<story><title>The Bitcoin Whales: 1,000 People Who Own 40 Percent of the Market</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-08/the-bitcoin-whales-1-000-people-who-own-40-percent-of-the-market</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>clarkmoody</author><text>Government-issued currencies usually come with legal tender laws and citizens are required to pay taxes using the government money. Since taxes are not voluntary, this creates built-in demand for the fiat money. The creators of alternative competitor-money are punished as well. The libertarian position is that human interactions should be voluntary, so the coercion problem is where libertarians find issue first.&lt;p&gt;A side note here about capital controls: Bitcoin allows money to be borderless, which is natural. Capital controls are an artificial construct of the state, often used to prop up the perpetually failing fiat money.&lt;p&gt;The second issue is economic. When the money supply of your currency is not constrained (by gold, or otherwise), then it inevitably inflates, often unpredictably and uncontrollably. The death of a fiat money usually has disastrous effects on the people, especially on the poor. Unfortunately, fiat money has a short lifespan, on average.&lt;p&gt;The libertarian position on wealth inequality is that as long as the distribution of wealth was determined voluntarily (without state privilege, in particular), then there is no problem. Bitcoin is such a system: all participation in Bitcoin has been voluntary. Early adopters took a big risk on a fledgling technology, and some have been rewarded with handsome returns.&lt;p&gt;Early writing about cypherpunk money usually mentions anonymity, which Bitcoin does not have (yet).&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; Where is this experiment going in the long run?&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Isn&amp;#x27;t that the trillion-dollar question? :-)</text></item><item><author>sevensor</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s interesting to see how this is playing out.  Libertarians have long argued that government-issued fiat currency is a tool of state oppression.  Now we have a real-world experiment demonstrating on a grand scale what happens when you create a currency by consensual fiat.  I&amp;#x27;d be interested to hear what libertarians think about this: Is Bitcoin truly the kind of currency libertarians have been advocating?  Have I mischaracterized the libertarian position?  What do you think about the concentration of Bitcoins in the hands of a small number of people?  Where is this experiment going in the long run?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Emma_Goldman</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not a moral realist so I think that libertarian philosophy is nothing but the most venal elements of capitalism congealed in thought, but I should add that the classical formulation of libertarianism is internally incoherent. You omit that for any transaction to be legitimate it must not only be voluntary but must also consist of the exchange of things legitimately acquired in the past, i.e. voluntarily acquired. This chain of voluntary exchange is what is supposed to grant one a title to that thing. But of course, in reality, that does not exist in the least. The distribution of things over history is primarily a function of brute coercion and happenstance. Nozick knew as much, and his suggestion is as pitiful as his scruples: we need to &amp;#x27;reset&amp;#x27; society according to the Rawlsian difference principle and &lt;i&gt;then&lt;/i&gt; begin our libertarian accounting.&lt;p&gt;In any case, I can&amp;#x27;t take seriously anyone who thinks that humans aren&amp;#x27;t interested in freedom because they want to be free to &lt;i&gt;do&lt;/i&gt; things, i.e. I want to be free to see my family not only in that I don&amp;#x27;t want someone to stop me from doing so, but I also want the means to be able to do so. The one is more or less pointless without the other. And that obviously requires more than negative liberty. Or that, in another vein, that capitalist enterprises are not vehicles of accumulated power that sustain themselves by exploiting workers, ordered along hierarchical top-down principles. One only need step into sociological reality to see as much.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Bitcoin Whales: 1,000 People Who Own 40 Percent of the Market</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-08/the-bitcoin-whales-1-000-people-who-own-40-percent-of-the-market</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>clarkmoody</author><text>Government-issued currencies usually come with legal tender laws and citizens are required to pay taxes using the government money. Since taxes are not voluntary, this creates built-in demand for the fiat money. The creators of alternative competitor-money are punished as well. The libertarian position is that human interactions should be voluntary, so the coercion problem is where libertarians find issue first.&lt;p&gt;A side note here about capital controls: Bitcoin allows money to be borderless, which is natural. Capital controls are an artificial construct of the state, often used to prop up the perpetually failing fiat money.&lt;p&gt;The second issue is economic. When the money supply of your currency is not constrained (by gold, or otherwise), then it inevitably inflates, often unpredictably and uncontrollably. The death of a fiat money usually has disastrous effects on the people, especially on the poor. Unfortunately, fiat money has a short lifespan, on average.&lt;p&gt;The libertarian position on wealth inequality is that as long as the distribution of wealth was determined voluntarily (without state privilege, in particular), then there is no problem. Bitcoin is such a system: all participation in Bitcoin has been voluntary. Early adopters took a big risk on a fledgling technology, and some have been rewarded with handsome returns.&lt;p&gt;Early writing about cypherpunk money usually mentions anonymity, which Bitcoin does not have (yet).&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; Where is this experiment going in the long run?&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Isn&amp;#x27;t that the trillion-dollar question? :-)</text></item><item><author>sevensor</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s interesting to see how this is playing out.  Libertarians have long argued that government-issued fiat currency is a tool of state oppression.  Now we have a real-world experiment demonstrating on a grand scale what happens when you create a currency by consensual fiat.  I&amp;#x27;d be interested to hear what libertarians think about this: Is Bitcoin truly the kind of currency libertarians have been advocating?  Have I mischaracterized the libertarian position?  What do you think about the concentration of Bitcoins in the hands of a small number of people?  Where is this experiment going in the long run?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>xg15</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;The libertarian position on wealth inequality is that as long as the distribution of wealth was determined voluntarily (without state privilege, in particular), then there is no problem. Bitcoin is such a system: all participation in Bitcoin has been voluntary. Early adopters took a big risk on a fledgling technology, and some have been rewarded with handsome returns.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I could never really make sense of that position. Voluntarily &lt;i&gt;by whom&lt;/i&gt;? Why would you ever voluntarily agree to a high-inequality society &lt;i&gt;where you are at the lower end&lt;/i&gt;?&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think bitcoin is a valid example because it&amp;#x27;s something that (right now) you can choose to ignore completely without any negative consequences for you. Therefore, high inequality is not necessarily a problem.&lt;p&gt;The moment bitcoin would become the single dominating currency, the situation would be completely different.</text></comment>