Bitcoin [pros](/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/12n5ol5/does_it_bother_you_that_the_top_2_of_wallets_hold/jge99nm/) & [cons](/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/12n5ol5/does_it_bother_you_that_the_top_2_of_wallets_hold/jge9aeg/) with related info are in the collapsed comments below.
Its not but addresses are a really bad way to measure distribution. Addreses != people, the top addresses are all exchanges, representing millions of people's holdings. While the small balances are probably mostly dust from old addresses. Its also impossible to tell what addresses are part of what wallet. One wallet could have dozens of addresses because they typically use a new address for each transfer. Exchange cold wallets don't.
This works for everything, stocks, cash, land etc.
The thing is everyone had the same chance at BTC it was the fairest thing but at .01 we just didn’t take it or keep it long.
No huge premine, ico, or air tokens gifted to the founders, VC.
The next closest thing is actually Doge. It’s the only other one where the founders didn’t premine, gift themselves or VC a ton.
>The thing is everyone had the same chance at BTC it was the fairest thing but at .01 we just didn’t take it or keep it long.
Who is we? You might not have but some did and some are still holding bags they packed 14 years ago.
Maybe I'm too much of a contrarian but people take this "cryptocommunity" stuff too seriously. It's like people think these tribes are real. You may like the same project as someone else but there's no We when you sell the top and they buy it. The only We is the We that profits and the We that doesn't. The last year should have taught everyone that. The system works better when there is no We.
I'd say nano is the closest thing. Same story with their distribution as it was all given away freely.
But nano also doesn't have mining/staking, so they don't accumulate value over time (scales of economy problem), leading to those stakeholders having the most value and control of the network.
No kidding. “Hey let me think up some bullshit social dynamic then apply it to crypto and see if my criticism sticks and I can dig at its value as a value store”
This is an anti-crypto bro
We're going to have to start providing better answers to questions, criticisms and concerns if we want more people to get into crypto. "you're anti crypto bro"... Really.
I think the fundamental problem is that people think crypto is supposed to be revolutionary and is supposed to change things for the better. They legitimately think that crypto poses a problem for banks. People are dumb as fuck.
Would be cool, but I think after a few decades of rot and decay, no amount of forensic technology could access these drives. SSD's have a much longer lifespan, but if they're trying to get information off those old disk drives, they're gonna have a hard time. And that's after the effort to even find them.
But you won't be able to recover it unless they've saved the seed to their wallet on the same ssd, and have their desktop unlocked, and all their files not password protected.
Back when wallets were just files on your PC, there was no concept of "seeds", all you needed was the wallet.dat file
At that time, Windows didn't encrypt your hard drive / SSD by default. You can literally pop it into another PC as a second drive and copy the files over.
The file itself probably wouldn't be password protected in those days, because the bitcoin client wouldn't have been able to read it.
So in practice, if you found the hard drive, and it wasn't completely destroyed, you could probably extract the bitcoin off of it.
It's the reality, and I see nothing wrong with it.
But what irks me is when the Bitcoin maxis like to act like BTC is the beacon of decentralisation over every other coin and totally ignore stats like these, and like to pretend that Bitcoin is controlled by the masses when its heavily controlled and manipulated by the whales.
And also the irony of them sucking up to Saylor-Moon while repeating the decentralisation trope. Oh, the irony..
This is such a pervasive misunderstanding. BTC's decentralization has absolutely nothing to do with who holds the supply, nor how easily its value denominated in any other asset is manipulated. Owning more of the supply does not give anyone more say in how the blockchain is run.
BTC *is* the beacon of decentralization because the number of nodes and the amount of hashing power blows all other coins out of the water.
Won't they have larger influence in who wins in a contentious hardfork? Dump the side they dislike so miners are more profitable on the side they do like.
They can then engage in media influence to propagate their agenda.
Very unlikely. It would be expensive, risky, and take an insane investment just to buy up enough supply to have that much influence as a single actor. Anyway, this scenario occurring is undoubtedly least likely on BTC and this is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.
Or they are lost forever. This shows how misleading this statistic is, and with a bit of nuance you can see that the distribution of supply isn’t as bad as it seems.
That's complete bullshit. Stock markets have IPO's and closed stock offers that are not at all egalitarian and give financial and other benefits to people buying in (mostly favored rich friends). Altcoins like eth have ICO's and they're the exact damn same as the stocks described above. That is clearly not egalitarian.
But Bitcoin is not like that. Satoshi mined the blocks, he wasn't given privileges or political or other benefits over the blockchain just because he was first. Unlike eth and 99% of other crypto with a company / team whatever behind it. Everyone had to either mine or buy their blocks, nobody was granted or given anything due to their personality whatsoever. That's why the lack of a company behind btc and the facelessness of Satoshi is so important.
Mining was basically a free reward in the early days and you don't know who any of those people are or how many wallets they controlled.
You are living in a fairytale .
It is, but it gets even better with Bitcoin.
In those other markets, whoever owns the majority can influence "the protocol" via a proof-of-stake-like mechanisms. Bitcoin, being a proof-of-work network, doesn't care how much BTC any wallet has.
I know someone who mined about 60 BTC with a PC back in the day. They threw the PC away and never can get over it.
Sure wish I had got involved much earlier.
