Due to Bitcoin's supply issuance schedule, it's fair to say that those who buy bitcoin early achieve (exponentially) outsized gains.
Based on what we've seen so far, adoption looks something like: cryptographers -> early adopters -> suits/elite -> the masses
Given that the exponential nature of adoption and returns, doesn't Bitcoin further increase wealth equality? So that the elite are even richer than the everyone else?
To be a bit more specific, what I'm envisaging is the new world to include three groups of people, the elite (aka "the 1%" of the old world), the early adopters (aka "the 1%" of the new world) and the masses (the remaining 98% of people).
Before bitcoin maybe top 2% of people owned 80% of the wealth. But after bitcoin, perhaps top 2% would own 95% of the wealth (approx only to illustrate point).
Thoughts?
I'm not sure that Bitcoin does increase wealth inequality - I think that it is an ongoing process that happens regardless of Bitcoin. The rich get richer every single day, simply because it is extremely hard to outspend their various sources of income. They will have huge stock portfolios which generate money in the form of dividends (companies paying out their profits) which usually get reinvested to buy more shares, so the dividends increase next quarter or next year - only a small fraction is usually siphoned off to pay living expenses. Bitcoin is just another storage vessel for their money and they are more than happen to join the hype train if they're advisors are showing them massive gains on certain types of investment.