

New York Department of Financial Services Bitcoin Hearing - Live - otoburb
http://www.totalwebcasting.com/view/?id=nysdfs

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thrush
I am completely on board with Bitcoin, but I'm a bit amazed (for lack of a
better term really) on how wealthy current Bitcoin participants will become
when Bitcoin becomes ubiquitous.

It seems that it would be more fair that everyone just transfer their current
personal value into bitcoin value to avoid the inflation effect.

There is no doubt that the current participants are creating incredible value
for the rest of the world, and should be rewarded, but it's truly scary how
much money they will have. I'd be interested to see someone do the math on how
rich they would become, but I think it would be scary.

I feel that democracy is to politics as what bitcoin is to the economy, but
our founding fathers were not turned into trillionaires.

My understanding is certainly limited, but I think the reality is plausible.

~~~
1053r
A few of the very earliest participants in the bitcoin community (who got in
before the first big peak at $32) have 100K BTC.

As a rough order of magnitude estimate, if Bitcoin gets to be as big a thing
as gold, then it will be worth about $10 trillion. Since there will be about
20 million BTC by then, those individuals will be worth about $50 billion.
This is a lot of money to be sure, but there won't be many of those people,
and this is not out of line with the world's very highest net worth
individuals.

The people who got in after that peak will probably be worth at least an order
of magnitude less. And if Bitcoin turns out to be a smaller deal than gold, it
might "only" create fortunes worth 9 figures of USD.

~~~
mcintyre1994
Apparently Satoshi has around 1 million BTC [0] which is staggering plugging
your numbers. That'd put him at $500 billion which is insane. Since you said
20 million BTC (less than the total there will ever be), we're talking within
about 20 years right? It would be incredibly interesting to see what happens
if somebody ends up with a theoretical worth exceeding the top 10 wealthiest
people in the world, but I wonder whether the mystery of who he is could
actually stop that happening. Also only 4 individuals are worth more than $50B
so that's pretty incredible too. [1]

[0] [http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/bitcoin-mints-its-first-
bil...](http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/bitcoin-mints-its-first-billionaire-
satoshi-nakamoto) [1]
[http://www.forbes.com/billionaires/list/](http://www.forbes.com/billionaires/list/)

~~~
downer80
I think it's pretty obvious at this point that Satoshi Nakamoto is just Gavin
Andresen's pseudonym. Is there anything wrong with that assumption?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Nakamoto](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Nakamoto)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_Andresen](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_Andresen)

[https://github.com/gavinandresen](https://github.com/gavinandresen)

[https://twitter.com/gavinandresen](https://twitter.com/gavinandresen)

[https://plus.google.com/117494054859918211010](https://plus.google.com/117494054859918211010)

~~~
mcintyre1994
I haven't really researched either character, but Gavin seems to claim/imply
he isn't Satoshi.

' This is quoted from the defunct Bruce Wagner Bitcoin podcast:

"Bruce Wagner : When was the last time you chatted to satoshi <laugh> Gavin
Andresen: Um... I haven't had email from satoshi in a couple months actually.
The last email I sent him I actually told him I was going to talk at the CIA.
So it's possible , that.... that may have um had something to with his
deciding " '

[https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=113609.0](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=113609.0)

My reading of that thread is that it's common knowledge/expected that they're
not the same person, but I certainly wouldn't claim to be sure.

~~~
curiouslyNot
That does very little to exclude him from the list of candidates potentially
responsible for the Satoshi Nakamoto alter-ego.

------
hoggle
Fred Wilson is right: "Regulate at the edges, but don't regulate the system
itself"

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otoburb
I like the analogy of new small cryptocurrency companies with smaller
community banks and their sensitivity to overbearing compliance costs.