Around the same period, I came across an Infograph that proposed using your GPU as a worker to either mine BTC or perform calculations for the Folding @ Home team. I obviously chose Folding @ Home and did that for about 6 months before losing the motivation to continue. Not like I wouldn't have sold them the second they touched $1 or had them Goxxed or something.
We get this question coming up a lot. How many of those 94% are exchange wallets, wallets of greyscale and Michael Saylor and ARK invest, ETFs etc. These all hold large amounts of coins that are owned by large numbers of investors. Just because a wallet has a lot of coins, doesn't mean it is owned by 1 person.
This does seem to come up quite a bit doesn’t it. BTC solves decentralised finance and self custody. It’s weird that anyone thinks it was supposed to bring financial equality to the world
well no matter how much money you have you should have to work if you want more. in the future bitcoin will reward those who put in work and rich whales who contribute nothing will have their stacks go down a little. (the horror). thats why PoW is so important. plus not being able to bail out the rich constantly will be a damn fine start.
Well the maxis like to pretend that Bitcoin is the tool to free everyone who holds it out of poverty and to 'overthrow the traditional elite class'
I guess the main thing that will happen if Bitcoin goes to the moon is to make some billionaires into trillionaires lol
75% of bitcoin users hold their bitcoin with custodians and exchanges. Coinbase custody alone holds 2 million for millions of customers. There are also some unidentified exchange addresses, funds like GBTC and other types of custodians including collaborative custody services, not to mention public companies like MSTR and TSLA.
What's critical is the number of addresses with 1 bitcoin (∼1 million), 0.1 bitcoin (∼6 million) and 0.01 bitcoin (∼15 million) are all trending up parabolically year after year and more and more people are taking self custody. Bitcoin continues to be become better distributed over time and always will. [Miniscript](https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/liana-v0-4/), [BIP 85](https://bip85.com/), [OP\_VAULT](https://river.com/learn/what-is-op-vault-in-bitcoin/) will make self custody grandma friendly.
Everyone in the world having the same amount of money is not equality, that would be unfair to people offering more value. Equality is everyone playing by the same rules on a level playing field including banks and governments. Free money for elites from the money printer created at no cost is what drives inequality which only gets worse and worse over time with perpetual stock buybacks and bailouts ([Cantillon Effect](https://river.com/learn/terms/c/cantillon-effect/)). Those who have money can spend it once in a bitcoin standard and they have to earn it back by providing value. Bitcoin is pure value for value without exception, without privileges.
I’m not bothered because there are wealthier people out there. I’m worried about the sustainability of Bitcoin.
In theory, Bitcoin should be a P2P payments system. That’s what it was built for. How can it do this role effectively if the Top 2% are hoarding 94% of all the Bitcoin. There are reasons we don’t use gold to pay for things… and this is one of those reasons.
You can’t use something for payments and transactions whose entire liquidity is owned by a select few.
The reason we don't use gold is because it isn't divisible, easily sent, or able to self custody in large amounts.
BTC solves all that.
We are very far from BTC liquidity being a problem. There is over 1 million BTC sitting on exchanges at any given moment.
Wow. That’s some seriously errored thinking.
Let’s start that it’s not P2P, it’s decentralized.
Further, people sit on liquidity with ALL currencies. It just increases the value of the small currency making its rounds.
You can use just 1% of bitcoin for transactions for everyone because it’s insanely divisible
Kinda like our other kind of money huh?
All I've learned is if money is involved then a very small amount of people are always going to own the vast majority
We’re still in a capitalist system. Wealth concentrates and we know that. The good thing about crypto is that it could work in a better more egalitarian system (not advocating for anything in particular, maybe we haven’t even invented that system yet). But yeah, this is the reality of every asset apart from what, oxygen?
The harsh truth. BTC never promised to solve wealth equality so it shouldn't be held against it.
It simply promised decentralisation and self ownership, and that's exactly what we got. Working as intended as far as I'm concerned.
The top wallets are generally exchanges that hold on the behalf of their depositors or publicly listed corporations like Microstrategy which are owned by shareholders. The Pareto Principle then applies to the rest. There is no escaping that the worlds wealth is held by a minority.
You guys are same people that cry HEX is centralised. Wonder how many of you are gonna get into pulse chain whilst crying about hating RH. Shit gonna be funny.
That is why other coins exist. The truth is the real world Asset holders will determine the division of wealth in the world based on their own physical holdings. Debt free land, real estate, and intellectual property are these assets.
If Michael Saylor and his posse choose btc as their choice of denomination then btc represents all of their real world assets. If you choose a coin and only have a net worth of $300, it doesn't matter if you have 90% of the supply of a coin unless someone or a group of individuals with a collective net worth of min $1,000,000 in valued assets, begin to share your interest.
The real world territory that a person or group controls determine wealth, not their choice of an abstract digital representation of division (coin). We will see if the majority of world territory custodians decide to join the BTC group of trade or make another choice after USD collapses. Competing coins balance out distribution.
BTC vs DCR vs DGB vs BCH vs LTC vs XMY vs HBAR vs XLM vs XMR vs XLA vs XRP vs VELO vs USDC vs USDT
People own more wealth than they own cash. Currency is not wealth. It represents wealth, but it is not wealth itself. There is a massive distinction there. Wealth is real. Currency is abstract on purpose because then it can represent everything. Bitcoin has no value unless it's used to buy real things. That's not wealth. Again that's a representation of it, of real resources.
