TD₿: No, Bitcoin Ownership is Not Highly Concentrated by Rafael Schultze-Kraft
TL;DR Bitcoin is an emerging monetary system that was fairly launched and is becoming less concentrated over time.
Hey Bitcoiners,
Another day, another terrible take from a mainstream journalist on Bitcoin. This one comes from the Wall Street Journal’s Paul Vigna.
Paul wrote a scathing piece that contained “new research” that falsely shows 0.01% of bitcoin holders control 27% of the currency.
Not only is the research not new, but it also makes the same misassumptions as previous proponents of this narrative have made in the past.
Mainly it fails to recognize that addresses do not equal users. For instance, it does not account for exchanges and other large institutions that custody bitcoin on behalf of many users.
Glassnode’s Rafael Schultze-Kraft touched on the common misconceptions around Bitcoin’s wealth distribution and shared a more accurate analysis on the subject in this piece (02/02/2021).
Paul also missed a very key point here…no one can control Bitcoin regardless of the amount of wealth they store in the protocol.
This is precisely what makes Bitcoin so special.
Tick tock next block,
Cory Klippsten
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Quote of the Day
“Wealth concentration is something to worry about if wealth can be transformed into political power, because you kick off a feedback loop of wealth -> power -> discretion over system features -> more wealth - luckily, bitcoin manifestly does NOT care if you are wealthy.” - Nic Carter, GP at Castle Island Ventures
Meme of the Day
(h/t @BitcoinScoresby)
Yes, the WSJ missed that one badly, but most readers skim the headlines, so they take it as gospel.
Great take.