"Bitcoin has gained widespread attention globally in 2013 and is the first online currency based on a peer to peer network without any central authority or third parties. Its market capitalization reached US$ 8.5 billion in December 2013. However, despite its popularity some issues like
network security (thefts),
anonymity (privacy) and wealth distribution (inequality) have plagued it. Of considerable importance is the last issue of unequal wealth distribution as it may create a huge socio-economic burden for the society. A group of researchers estimated that the GINI coefficient for the network was at an all time high of 0.985 in Jan 2013 and that the rich were getting richer as the network grew. In the present work it has been strived to determine how the GINI actually increases or decreased depending upon the wealth distribution. For doing this a raw transaction of data of more than 36 million transactions has been sourced and a list of all users and their wealth in the network has been computed. The final results are very alarming as GINI has increased to 0.997 by the end of 2013 and the market share of top 10 holders alone has reached 6.6% of the entire market. Therefore, the rich have actually got richer and steps should be taken to curb such a wealth accumulation model in the network."
It seems bad news for bitcoin price.
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-13-0755-3_15It could be true. It wouldn't be surprising if one of the contributing factors is the fact that there were a lot of investors who panic dumped at the bottom of the bear market, that essentially transferred BTC to the hands of the elites who recognise the cycles within the market, leading to an increase in inequality of distribution.
There are some in this thread that say that this stat doesn't matter at all in reflecting distribution inequality, while others that say it does effectively. The truth is probably somewhere in between. At the very least it does show a problem with people's blind trust with centralised platforms to hold their coins.
But I'm just wondering, could you give examples of BTC's "network security" and "anonymity" being under fire in recent years? I couldn't think of any major developments that would hurt BTC in these regards.