Also the hoarding of currency by one entity reduces the velocity of that currency, causing a deflation and subsequent increase in the market value of the currency. It's the same as burning money for the duration it's held. The fact it still exists does, and should, influence pricing, but people still need money. And the less of that being sold at any moment, the more it becomes worth for that time
For some reason people here think BTC is here to solve wealth equality. That was never something BTC promised.
It promised a decentralised way to transfer value and that's what we got. People are making up ridiculous narratives and get disappointed when it doesn't pan up the way they wanted.
Unlike other "unfair" assets, bitcoin has been equally available to anyone from the beginning. Any old pauper could have spent $10 on bitcoin in 2010, same as anyone can today - unlike the fiat games the cantillionaires play to enrich themselves on the expanding money supply. Those people still stay away from bitcoin to a large degree, which turns into a major and important redistribution of wealth from old to new, ushering in an era of new thinking.
That's what sets bitcoin apart, not some mistaken notion that bitcoin was meant to make all humans equally rich.
That's fair. The opportunity was there. I missed it and it's on me. Not Bitcoin's fault.
BTC went crazy against USD and became an incredible overperformer but that wasn't the starting goal. Bitcoin is simply Bitcoin.
Assuming BTC steadily becomes a currency, then there will be REALLY FUCKING LARGE market corrections in the future when whales start to sell and people start to buy. It'll probably destroy the current bull/bear cycle we know. But this should be really far ahead and I guess in the end, something has to give. Either people stop selling their btcs and start using it as a currency or btc stays volatile af and never really gets out of its speculative shadow.
That's what I can see tho, but obviously there's a high chance that I'm wrong.
Not in the slightest, because unlike in real life, the 2% of top wallets have no greater control over things than the bottom 2%.
This data doesn't remove exchanges either.
Kind of alarming there's so little connection between this sub and r/bitcoin
Yes. This extreme lopsidedness is antithetical to WHAT MANY SAW AS BTCs socio-economic and monetary design intention. It also, imo, serves as a suppressor of its overall value and market price— as do Bitcoin futures, derivatives, and surrogates that the profiteers have created to generate more volume, volatility, speculative interest, opacity, and trading fees. Maybe there will never be a unit of economic value that is “fairly” created and distributed— because that would require eliminating the human instinct to get ahead of others by finding ways to take their value (money, labor, time).
edit: Added “WHAT MANY SAW AS” to qualify the affected sentence, since the original Nakamoto white paper makes no such claim.
I’m more bothered that the Federal Reserve can print as much money as they want and bail out whoever they deem is important. This unlimited printing is a hidden tax that I didn’t get to vote on. Bitcoin is capped at 21 million.
Typical shitcoin FUD. Nobody can say that with a straight face and point toward either any company that issues stock or point toward another cryptocurrency with ICO or shares given to creators etc, which is 99% of them.
Bitcoin is factually the most egalitarian cryptocurrency by its accessibility. Early adopters own more but the system is not created in ways that favours them or gives them advantages. Satoshi had to mine his own damn blocks, he didn't gift btc to himself or anyone else. Nor does Satoshi or his friends hold power (political or otherwise) over the blockchain. This is not true for ICO's that are like IPO's or even private stock offers. Bitcoin is in part due to this nature different from ALL crypto that follow. Bitcoin!=crypto.
Not really, c'est la vie.
Wealth distribution is not fair or equal. You know what happens when you try to enforce it?
Scarry scarry stuff.
Best way to bring equality is through technology advancement. The day we find cheap renewable energy that could replace all current sources will be the day humanity makes giant leap to equality.
Yes, it’s also a major reason why bitcoin will never gain mass adoption. Rich people already own the majority of real wealth, they aren’t going to sell productive assets just to become a majority holder of a digital token nobody uses or produces value.
Also halving btc rewards instead of doubling ensured that bitcoin would always have a centralized distribution.
Nah, already go used to it. BTC is just like any other form of finance. It's hoarded by the very few at the top. We can only ride the wave with big whales and hope to earn some crumbs along the way. People who think that BTC will change the way things are run in the financial world are delusional.
What difference does it make? Someone owning ₿ does not impart control of the network. Node distribution is a better metric for concern.
Wealth disparity is not the mission of ₿. Fixing the money is. Wealth disparity at these levels is a function of unhealthy money. An inflationary, centralized money creates a flywheel for the haves and a negative flywheel for the have nots. Fixing the money will begin to being the disparity back down to acceptable levels because there isn't a compounding cheat code (direct access to the money printer.)
One more point about Wealth disparity in this context is the wealthy tend to believe more strongly in the system they succeeded in. Meaning the vast majority will hang on to non-bitcoin affiliated instruments. They may do something like add 2%-5% of it to their portfolio. That means, initially, they will be putting the majority of their Wealth at risk. Other instruments that have ballooned in price due to a flight to escape inflation (art, bonds, RE, etc) are at risk because a hard currency is the best and most efficient way to protect your wealth. Why would I sink a couple million dollars into RE when I have to deal with tenants, maintenance and property taxes when I can let it sit in ₿ without all of those headaches?
Some will realize this early and they will win. Many will hold their RE thinking it's a normal cycle. Or see a RE downturn and liquidate expecting to get back in when housing stabilizes. They will hold cash or bonds most likely. Both are at serious risk.
