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A comment on Joseph Stiglitz: 'We should shut down the cryptocurrencies'. Parent comment

Re:Joseph Stiglitz: 'We should shut down the cryptocurrencies' by Geee on Friday May 27, 2022 @03:41PM (#31533964)
It doesn't concentrate wealth, because it's a zero-sum game. The only way to acquire bitcoin is to be productive and contribute to society. Otherwise, they'll have to spend their bitcoin. Fiat monetary system, on the other hand, allows creating more money for those who are already wealthy, i.e. wealth is constantly transferred from the poor to the rich.

Consumerism is caused by forced spending and growth through inflation. People who spend less are punished.

The article you linked looks just at bitcoin addresses, which is wildly inaccurate method, because it's possible to create infinite amount of addresses. In addition, it's impossible to know how many people are behind those big addresses which belong to exchanges, investment funds, nation states and so forth. This article[0] is more accurate, and puts the number at 2% of entities own 71.5% of bitcoin, where entities could still be multiple people.

[0] https://insights.glassnode.com/bitcoin-supply-distribution/

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Re:Joseph Stiglitz: 'We should shut down the cryptocurrencies' by moistly on Friday May 27, 2022 @10:47PM (#31537173)
So it is very accurate to say 5% of the actual bitcoin participants—a very small number of people—own a supermajority of the currency, that the 8 billion of us are to share.

Brilliant.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Joseph Stiglitz: 'We should shut down the cryptocurrencies' by Geee on Saturday May 28, 2022 @04:11PM (#31543355)
All of them are not individuals, and similar power law distribution applies to all kinds of wealth.
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Re:Joseph Stiglitz: 'We should shut down the cryptocurrencies' by monkey_monkey on Friday May 27, 2022 @04:25PM (#31534470)
> The only way to acquire bitcoin is to be productive and contribute to society

This actually made me laugh.

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Re:Joseph Stiglitz: 'We should shut down the cryptocurrencies' by Geee on Friday May 27, 2022 @06:45PM (#31535800)
Not sure what are you laughing at. It's the nature of hard money, like bitcoin and gold. Their production cost is close to their market value, which means that you can acquire them only by mining or by trade, which both require work. No one can profit by creating them from thin air, like fiat money.
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Re:Joseph Stiglitz: 'We should shut down the cryptocurrencies' by monkey_monkey on Saturday May 28, 2022 @03:17AM (#31538285)
Literally all you have to do is invent a new coin.

Also - to acquire Bitcoin: https://xkcd.com/538/

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Re:Joseph Stiglitz: 'We should shut down the cryptocurrencies' by Geee on Saturday May 28, 2022 @07:38AM (#31539505)
Good luck trying to sell your coin to bitcoiners.
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Re:Joseph Stiglitz: 'We should shut down the cryptocurrencies' by monkey_monkey on Saturday May 28, 2022 @10:50AM (#31540774)
If you're trying to imply that no one who holds Bitcoin would sell to buy other coins, then I think your view of Bitcoiners may need to be recalibrated.

https://www.reddit.com/r/terraluna/comments/rs8hfv/how_to_bu...

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Re:Joseph Stiglitz: 'We should shut down the cryptocurrencies' by Geee on Saturday May 28, 2022 @04:20PM (#31543443)
Why do you think that creating a new coin and trying to sell it is the easiest way to get bitcoin? Most people think that it's not very easy, and buy bitcoin from an exchange.
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