For years now we have constantly heard that the one percent in the world controls 99 percent of the wealth. The discussion has become so nauseating since Occupy Wall Street because of the political ideologies and “solutions” usually put forward following the endless citations of statistics. With every single economic news story, there is always at least 10 people writing the one percent this and the one percent that.
One of those lambasting the one percent has been the bitcoin community. The proponents of the peer-to-peer decentralized digital currency have regularly criticized the one percent and the top one percent of the top one percent. Many believe the virtual currency would put an end to Wall Street’s corruption and the pervasive nature of government.
Unfortunately, neither has happened nor will it ever occur. There will always be a top one percent and there will always be corrupt governments with cronyism.
Evander Smart of CryptoCoinNews published an interesting chart that looked at the distribution of bitcoin. Essentially, the chart highlights that the one percent of the bitcoin community controls 99 percent of bitcoin wealth. In fact, each person of the 99 percent own just $24 or less in bitcoin.
The author of the article commented on this immense number: “This is pretty startling to see if you aren’t expecting it. It is hard to compare to any other store of value easily or fairly since most do not have a finite unit count built-in.”
He later added: “Are Satoshi Nakamoto and The Winklevoss Twins the three addresses at the top of the Bitcoin wealth mountain? Will the next bull market change these numbers dramatically? Will the Bitcoin community experience a trickle-down economic windfall down the road when the heavy hitters have hoarded enough of a profit for being early adopters, and sell off their fortunes? Stay tuned.
“I don’t know what to make of it, but I hope the future has a less centralized collection of wealth for the world’s leading centralized digital currency. The carpet doesn’t match the drapes.”
At the time of this writing, the price of bitcoin is trading at around the $230 mark.
You can’t tell the distribution of bitcoin between individuals by looking at bitcoin addresses. One person can own many addresses. Theoretically, ALL bitcoin could be owned by ONE person controlling all btc addresses. On the other hand, when you deposit bitcoin with an online wallet, many depositors holdings may be pooled in one address. So one btc address might contain the bitcoins of hundreds of people.
Of course there will great inequality in bitcoin wealth – it could not be otherwise when, whatever its ‘democratic’ characteristics, it’s still a currency within a capitalist economy. But your stats do not give an accurate picture of the distribution.
As an illustration, I am ‘poor’ in bitcoin terms. But your table puts me in the top 0.5%!
Bitcoin won’t end capitalist inequality, but it will help us avoid some of the pitfalls of the existing financial system (central control, government snooping, massive transfer fees, etc).
And blockchain technology has many wider applications that can potentially empower all of us – yes, even the 99%!