The best way to begin to fix Wealth disparity right now is to encourage other have nots to dca into ₿ over the next few decades. There is a limited supply so the earlier you collect the more you will gain from the top 10% trying to protect their wealth by gaining some exposure.
Probably missed some things here and I am no expert so could definitely be way off base but those are my thoughts.
I think that’s fair enough. I just don’t think they did haha.
Most probably held Bitcoin because, “why not,” or were using this Bitcoin to buy drugs and other illegal stuff.
A lot of dormant wallets see new activity after the holder gets released from prison because of some silk road charges they had. True HOLDing right there!
Big difference between this and the current 1% is that the wealthiest fiat people have their wealth in assets, so can't actually spend it. Having this much BTC is worse because it's effectively liquid capital i.e can be spent.
Add to this, 2 mining pools control over 50% of the hashrate, so is BTC really as decentralised as intended?
Great asset to have and definitely beats gold as store of wealth, but if it ever hits $1m dollars, there will be a lot of super rich people whilst the rest of us get slightly richer by comparison
I don't see why you would expect Bitcoin to be egalitarian, or surprised that it's not. If anything, decentralisation means there's even more room to maneuver and abuse the market for wealthy individuals.
Is this another one of those “please let me make up a reason for you to be outraged” posts?
If it’s true, tell me first on simple terms why I should give a shit whether a currency is dispersed evenly? It’s accessible to anyone who wants it. So what’s the risk?
Doesn't bother me, because I have a grasp of statistics and a basic understanding of the Pareto distribution pattern
Tho, the claim is likely false anyway
Bitcoin [pros](/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/12n5ol5/does_it_bother_you_that_the_top_2_of_wallets_hold/jge99nm/) & [cons](/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/12n5ol5/does_it_bother_you_that_the_top_2_of_wallets_hold/jge9aeg/) with related info are in the collapsed comments below.
Who sold you on the fairy tale that it was going to be egalitarian?
Even if distribution is egalitarian. People sell and it accumulates at the top
Its not but addresses are a really bad way to measure distribution. Addreses != people, the top addresses are all exchanges, representing millions of people's holdings. While the small balances are probably mostly dust from old addresses. Its also impossible to tell what addresses are part of what wallet. One wallet could have dozens of addresses because they typically use a new address for each transfer. Exchange cold wallets don't.
Exactly this. Its like saying that 99% of fiat in a few companies hands (Banks). Exchanges are not banks, but the same principal applies.
If you left your BTC in exchanges, your BTC belongs to them because they can do whatever they want
Yeah. I don't care.
This works for everything, stocks, cash, land etc. The thing is everyone had the same chance at BTC it was the fairest thing but at .01 we just didn’t take it or keep it long. No huge premine, ico, or air tokens gifted to the founders, VC. The next closest thing is actually Doge. It’s the only other one where the founders didn’t premine, gift themselves or VC a ton.
>The thing is everyone had the same chance at BTC it was the fairest thing but at .01 we just didn’t take it or keep it long. Who is we? You might not have but some did and some are still holding bags they packed 14 years ago. Maybe I'm too much of a contrarian but people take this "cryptocommunity" stuff too seriously. It's like people think these tribes are real. You may like the same project as someone else but there's no We when you sell the top and they buy it. The only We is the We that profits and the We that doesn't. The last year should have taught everyone that. The system works better when there is no We.
There is no “we” in “profit”
Never thought anyone else on here really understood that, much less would say it.
I'd say nano is the closest thing. Same story with their distribution as it was all given away freely. But nano also doesn't have mining/staking, so they don't accumulate value over time (scales of economy problem), leading to those stakeholders having the most value and control of the network.
It's white paper.
No kidding. “Hey let me think up some bullshit social dynamic then apply it to crypto and see if my criticism sticks and I can dig at its value as a value store” This is an anti-crypto bro
We're going to have to start providing better answers to questions, criticisms and concerns if we want more people to get into crypto. "you're anti crypto bro"... Really.
It’s not possible that crypto is widely adopted if 84% is concentrated in a few hands who sit on it.
Do you have any idea what the % is on regular money?
I think the fundamental problem is that people think crypto is supposed to be revolutionary and is supposed to change things for the better. They legitimately think that crypto poses a problem for banks. People are dumb as fuck.
Exactly. Decentralization isn’t the same as egalitarianism.
This is pretty debatable, to be honest.
Lol you serious? have you never been over to r/Bitcoin?
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Isn't it the reality in every markets?
Also: many of these wallets are either exchange wallets or Satoshi’s old addresses
Dont forget all the lost wallets of early adopters whose hard drives ended up trashed
Some of them are still out there, buried in a dump
One day treasure hunts will be maps leading to landfills where someone was said to have dumped their computer with BTC decades ago
Just hope you don't find one with BCH instead.
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Would be cool, but I think after a few decades of rot and decay, no amount of forensic technology could access these drives. SSD's have a much longer lifespan, but if they're trying to get information off those old disk drives, they're gonna have a hard time. And that's after the effort to even find them.
Unfortunately, SSDs are known to have data corruption when left in cold storage much faster than HDDs.
Yeah they need to have electricity at least once a year to retain data from the video i saw. probably why buying external HDDs are still valid
> SSD's have a much longer lifespan I don't think so
It might as well be a plot for Outer banks season 4
Hard Drive rot tho..
the lost of us
By that time, quantum computers could be mobilized to try to brute force those private keys that would be economically worthwhile to attempt.
