BItcoin : Top 2.5% own 95.8%

[12DrinkMore]

Talk about uneven wealth distribution.

 

https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-addresses.html

 

The top 2.5% of bitcoin owners possess 95.8% of all the bitcoins.

 

Or the top 1% own more than 87%

 

This is surely masking an unprecented massive transfer of wealth in the form of hard earned fiat currency from recent wannabee rich guys to long term holders of bitcoin......

 

So how skewed is the distribution?

 

Addresses richer than:

 

1 USD             100 USD     1,000 USD    10,000 USD    100,000 USD    1,000,000 USD    10,000,000 USD
20,053,613    7,323,557    2,596,315    769,041            163,566            19,932                   1,903

 

I think it would be reasonable to say that even if on paper the big wallets will lose out hugely when it collapses, they will also have safely moved a nice chunk into Mrs Yellen's fiat.

 

And it is another reason why bitcoin can never deliver on its promises, all the churn and liquidity is in very small amounts. The rest is sticking somewhere, useless for transactions.

[Dario]

Can you give the community the source of that article, please? Thank you

[12DrinkMore]

20 minutes ago, Dario said:

Can you give the community the source of that article, please? Thank you

 

The data source is in the post.

 

The words are my personal ramblings, which may be a load of cobblers.

 

But I am interested in hearing other opinions.

[welovethailand]

the top 1% own more than 87% ?

Those are the big banks.

Totally manipulated.

As with any bubble, there will be winners but mostly losers.

Winners are those who are not greedy

Know when to hold them, when to fold them, and when to walk away.

[steve73]

This is not too different from a more general wealth distribution.

 

Top 1% have 82% if you believe the latest Oxfam report.

 

https://www.rt.com/business/416644-worlds-richest-wealth-oxfam/

[12DrinkMore]

3 hours ago, welovethailand said:

the top 1% own more than 87% ?

Those are the big banks.

Totally manipulated.

As with any bubble, there will be winners but mostly losers.

Winners are those who are not greedy

Know when to hold them, when to fold them, and when to walk away.

 

?

 

The top 1% of bitcoin owners have been in from the very start, techies, enthusiasts and those making a very fortuitous punt.

 

There are zero banks in  among that group.

 

 

[MadMuhammad]

Kinda puts a dent in the argument that crypto's present opportunity to everyone, spreading the wealth argument dont ya think?

[seancbk]

The problem with most estimates is that they fail to account for the fact that the relationship between Person Holding Bitcoin, Wallet, and Address is a little complicated. It is not necessarily 1 : 1 : 1.

 

That is to say, it is not true by definition that one Person has one Wallet that uses a single Bitcoin Address.

 

For a start, a Person may hold many Bitcoin Wallets. And a Wallet can make use of many Bitcoin Addresses. (Indeed it is advisable to generate a new Address every time you use your Wallet for reasons of anonymity.) So the relationship can be 1 : Many : Many.

 

The owners of an exchange will own several Wallets — wallets for cold storage and hot wallets for when clients request withdrawals— containing the Bitcoins of its many clients.

 

We then have this relationship — Many People (millions of Bitfinex clients) : 1 Wallet (the Exchange’s cold storage Wallet) : 1 Address. We can actually see that Wallet on the blockchain:

 

Bitcoin Address 3D2oetdNuZUqQHPJmcMDDHYoqkyNVsFk9r is the richest Bitcoin Address in the Bitcoin Rich List.  But this is just the address of the Bitfinex Cold Wallet. It contains about 120,000 Bitcoin valued at $525 million, or 0.72% of all Bitcoins, bitcoins which are owned by millions of their clients.
 

 

In conclusion, the previous model of Bitcoin distribution fails because of the fundamental flaw that there is no clear-cut and predictable relationship between Persons Owning Bitcoin, Bitcoin Wallets, and Bitcoin Addresses.

[dutchberliner]

No buddy wrong as usual.

 

Those addresses are mostly controlled by custodian services and exchanges.

 

They hold Bitcoin for millions of other people.

 

 

[Calach]

Several of these addresses would be exchanges and the bitcoins they contain their users'. So under that concentration they probably are tens of thousands of persons, probably more. 

 

 

[ExpatOilWorker]

How liquid is Bitcoin actually?

What % is traded/changing hands daily? 

 

I know of people who have Bitcoins, but I am yet to meet a person who have ever sold any of his/her Bitcoins.

[seancbk]

11 minutes ago, ExpatOilWorker said:

How liquid is Bitcoin actually?

What % is traded/changing hands daily? 

 

I know of people who have Bitcoins, but I am yet to meet a person who have ever sold any of his/her Bitcoins.

