Recently I've seen an interesting thing -- a BTC rich list at Bitinfocharts. If you look at it and do some simple math, you'll find out that today ~2.5% of BTC addresses (wholecoiners and above) hold ~95% of all BTC coins. It looks pretty much like wealth distribution in the real world, only a bit worse, I'd say.
Of course, some of those ~2.5% of BTC addresses are exchanges and alike, that is, they actually represent multiply entities or a bunch of different people holding different amounts of BTC. But even if we take this into account somehow, large inequality in BTC distribution is a fact.
Well, of course, there's no reason why BTC distribution must be equal among the world population. It was unequal from the very beginning, and the practically important question is what direction it all will go in the future.
There're two ways to go -- to greater "equality" (i.e. BTC coins will be spreading across more and more accounts) or to greater "inequality" (i.e. BTC distribution will become more and more concentrated).
In the nearest future I'd expect more concentration -- relatively few addresses will accumulate more and more coins. These "few addresses" are the "whales", "institutions", etc. -- the guys who already have enough big bucks. However, it must not be thought like these guys will buy more and more BTC at ever-rising prices. They will shake it down from the little pockets of shrimps and wannabe crypto-inwastors -- it's relatively easy to do if you have a lot of money, a lot of time, a manipulative market, and the necessary experience.
"Why those guys would want to do that?", you might ask. Because if you control the majority of supply, it becomes kinda similar to a 51% attack. You can drive the price to whatever you want, becoming richer and richer in real life. It's not even necessary to have a new ATH every day, it's enough to have the price rising on average (like 20% yearly average, for example). Actually, it's just fine to have occasional dumps, because dumps cause panic sells, a good opportunity to accumulate more coins cheaper than on average.
The game is all about profits. It obviously has nothing to do with "decentralization", no matter what you mean by that word. It has nothing to do with "regulation", the big guys actually want to be regulated -- it can make their wealth "legal" and themselves "digital frontier investors" and not "shady guys who speculate BTC days and probably push drugs nights". Even taxes are not a problem -- hire a lawyer to make you "every shit compliant", an accountant to perform "tax optimization" tricks, and buy citizenship in Cyprus, Monaco, or similar. It's an entirely different life to sit on a big pile of shit that people believe being gold!
And here is one little problem with all that. In the long run, people must really believe that your shit is gold... It's relatively easy to drive BTC to $100K, $888K, $1M, or whatever, as long as people believe it really costs that much. The tricky thing is to make them believe.
If my little conspiracy theory is correct -- the BTC price has no other way than up (up on average, remember!).
I should say that I don't think bad of the above guys. After all, they simply managed to be in a right place at right time and were smart enough to profit from the opportunity. I can't blame them for anything. C'est la vie.
Anyway, I think "BTC centralization" might be a good indicator (similar to "BTC dominance", etc.). Maybe someone has already implemented it somewhere.
Photo by David McBee from Pexels
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