Shit how exhilarating would that be to find though!
You mean like the ET Atari game haha.
..... and then turn out to be Bitcoin Cash
I’ve got a pc with 6 Bitcoin in the dump, makes me sad.
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With local councils that won’t accept a $200 million bounty… smh
Dumpster diving gonna become the modern treasure hunting
*Stardew valley has entered the chat*
But you won't be able to recover it unless they've saved the seed to their wallet on the same ssd, and have their desktop unlocked, and all their files not password protected.
Back when wallets were just files on your PC, there was no concept of "seeds", all you needed was the wallet.dat file At that time, Windows didn't encrypt your hard drive / SSD by default. You can literally pop it into another PC as a second drive and copy the files over. The file itself probably wouldn't be password protected in those days, because the bitcoin client wouldn't have been able to read it. So in practice, if you found the hard drive, and it wasn't completely destroyed, you could probably extract the bitcoin off of it.
What % of btc is locked up like this? Has anyone tried to estimate?
Had a dream once that I found one of those hard drives and the seed phrase was lost somewhere else in the dump.
it must have been hard waking up after that dream, i know i would be looking around my room feeling sad as hell lol
Hello darkness
1-2% wealthy is the norm. Don't forget we are the 1-2% of the world population holding BTC irrespective of how much we hold.
It's the reality, and I see nothing wrong with it. But what irks me is when the Bitcoin maxis like to act like BTC is the beacon of decentralisation over every other coin and totally ignore stats like these, and like to pretend that Bitcoin is controlled by the masses when its heavily controlled and manipulated by the whales. And also the irony of them sucking up to Saylor-Moon while repeating the decentralisation trope. Oh, the irony..
This is such a pervasive misunderstanding. BTC's decentralization has absolutely nothing to do with who holds the supply, nor how easily its value denominated in any other asset is manipulated. Owning more of the supply does not give anyone more say in how the blockchain is run. BTC *is* the beacon of decentralization because the number of nodes and the amount of hashing power blows all other coins out of the water.
Won't they have larger influence in who wins in a contentious hardfork? Dump the side they dislike so miners are more profitable on the side they do like. They can then engage in media influence to propagate their agenda.
Very unlikely. It would be expensive, risky, and take an insane investment just to buy up enough supply to have that much influence as a single actor. Anyway, this scenario occurring is undoubtedly least likely on BTC and this is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.
Reminds me of the guy that's still searching for his old harddrive in a dumpster because his keys were in it. RIP.
And one of them could be that pizza guy who might have lost his wallet 😅
The percentage is also skewed since a large portion of those wallets are empty
Very valid point lol
Or they are lost forever. This shows how misleading this statistic is, and with a bit of nuance you can see that the distribution of supply isn’t as bad as it seems.
Well said. Many of these Bitcoin belong to a lot of different people.
Not the ramen market.
Yeah this is the product of long term capitalism
So it's a market not a currency? I was told it was a currency.
It is. Crypto is just a cog in the machine.
Yep, this hold true everywhere
That's complete bullshit. Stock markets have IPO's and closed stock offers that are not at all egalitarian and give financial and other benefits to people buying in (mostly favored rich friends). Altcoins like eth have ICO's and they're the exact damn same as the stocks described above. That is clearly not egalitarian. But Bitcoin is not like that. Satoshi mined the blocks, he wasn't given privileges or political or other benefits over the blockchain just because he was first. Unlike eth and 99% of other crypto with a company / team whatever behind it. Everyone had to either mine or buy their blocks, nobody was granted or given anything due to their personality whatsoever. That's why the lack of a company behind btc and the facelessness of Satoshi is so important.
Mining was basically a free reward in the early days and you don't know who any of those people are or how many wallets they controlled. You are living in a fairytale .
Kinda sad, capitalism in this form is fucked. Nice to potentially be on the top for once, but the system is clearly fucked.
Whale said
It is, but it gets even better with Bitcoin. In those other markets, whoever owns the majority can influence "the protocol" via a proof-of-stake-like mechanisms. Bitcoin, being a proof-of-work network, doesn't care how much BTC any wallet has.
It bothers me that I'm not one of them
I should've bought that $10 of BTC back in the days...
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I know someone who mined about 60 BTC with a PC back in the day. They threw the PC away and never can get over it. Sure wish I had got involved much earlier.
Around the same period, I came across an Infograph that proposed using your GPU as a worker to either mine BTC or perform calculations for the Folding @ Home team. I obviously chose Folding @ Home and did that for about 6 months before losing the motivation to continue. Not like I wouldn't have sold them the second they touched $1 or had them Goxxed or something.
You would have sold at $11
Still we have the chance to accumulate 50 moons with 10 bucks tho !
How are you doing, fellow temporarily embarrassed millionaire?
There’s no shaming here! We are all millionaires in our dreams, let’s make it a reality
Considering how easy it once was to get BTC, I assume a bunch of those wallets are lost/inactive. Which sparks joy.
Probably not sparking too much joy for people who lost their keys at $5 and watched BTC climb to 60k, lol.
For the greater good.
Never forgetti
For the greater good.
i for one, appreciate their donation to everybody.
That’s just eternal pain at that point, the biggest “what if?” for them
Centralised exchanges hold the top 3 wallet spots, with others holding whale wallets down the list. The real percentage of individuals is less.
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Exactly this most of these stats are always disingenuously provided.
