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Comment by pyman

7 hours ago

Is this info correct?

- 2.4 million bitcoins are lost forever. Their owners, for one reason or another, can't access their wallets. No insurance, no guarantees, nothing.

- 1.1 million are owned by a mysterious person who sits at the top of the pyramid.

- 2.3 million belong to investors and speculators, who make money by pumping and dumping.

- 1 million are owned by banks, the same institutions the mysterious man said his system would replace.

- 1.6 million are held by whales: billionaires, money launderers, narcos, weapons dealers, and so on.

- 1.4 million are still left to be mined, but only a handful of rich people with servers worth millions can actually mine them.

- The rest are owned by individuals who see it as a long term investment.

- It's a digital currency most people don't use to buy or sell anything. The only ones making transactions are banks, investors, and the rich.

- And if you own even a tiny bit of bitcoin, and read something like this, you go ballistic and end up siding with the banks, investors, and the rich to keep the system going.

I can't think of a worse system to fight inequality.

The banks won.

2 comments

pyman

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zahlman  4 hours ago

> 2.4 million bitcoins are lost forever

I don't have access to the sources for your numbers, but you fail to explain why this is a problem. Physical bills get lost or destroyed all the time, too.

> the same institutions the mysterious man said his system would replace.

I'm unaware of Nakamoto making any such claim. At most there was a goal to provide an alternative to the fiat currency system (https://cointelegraph.com/learn/articles/what-is-the-purpose...).

It turns out that people - most notably merchants - are thus far uninterested in using it that way. Government fiat is how everyone is accustomed to valuing legal tender. Further, government currently will not allow for fractional reserve banking to be done using Bitcoin deposits. FRB is essential to how our credit system works - although I imagine it would also cause a problem for Bitcoin anyway, since its value is supposed to depend on artificial scarcity.

> only a handful of rich people with servers worth millions can actually mine them.

Historically, Bitcoin can be and has been mined on consumer hardware. Whether this is profitable will depend on several factors, but it's one of the reasons that consumer grade graphics cards have increased in price lately. I'm unaware of any major economies of scale here.

> And if you own even a tiny bit of bitcoin, and read something like this, you go ballistic

You have apparently been around HN for 16 years; you should know better than to post like this.

> I can't think of a worse system to fight inequality.

This is a complete non sequitur. "Fighting inequality" is not as far as I can tell a goal of Bitcoin, and in general new technologies have no moral obligation to do so.

> The banks won.

This is fundamentally at odds with your own claim that criminals - especially money launderers - hold large amounts of Bitcoin.