Quote from: rpietila on August 24, 2016, 09:12:48 PM

Quote from: SchemerDreamer on August 24, 2016, 08:19:09 PM

Quote from: rpietila on August 24, 2016, 08:02:54 PM

about 100 people have 10k or more, 150-200 people have 5k or more.

Just a little while ago you could buy 5000 XMR for under 10 BTC.. And it stayed that way for a long time.. You really think there are only ~200 people out there with higher balances than 5k?

I have written threads about the specifics of the model how these can be calculated. Instead of referring to those, I try to write it again in less formal but more understandable way.

1. Number of coins (XMR) is known, 12,700,000.

2. There is a largest holding. We don't know how large it is but my belief is more than 500,000 and less than 5,000,000 XMR. I am assuming 1,000,000 in the beginning of the deduction.

3. There is the smallest holding that matters. Anything below that is considered dust, and its owners don't count. Let us use 1 XMR because it's a round figure. Usually I prefer about $2 worth.

The above is true because it just is. So how can we know anything about how the coins are owned by people?

The answer is statistical probability. The number of coins each owner has, is a random variable. Therefore, the probability of someone owning 231 XMR (or: any number between 231-231.999999999999) has to be very near the probability of someone owning 232 XMR (or: any number between 232-232.999999999999). Or if not, there needs to be a valid explanation.

Another rule is called power law, and it says that the top end of many statistical phenomena, tends to behave so that if the largest value is 1, the second, third, etc. largest values are close to 1/2, 1/3, etc (or: the set [1; 1/2; 1/3; ...] is a good fit to the set of actual values).

Therefore, with the initial guess that the largest owner has 1,000,000 XMR, we can first construct the power law "elite" of 1,000 owners who own anything between 1,000 XMR (1,000th richest) and 1,000,000 XMR (1st richest). In total, the 1,000 largest owners have 7,500,000 XMR.

This answers your question. The reason there are surprisingly little people who fulfil "owns at least X XMR" is that to satisfy statistical continuity, there has to be people owning 2x that amount, and the number of those people tends to be 1/2x the number owning the smaller amount, and this goes all the way until the largest holding.

So the TOP-1000 who have 1,000 XMR or more, collectively own 7,500,000 XMR. The rest, with smaller holdings, are much more in number, but altogether own only 5,200,000 XMR.

There is a scenario universe for the possible assumptions. It is possible to decide sigma levels and make a more complicated multi-scenario calculation. But it does not really matter.

Really appreciate the detailed response, that def makes sense. It just initially seemed hard to believe due to the relativity low amount of BTC it used to take to achieve 5K but you make some very valid points, thanks