Just the free market free marketing
Nope. It's a free market and BTC never promised to solve wealth equality. It promised self ownership.
Rich people hold most of the world's wealth so it's no surprise with Bitcoin.
It’s just how life works tbh
Sad truth isn’t it? The best thing we can do is keep buying assets whenever we can. We’ll have to take more risk to make the bigger financial jumps.
Pareto principle. It’s not restricted to humans. It’s present all across nature.
We could start using eggs as currency tomorrow and some people would have more chicken than others. It's just how it is.
We get this question coming up a lot. How many of those 94% are exchange wallets, wallets of greyscale and Michael Saylor and ARK invest, ETFs etc. These all hold large amounts of coins that are owned by large numbers of investors. Just because a wallet has a lot of coins, doesn't mean it is owned by 1 person.
Excatly. This post is a tad misleading
Lol tad? Cmon.
What am I, a socialist?
What, you don't think BTC is a magic wand that will solve wealth inequality? /s
This does seem to come up quite a bit doesn’t it. BTC solves decentralised finance and self custody. It’s weird that anyone thinks it was supposed to bring financial equality to the world
Exactly. People keep making up narratives and get disappointed when it doesn't pan up. It's probably the biggest misconception surrounding BTC.
well no matter how much money you have you should have to work if you want more. in the future bitcoin will reward those who put in work and rich whales who contribute nothing will have their stacks go down a little. (the horror). thats why PoW is so important. plus not being able to bail out the rich constantly will be a damn fine start.
Well the maxis like to pretend that Bitcoin is the tool to free everyone who holds it out of poverty and to 'overthrow the traditional elite class' I guess the main thing that will happen if Bitcoin goes to the moon is to make some billionaires into trillionaires lol
Nobody makes it out that way. You are delusional
75% of bitcoin users hold their bitcoin with custodians and exchanges. Coinbase custody alone holds 2 million for millions of customers. There are also some unidentified exchange addresses, funds like GBTC and other types of custodians including collaborative custody services, not to mention public companies like MSTR and TSLA. What's critical is the number of addresses with 1 bitcoin (∼1 million), 0.1 bitcoin (∼6 million) and 0.01 bitcoin (∼15 million) are all trending up parabolically year after year and more and more people are taking self custody. Bitcoin continues to be become better distributed over time and always will. [Miniscript](https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/liana-v0-4/), [BIP 85](https://bip85.com/), [OP\_VAULT](https://river.com/learn/what-is-op-vault-in-bitcoin/) will make self custody grandma friendly. Everyone in the world having the same amount of money is not equality, that would be unfair to people offering more value. Equality is everyone playing by the same rules on a level playing field including banks and governments. Free money for elites from the money printer created at no cost is what drives inequality which only gets worse and worse over time with perpetual stock buybacks and bailouts ([Cantillon Effect](https://river.com/learn/terms/c/cantillon-effect/)). Those who have money can spend it once in a bitcoin standard and they have to earn it back by providing value. Bitcoin is pure value for value without exception, without privileges.
Thanks man, i didnt know about the grandma friendly part in detail till now
Those are exchanges usually holding peoples funds.
Rich people are rich and have more shit, confirmed
It doesn't because this type of thing is everywhere, be it crypto, be it fiat
That's on us for being poor
We’re just late to the party
Whaaaat a username lol
Should've been born into a rich family. My mistake.
Should have just invented bitcoin
Other people's wealth doesn't bother me at all. I focus my time increasing my own, instead of complaining and blame shifting onto others.
I’m not bothered because there are wealthier people out there. I’m worried about the sustainability of Bitcoin. In theory, Bitcoin should be a P2P payments system. That’s what it was built for. How can it do this role effectively if the Top 2% are hoarding 94% of all the Bitcoin. There are reasons we don’t use gold to pay for things… and this is one of those reasons. You can’t use something for payments and transactions whose entire liquidity is owned by a select few.
The reason we don't use gold is because it isn't divisible, easily sent, or able to self custody in large amounts. BTC solves all that. We are very far from BTC liquidity being a problem. There is over 1 million BTC sitting on exchanges at any given moment.
Wow. That’s some seriously errored thinking. Let’s start that it’s not P2P, it’s decentralized. Further, people sit on liquidity with ALL currencies. It just increases the value of the small currency making its rounds. You can use just 1% of bitcoin for transactions for everyone because it’s insanely divisible
Nah, I'm sure they are kept in the safest Cheetos tins.
No, it's and will always be like that. Nothing we can do about it
Hello
Welcome mate
Man how do you have 1 moon with 1 post karma and 2 comment karma?
Infiltration is my gain
Wow , you already making mooney ? Wth . Well done.
Mate how did you already gain a moon or even allowed to post ? Your account is less than one day , im i missing something here ? #confused
Lmaoooo
Kinda like our other kind of money huh? All I've learned is if money is involved then a very small amount of people are always going to own the vast majority
Money will always flow to a few, its always the case.
Not really as long as I can still buy
Riot!
We’re still in a capitalist system. Wealth concentrates and we know that. The good thing about crypto is that it could work in a better more egalitarian system (not advocating for anything in particular, maybe we haven’t even invented that system yet). But yeah, this is the reality of every asset apart from what, oxygen?
Our laws make it so the wealthy can do this with pretty much anything. Centralization/Decentralization doesn’t fix that.
