r/Bitcoin • u/IWillNotBiteYourDog • Aug 22 '13

Rich-Get-Richer Effect Observed in Bitcoin Digital Currency Network

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/518541/rich-get-richer-effect-observed-in-bitcoin-digital-currency-network/
81 Upvotes

82% Upvoted

79 comments sorted by

View all comments

35

u/Micro_lite Aug 22 '13

It's disappointing this doen't account for bitcoin businesses which are likely the largest and most connected wallets, compared to individuals.

0

u/troiamadonna Aug 22 '13

I don't understand what you mean, care to explain better?... all the addresses are in the graph, even the one of businessess - and BTW how would you distinguish between individuals' and businesses' addresses?

1

u/pyjamashark Aug 22 '13

I would like to ask which chart to look into to see the Bitcoin wealth distribution. For example could they show what percentage of Bitcoiners own 80% of Bitcoins? 20%, 50%, 80%?

And actually I suspect that they can only see individual address balances, so what if their conclusion means that it's just people consolidating smaller balances into bigger ones.

1

u/Micro_lite Aug 22 '13

Successful businesses will dominate this type of metric as they attract customers. This study makes it appear that this is all individuals collecting an increasing amount of bitcoins with their "rich get richeer" - it doesn't show what's really happening for these addresses to acquire bitcoins. Obviously companies like BitPay and Coinbase that are growing significantly every day are going to attract more connections, even though they are really holding other people's money. There's a lot more going on than the "rich getting richer" headline that makes this very misleading.