the difference is that nobody will rob you with inflation forcing you to spend money when you dont want to do this.

   Yes, it's true that patterns of accumulation would be unlikely to change. However, the political structure of the planet may end up becoming much more unified. There is the potential that "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts" and that unifying as one planet could reveal emergent properties (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence) in humanity and take us to another level of evolution. The laws of nature are unlikely to change, but a revolution is literally the beginning of a new cycle. Bitcoin may also facilitate interplanetary trade since its value is based on mathematics, a universal language, rather than politics or commodities which may have limited utility on planets with different atmospheres or technology.
       Wealth will likely concentrate again and again, but divorcing the value of currency from the fate of nations is likely to bring about changes. Death, decay, and corruption are a natural part of life, and so is renewal. Bitcoin is such a force of renewal.

as a bitcoin miner you are not one of the people working in the mines you are the owner operator, you make an investment, pay your expenses and keep the profit. the hardware in a sense are your workers and they perform the labour. this is text book case of capitalism.

the link between bitcoin and fiat means they are basically interchangeable. it follows that bitcoin economics will simply reflect economics as we know it - a minority of people holding the majority of wealth. yes there is a whole new arena of opportunities and some people will get rich but this is exactly the system we now have in place, nothing will have changed except the addition of a few more wealthy people.

economic opportunity is not economic revolution. your argument can be made for the internet itself as it has provided more economic opportunities (and made more people wealthy) with less barrier to entry than anything (including bitcoin) before it.

look, the point of the post was to get people thinking about the distribution and accumulation of bitcoin. it doesn't have to be the same as our current model. for example, and this is only a thought experiment, do not spam me what if you only got to keep 50% of your earnings and the rest were distributed across the network? every bitcoin user (ignoring the technical problems of identifying individual users) would have a steady stream of income - not much but they could always make more by mining themselves or investing. maybe even enough for basic living? yes they would be getting something for nothing but so what? most executives make salaries that are disproportionation to the amount of revenue that they are directly responsible for. if you want a economic revolution it can't just be the same old same old, you have to try something new.

It's a more democratic way of distributing money than anything else that's been before.

Gold? If you didn't have or couldn't physically use a pickaxe and shovel, you were always getting gold at a premium price. And you had to find it to begin with. Pretty exclusive.

Fiat? If you're not a large financial company, you cannot benefit from the initial distribution of fiat money. Absolutely exclusive.

The only thing that's stopping people mining BTC is the fear of the technical challenge. Well, and the upfront capital. And ASICs are less exclusive now, and that trend will only continue since USB key style ASICs with a 1.99 BTC price tag are available. Bitcoin, while not perfectly equal opportunities, still wins against the previous monetary paradigms.

I just read through Satoshi's paper again and no where does it say he invented this system to overthrow governments or create a revolution. Why does everyone want to use it for that? Isn't it enough to just screw over banks that are raping everyone with ridiculous fees? 

The problem is not specifically that a small percentage hold a majority, the problem is that small percentage can use that power to control everyone else.


I agree. The solution to this is to have a currency that can find its own value relative to a basket of goods so that it cannot be manipulated by those with a lot of the currency.


I also agree, and I have proposed some very advanced ideas to change this. See the link in my signature.


See the link in my signature.

It does. The people who manage the system and the people who help them and the people who help them and the people who help them and the people who help them and so on get bitcoins.


It is not linked, it is compared, and that is just what happens to everything. Castles, cars, candy and clothes all get compared to units of whatever people's local money happens to be. When the monies die the things still have their value, possibly extra value. It would be truly bizarre for two monies to coexist without there being an exchange rate between them.

An example of linked would be the dollar and the cent.

I'll let you in on my current revolutionary theory. Don't tell anyone though. It's a secret. I think BFL is going to ship en mass within the next month or two. I just bought a shitload of Bitcoins to add to my mining savings. When the diff skyrockets because of the mining increase price will follow and I'm gonna sell all, move to Thailand and wage war on a bottle of Scotch for the rest of my life. What do you think. Good plan?

Bitcoin will revolutionize our current economic system because it gives individuals the ability to opt-out of fiat currencies and transact or save in a currency that bankers have no control over.



Sure it does.  New bitcoins are distributed to the miners that process the transactions, validate the blockchain, and secure the network.  This is a brilliant way to distribute bitcoins because it rewards those that are providing value and offers an incentive to join the network and become a miner.  With fiat currencies, newly created money is distributed to bankers, politicians, those with political connections, and people that are taking on debt and living beyond their means at the expense of savers.  With Bitcoin, wealth is accumulated by those who choose to save, those who invest wisely, or those who provide goods and services that others are willing and freely choose to pay for.  With fiat, it's the bankers, politicians, and people with political connections that accumulate the wealth.



New bitcoins are distributed to miners according to the amount of hashing power they contribute to the network.  If you're like me and don't mine, then you can purchase bitcoins that someone else mined at market value.  It doesn't get any more fair than that.



We have to have exchanges because it takes time to transition to a new currency.  This sort of thing doesn't just happen overnight, especially when you're talking about the world's reserve currency.  We are still in the early stages of transitioning to honest, sound money.  It's going to take a while, you'll just have to be patient.  As more and more people come to understand the benefits of Bitcoin, more of their transactions will be in Bitcoin and there will be less need to exchange back and forth between fiat.

Gold isn't a commodity.  That's what bankers want us to think.  Gold is money.  There is also an exchange rate between euros and dollars.  Does this mean that the euro is a commodity?



Yes, a minority of people have the majority of bitcoins right now, but over time they will be sold or spent and that wealth will be spread out to others.  Clearly, the Bitcoin monetary system is the best alternative out there right now because it in no way resembles the current fiat monetary system that bankers and politicians are so fond of.

It's also important to remember that one of Bitcoin's greatest features is that it is completely voluntary.  As of right now, there is no banker or politician forcing anyone to use bitcoins.  If there is some aspect of it that someone considers unfair, they don't have to use it.  In fact, anyone is free to copy the code, modify it to their liking, introduce a new currency and then let the free market determine it's value.

By distribution and accumulation I am referring to the bias in capitalistic markets wherein people with more wealth can more easily increase their wealth by investing. Over time the total wealth of a country sits in the hands of a very small minority of the population. Governments redistribute some wealth through taxation and government spending (i.e. healthcare, education etc) but over time the disparity grows. Bitcoin does nothing to address this. A bitcoin based economy will have the same disparity over time.

Agreed that compared is a better word.