Quote from: bitbeg on December 07, 2013, 04:33:49 AM

...and over half the Bitcoins that will ever exist are already in the hands of such a small amount of people (let's say 1 million?), what would be the repercussions?

As it stands today, a huge chunk of people are left out.

Those who:

- don't have any money to 'invest'
- are without a computer or internet connection
- don't know about Bitcoin
- can, but are unwilling to buy into Bitcoin for any given reason
- are incarcerated, sick, comatose, etc.

The rich can still buy, so they'll never be out of the loop. Besides, they hold value elsewhere which they can always sell for whatever the currency will be.

Forgetting the madness of speculative greed, and just concentrating on those who believe that Bitcoin can one day be the reserve world currency/money-- do you believe that such a disproportion in future wealth is something that's going to be good for humanity?

I always thought that one of the ideas behind Bitcoin would be to somehow 'stick it' to the rich/banks/governments. However, if the best case scenario (or one of them) becomes a reality, the thought of the future disparity makes my stomach turn. As it stands, 1/7000th of the world population already owns 50-60% of the total sum of the future 'money', and most of them are hording.

The possibility of this outcome alone makes Bitcoin the ultimate divider of people and predestines it for failure. The failure can, and most likely will, see it become what it once was-- a niche for a specific type of transaction or completely disappearing, or it will be a failure of humanity on an epic scale.

Quote from: bitbeg on December 08, 2013, 01:39:42 PM

Quote from: zimmah on December 08, 2013, 12:14:06 AM

if it ever comes that far, the current owners of bitcoin can only gain goods by spending their bitcoins.

unlike the current wealthy elite, they can not just print more money.

eventually even the richest bitcoiners will go broke if they keep spending their bitcoins.

True, but that still wouldn't change the fact that the richest Bitcoiners came upon an extreme amount of wealth and others did not. In fact, they came about the coins by attributing a value to them that literally comes from thin air, much in the same way as printed money.

No, see, you are missing some steps. Bitcoin won't "become the sole reserve currency" with the current distribution. The Federal Reserve, the ECB and the PBOC aren't going to put out press releases saying "We've adopted bitcoin as the reserve currency. We don't have any. Can you sell us some?"

The banks need to acquire them first. That means buying them from people. That means changing the bitcoin distribution. In particular, the central banks would need to gather many, many bitcoins before they could consider using it as a reserve.

Your analysis is very static. You don't see the system as being a living, moving thing. But I figure your post is much more political than it is analytical.