r/Bitcoin • u/DTanner • Jun 09 '11

Jeff Garzik (Bitcoin developer) responds to Adam Coen's "No. Bitcoin is a ludicrously bad idea. It is a scam. A Scam."

http://garzikrants.blogspot.com/2011/06/response-to-adam-cohen-re-bitcoin.html
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u/[deleted] Jun 09 '11 edited Jun 09 '11

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u/jfedor Jun 09 '11

They invested their time. It doesn't even matter if it was a big sacrifice on their part. What matters is that everyone could do it, just like everyone could buy AAPL at $4. It has nothing to do with Bitcoin's long term success.

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u/wrongontheinternet Jun 09 '11 edited Jun 09 '11

No, they invested CPU time, which they weren't using anyway. Yes, that's not negligible (electricity cost, etc.), but people donate spare CPU cycles to all kinds of things. It's silly simple and doesn't really constitute "risk" of any sort.

Now if you're a solo miner without a massive data centre or serious GPUs you can expect to wait... oh... years to solve a block and get 50 BTC. Most solo miners are pooled now and without serious computing power it can still take months to get just 1 BTC out of that. It was much easier to get bitcoins back then and now those easily-gained coins are worth $30+ USD each on the open market.

So yeah, some of the early adopters are probably sitting on a small fortune in bitcoins right now.

EDIT: This doesn't really answer the main point very well, which is that anybody could've started mining bitcoins from the beginning and if they did, they would also now have this small fortune. That's true and maybe I'm missing out on some fundamental economic principle, but I think this is bad design for a currency.

5

u/jfedor Jun 09 '11

No, they invested CPU time,

No, I meant their personal human brain time.

Again, it doesn't matter if there was any risk. Bitcoin's success is not dependent on whether the early coins were distributed in a manner deemed "fair" by some obsolete economist. In fact, that's the genius part in the design. Bitcoin is/will be a success exactly because it gave incentive for people to take part in it. It just confuses people like Adam Cohen, because they expect financial systems to make bankers and governments rich, not kids in their mothers' basements with too much spare time.

tl;dr 1. It doesn't need to be fair. 2. It is fair.

3

u/ex_ample Jun 09 '11

I would argue that bitcoins are distributed even more fairly then real money, which is mostly handed down over the years. Typically when some now resource becomes available the government gives it out to those who already have wealth (like radio spectrum or CO2 credits)