 

The amount of Bitcoin that changed hands in the last 24 hours is 858.952 Bitcoins

 

or ฿286,047,072,520 THB

 

or $9,117,910,000 USD

I would say that is pretty good liquidity

[12DrinkMore]

1 hour ago, seancbk said:

 

The amount of Bitcoin that changed hands in the last 24 hours is 858.952 Bitcoins

 

or ฿286,047,072,520 THB

 

or $9,117,910,000 USD

I would say that is pretty good liquidity

 

That is a mix of bitcoin to alt-coin churn and transactions with real currencies such as the USD.

 

So far I cannot find data on the  volume of bitcoin <=> fiat transactions. And with numbers for the major exchanges? 

 

It is certainly nowhere near 9 billion USD. Just think how much money the exchanges would make on a percentage of that.

 

Can you help with a website?

 

That will help with answering

 

2 hours ago, ExpatOilWorker said:

How liquid is Bitcoin actually?

 

Unless someone can show me otherwise, every time a bitcoin is sold for real currency, a buyer with real currency has to come forward.

 

 

[lkn]

18 hours ago, dutchberliner said:

Those addresses are mostly controlled by custodian services and exchanges.

 

They hold Bitcoin for millions of other people.

Which seems to indicate that people do not care about a decentralized peer-to-peer currency, since 87% store their coins with a central custodian.

 

So we have just gone from a regulated system to an unregulated system with consumer protection nor insurance, but still with dominant central players.

[seancbk]

14 hours ago, 12DrinkMore said:

 

That is a mix of bitcoin to alt-coin churn and transactions with real currencies such as the USD.

 

So far I cannot find data on the  volume of bitcoin <=> fiat transactions. And with numbers for the major exchanges? 

 

It is certainly nowhere near 9 billion USD. Just think how much money the exchanges would make on a percentage of that.

 

Can you help with a website?

 

That will help with answering

 

 

Unless someone can show me otherwise, every time a bitcoin is sold for real currency, a buyer with real currency has to come forward.

 

 

 

Bitcoin only stats 

https://blockchain.info/stats

The info I gave in my previous post came from https://coinmarketcap.com/

 

[12DrinkMore]

51 minutes ago, seancbk said:

 

Bitcoin only stats 

https://blockchain.info/stats

The info I gave in my previous post came from https://coinmarketcap.com/

 

 

Yes, I have been there before.

 

I have still not been able to find statistics over the volume of bitcoin transactions that use fiat currency on the other side of the transaction.

 

Ie strip out all the bitcoin to alt-coin stuff and what is left?

 

 

[12DrinkMore]

23 hours ago, seancbk said:

We then have this relationship — Many People (millions of Bitfinex clients) : 1 Wallet (the Exchange’s cold storage Wallet) : 1 Address. We can actually see that Wallet on the blockchain:

 

This is confusing me.

 

I thought that the blockchain was supposed to indicate the actual owner. If these coins are being held in a common wallet, then surely the wallet owner owns the coins? And if they are being held "in trust" by the exchange, what regulatory and legal rights do the guys who think they own the coins actually have?

 

And this idea of "trust" I thought was one of the main properties that bitcoin was supposed to eliminate?

 

 

[phycokiller]

15 minutes ago, 12DrinkMore said:

 

This is confusing me.

 

I thought that the blockchain was supposed to indicate the actual owner. If these coins are being held in a common wallet, then surely the wallet owner owns the coins? And if they are being held "in trust" by the exchange, what regulatory and legal rights do the guys who think they own the coins actually have?

 

And this idea of "trust" I thought was one of the main properties that bitcoin was supposed to eliminate?

 

 

the blockchain has no record of owners. if you leave bitcoins in trust its just the same as leaving anything in trust. bitcoin doesnt suddenly make scammers honest or anything like that

[seancbk]

3 hours ago, 12DrinkMore said:

 

Yes, I have been there before.

 

I have still not been able to find statistics over the volume of bitcoin transactions that use fiat currency on the other side of the transaction.

 

Ie strip out all the bitcoin to alt-coin stuff and what is left?

 

 

 

 

I don't really understand what your issue is.  Do you not believe that there is a huge active market of people buying, selling and holding BTC as well as a large number of other cryptos.

 

You can see the Buy and Sell order books at bx.in.th  which are BTC to THB or THB to BTC

Live orders shown here    https://bx.in.th/THB/BTC/

 

Full order Book   https://bx.in.th/charts/THB/BTC/#orderbook


 

[speedtripler]

On 26/01/2018 at 9:23 AM, 12DrinkMore said:

 

The data source is in the post.

 

The words are my personal ramblings, which may be a load of cobblers.

 

But I am interested in hearing other opinions.

Cobblers.... /

[steve73]

This is further complicated since most BTC/USD transactions leave the "virtual" USD on the exchange, rather than converting it back to actual fiat. 

 

It typically costs around 5%+ to convert fiat to CC, and then a further cost to convert back to fiat (outwith an exchange), so unless you're cashing-out for good there's little point.