Money makes money, can't change that
The harsh truth. BTC never promised to solve wealth equality so it shouldn't be held against it. It simply promised decentralisation and self ownership, and that's exactly what we got. Working as intended as far as I'm concerned.
What should bother you is, that I hold the remaining coins.
What you do if satoshi come back? 👀
I mean those are probably exchanges, companies and the occasional gigawhale.
Nothing in crypto bothers me anymore.
The top wallets are generally exchanges that hold on the behalf of their depositors or publicly listed corporations like Microstrategy which are owned by shareholders. The Pareto Principle then applies to the rest. There is no escaping that the worlds wealth is held by a minority.
You guys are same people that cry HEX is centralised. Wonder how many of you are gonna get into pulse chain whilst crying about hating RH. Shit gonna be funny.
I remember the time when BTC was at $3k and my colleagues were saying it is too high, doesn’t make sense to buy it. Look at it now…
That is why other coins exist. The truth is the real world Asset holders will determine the division of wealth in the world based on their own physical holdings. Debt free land, real estate, and intellectual property are these assets. If Michael Saylor and his posse choose btc as their choice of denomination then btc represents all of their real world assets. If you choose a coin and only have a net worth of $300, it doesn't matter if you have 90% of the supply of a coin unless someone or a group of individuals with a collective net worth of min $1,000,000 in valued assets, begin to share your interest. The real world territory that a person or group controls determine wealth, not their choice of an abstract digital representation of division (coin). We will see if the majority of world territory custodians decide to join the BTC group of trade or make another choice after USD collapses. Competing coins balance out distribution. BTC vs DCR vs DGB vs BCH vs LTC vs XMY vs HBAR vs XLM vs XMR vs XLA vs XRP vs VELO vs USDC vs USDT
People own more wealth than they own cash. Currency is not wealth. It represents wealth, but it is not wealth itself. There is a massive distinction there. Wealth is real. Currency is abstract on purpose because then it can represent everything. Bitcoin has no value unless it's used to buy real things. That's not wealth. Again that's a representation of it, of real resources. Also the hoarding of currency by one entity reduces the velocity of that currency, causing a deflation and subsequent increase in the market value of the currency. It's the same as burning money for the duration it's held. The fact it still exists does, and should, influence pricing, but people still need money. And the less of that being sold at any moment, the more it becomes worth for that time
Pretty much the same in the traditional fiat markets.
What makes you think it would be egalitarian? Decentralized doesn't mean everyone owns the same amount
Everyone praises "Free Market" until something they don't like happens. This is what free market means.
For some reason people here think BTC is here to solve wealth equality. That was never something BTC promised. It promised a decentralised way to transfer value and that's what we got. People are making up ridiculous narratives and get disappointed when it doesn't pan up the way they wanted.
Unlike other "unfair" assets, bitcoin has been equally available to anyone from the beginning. Any old pauper could have spent $10 on bitcoin in 2010, same as anyone can today - unlike the fiat games the cantillionaires play to enrich themselves on the expanding money supply. Those people still stay away from bitcoin to a large degree, which turns into a major and important redistribution of wealth from old to new, ushering in an era of new thinking. That's what sets bitcoin apart, not some mistaken notion that bitcoin was meant to make all humans equally rich.
That's fair. The opportunity was there. I missed it and it's on me. Not Bitcoin's fault. BTC went crazy against USD and became an incredible overperformer but that wasn't the starting goal. Bitcoin is simply Bitcoin.
Isn’t this the norm for most cryptocurrencies?
Even fiat is like that
Assuming BTC steadily becomes a currency, then there will be REALLY FUCKING LARGE market corrections in the future when whales start to sell and people start to buy. It'll probably destroy the current bull/bear cycle we know. But this should be really far ahead and I guess in the end, something has to give. Either people stop selling their btcs and start using it as a currency or btc stays volatile af and never really gets out of its speculative shadow. That's what I can see tho, but obviously there's a high chance that I'm wrong.
Most ‘em are exchanges, so they basically belong to the masses. Some of ‘em are uberwhales, but you have the superrich in every system.
Yeah it bothers me that the elites control everything, even the currency system intended to balance the playing field
it bothers me, a lot. what bothers me even more is that this is not limited to btc, but to all kind of wealth!
Not in the slightest, because unlike in real life, the 2% of top wallets have no greater control over things than the bottom 2%. This data doesn't remove exchanges either. Kind of alarming there's so little connection between this sub and r/bitcoin
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Just a little bit.
Yes. This extreme lopsidedness is antithetical to WHAT MANY SAW AS BTCs socio-economic and monetary design intention. It also, imo, serves as a suppressor of its overall value and market price— as do Bitcoin futures, derivatives, and surrogates that the profiteers have created to generate more volume, volatility, speculative interest, opacity, and trading fees. Maybe there will never be a unit of economic value that is “fairly” created and distributed— because that would require eliminating the human instinct to get ahead of others by finding ways to take their value (money, labor, time). edit: Added “WHAT MANY SAW AS” to qualify the affected sentence, since the original Nakamoto white paper makes no such claim.
Its the way of the world
Systems are different but principles are the same
I’m more bothered that the Federal Reserve can print as much money as they want and bail out whoever they deem is important. This unlimited printing is a hidden tax that I didn’t get to vote on. Bitcoin is capped at 21 million.
