Quote from: the_darkness on May 28, 2014, 08:25:13 PM

What I am trying to say is: what about people who don't even know about Bitcoin now?

The answer I gave earlier applies to people that haven't heard about bitcoin too:

A very credible argument can be made that a new user benefits most strongly by joining the dominant network. The largest network would tend to have the widest acceptance, greatest liquidity, largest market capitalization, and the strongest user base (allowing the new user to benefit as per Metcalfe's Law). If bitcoin tends to appreciate on average at a faster rate than a basket of alt-coins, this only gives more reasons for new users to prefer bitcoin.

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Why would they have any incentive to join a system that favours a relatively tiny group of what in their view are "early adopters"?

This is the "I-don't-want-to-make-early-adopters-rich" fallacy. It doesn't actually make sense. The benefit to early adopters moving forward in time is exactly the same as to adopters who choose to buy today. Early adopters may already be rich, but if that's true then it's already happened. As of right now, it is just as risky to continue to hold, as it is to choose to buy.

Consider this: Alice and Bob each have $1,000,000 in financial assets. Alice is an early adopter of bitcoin and holds half her wealth in BTC. Bob just learned about bitcoin today, and holds 100% of his wealth in US treasuries and stocks. The risk Bob takes by moving $500,00 into BTC simply puts him at the same risk level as Alice moving forward in time. The fact that Alice's bitcoins performed well in the past has no bearing on portfolio allocation moving forward. Alice choosing to continue to hold $500,000 in bitcoin is just as risky as Bob deciding to buy $500,000 of BTC.

The public cannot make early adopters un-rich by not investing in bitcoin. And by investing in bitcoin, the public makes early and current investors rich to the exact same degree from this point in time moving forward.