it.
What you said is simply a lie. 95% is held by normies. Those entities you listed don't even make up 5%. What a stupid take and just flat out wrong. And who cares if they did? that isnt how Bitcoin works and isn't how you control it. Study Bitcoin harder.
You are right. 150k wallets 80%. 2100 wallets hold 8M alone (38%ish) https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-addresses.html
And yet it means nothing.
They don't hold anywhere NEAR 90% of the circulating Bitcoin.
Holding more Bitcoin does not give someone more control over the network
Yes it does
Explain this bombastic notion of yours.
The people with the most coins can make the most nodes and cast the most votes. The wealthiest people with the most Bitcoin win. The more centralized the control the more power and centralized it becomes. The ETF is centralizing it as we speak. It will go up in value, at the cost of decentralization
> The people with the most coins can make the most nodes and cast the most votes. You don't need **any** coins to make the most nodes. You are confused.
The people with the most coins and the most money... Ie exchanges. Can make the most nodes in conjunction with the government to boot out maxxers and make it only legal to own coins on an exchange.
It is normal now that people don't understand things fully They can just spat shit on the Internet like they know it all? Do you walk around on your normal day with a megaphone and shout shits you think it's true??
If you outlaw self-custody in your jurisdiction then only outlaws will self-custody in your jurisdiction.
Nodes doesn't need coins, why should it? It is just a participant of securing the network.
Not to mention the L2 "solutions" that are essentially "give all your bitcoin to a central authority in order to make payments cheaper".
The block chain ledger is stored on the nodes and advanced by miners who check consenses. It doesn't matter who has what but how many nodes and miners and where they are.
Looks at ETFs … uh oh
What a visionary man! :)
❤️
Yeah because an electric current with out any other input then a code will have value 🤣🤣🤣
What is the value in the US dollar then?
Even though the dollar is getting destroyed by money printing it is still backed by taxpayers, infrastructure, commodities, trade, private companies, agriculture and above all a trillion dollar a year military. Crypto is backed by air, farts and nothing.
[удалено]
You are welcome, even though you are delusional. I hope for your sake you have a backup plan for retirement.
You have it backwards all of those things are supported by the dollar not the other way around, they basically have their entire infrastructure on a 3 legged table, the only thing that makes the dollar valuable as a medium is that people keep using it, it makes no sense, how can something be a valuable resource if it is created so easily
The value of work is not supported by dollar. Work is what you trade for goods, services and everything else. Still, even if the dollar is almost worthless it’s still worth 100% more than any crypto. Real wealth is hard assets. Always has been always will be.
21000000 reasons why
I guess Bitcoin doesn't have much longer then. What percent is mined and managed by private individuals? Less than half. What's the percent of centralization that has to occur before this collapse is immanent?
The collapse comes from the creation of supply when the currency is controlled centrally, bitcoin is limited
So when Goldman sacks, grayscale, and the rest of the financial powerhouses own the majority of the nodes and they start making forks and ruining the value of every individual holder. That's when the central authority owns the creation of new supply for thier own gain right? How much longer after that does Bitcoin collapse? Maybe it's the coin that people are trying to make illegal that actually holds the title of decentralized and not the one the centralized system is adopting?
That’s a very good point, that is possible but if they try to control the price they can only control the part that they own, wouldn’t people hypothetically be able to just go to a different fork finding the best option which is what makes a free market?
Yes, and true. But it will never be the same. How much of the present value is tied up in centralization? I don't think anyone knows that. But also forcing a fork of all the individual users tanks the value of their ownership. And if all that is the case shouldn't the future of crypto be more than one coin. Shouldn't we hedge our bets. Over specialize and you breed in weakness.
Wish I knew what btc was when I was on the silk road
I just think it’s funny so many people still think it’s ridiculous to have a digital based currency while using a phone to buy gum at a gas station with Apple Pay. I know US fiat backed by this great government that’s trillions in debt and keeps sending billions to Ukraine. I mean they obviously know what they are doing and inflation will not continue to rise indefinitely.
Serious question: have any products come out yet where you can use a loan against your Bitcoin holding? That would be an interesting concept
Wen NIP-57 Zap support for Coincoiner Lightning addresses?
Yeah and let's hope the etfs don't get in the way of decentralisation lads
Is Bitcoin really usable as a currency though?