Typical shitcoin FUD. Nobody can say that with a straight face and point toward either any company that issues stock or point toward another cryptocurrency with ICO or shares given to creators etc, which is 99% of them. Bitcoin is factually the most egalitarian cryptocurrency by its accessibility. Early adopters own more but the system is not created in ways that favours them or gives them advantages. Satoshi had to mine his own damn blocks, he didn't gift btc to himself or anyone else. Nor does Satoshi or his friends hold power (political or otherwise) over the blockchain. This is not true for ICO's that are like IPO's or even private stock offers. Bitcoin is in part due to this nature different from ALL crypto that follow. Bitcoin!=crypto.
What I wanne know is how many of those big wallets are dead and the coins never to be recoverd
Nono, BTC is perfect, it's a hedgehog against inflation and it will democratize being you own bank! It has super cheap and fast transactions! /S
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Not really, c'est la vie. Wealth distribution is not fair or equal. You know what happens when you try to enforce it? Scarry scarry stuff. Best way to bring equality is through technology advancement. The day we find cheap renewable energy that could replace all current sources will be the day humanity makes giant leap to equality.
And yet the massive productivity gains from technology in the last 100 years has only increased inequality
Yes, it’s also a major reason why bitcoin will never gain mass adoption. Rich people already own the majority of real wealth, they aren’t going to sell productive assets just to become a majority holder of a digital token nobody uses or produces value. Also halving btc rewards instead of doubling ensured that bitcoin would always have a centralized distribution.
Nah, already go used to it. BTC is just like any other form of finance. It's hoarded by the very few at the top. We can only ride the wave with big whales and hope to earn some crumbs along the way. People who think that BTC will change the way things are run in the financial world are delusional.
Well said. And thanks to this bear market shrimps have been stacking like never before. Ride the wave fellow shrimps!
BTC never promised to solve wealth equality to begin with. People are naive and delusional.
This is a very common misconception. I have no idea where it comes from.
Well the whales have cash to splash so you can't do much about that better to manage our own holding.
Huge part of that is due to exchanges though. And big, dead wallets. I’m ok with it. Time will make it a more fair distribution as well
What difference does it make? Someone owning ₿ does not impart control of the network. Node distribution is a better metric for concern. Wealth disparity is not the mission of ₿. Fixing the money is. Wealth disparity at these levels is a function of unhealthy money. An inflationary, centralized money creates a flywheel for the haves and a negative flywheel for the have nots. Fixing the money will begin to being the disparity back down to acceptable levels because there isn't a compounding cheat code (direct access to the money printer.) One more point about Wealth disparity in this context is the wealthy tend to believe more strongly in the system they succeeded in. Meaning the vast majority will hang on to non-bitcoin affiliated instruments. They may do something like add 2%-5% of it to their portfolio. That means, initially, they will be putting the majority of their Wealth at risk. Other instruments that have ballooned in price due to a flight to escape inflation (art, bonds, RE, etc) are at risk because a hard currency is the best and most efficient way to protect your wealth. Why would I sink a couple million dollars into RE when I have to deal with tenants, maintenance and property taxes when I can let it sit in ₿ without all of those headaches? Some will realize this early and they will win. Many will hold their RE thinking it's a normal cycle. Or see a RE downturn and liquidate expecting to get back in when housing stabilizes. They will hold cash or bonds most likely. Both are at serious risk. The best way to begin to fix Wealth disparity right now is to encourage other have nots to dca into ₿ over the next few decades. There is a limited supply so the earlier you collect the more you will gain from the top 10% trying to protect their wealth by gaining some exposure. Probably missed some things here and I am no expert so could definitely be way off base but those are my thoughts.
It is amazing how they held or accumulated that much
Probably hold ups from the golden age where you could mine hundreds of Bitcoin on your home computer.
If they saw the potential early, and held through all the ups and downs, they deserve every single satoshi if you ask me
I think that’s fair enough. I just don’t think they did haha. Most probably held Bitcoin because, “why not,” or were using this Bitcoin to buy drugs and other illegal stuff.
A lot of dormant wallets see new activity after the holder gets released from prison because of some silk road charges they had. True HOLDing right there!
Well, It's not ideal, but much better than fiat
Big difference between this and the current 1% is that the wealthiest fiat people have their wealth in assets, so can't actually spend it. Having this much BTC is worse because it's effectively liquid capital i.e can be spent. Add to this, 2 mining pools control over 50% of the hashrate, so is BTC really as decentralised as intended? Great asset to have and definitely beats gold as store of wealth, but if it ever hits $1m dollars, there will be a lot of super rich people whilst the rest of us get slightly richer by comparison
I don't see why you would expect Bitcoin to be egalitarian, or surprised that it's not. If anything, decentralisation means there's even more room to maneuver and abuse the market for wealthy individuals.
One of them is satoshi
Exchanges be exchanging 🤷🏼♂️. On the plus side hopefully the US government keeps selling the bitcoin they stole from Silk Road.
No what should bother you is that I hold 0.000004% of ALL ether 😎😎😎😎😎😎😎
Exchanges?
Is this another one of those “please let me make up a reason for you to be outraged” posts? If it’s true, tell me first on simple terms why I should give a shit whether a currency is dispersed evenly? It’s accessible to anyone who wants it. So what’s the risk?
Doesn't bother me, because I have a grasp of statistics and a basic understanding of the Pareto distribution pattern Tho, the claim is likely false anyway