Help me understand bitcoin

[bowserthedog]

SvennoJ said:

bowserthedog said:

I don't agree with the assertion that Bitcoin was created so that the rich could get richer and so it could be manipulated. It was designed as an alternative to fiat currency which is heavily manipulated by corrupt governments. Bitcoin has a fixed supply schedule. Every 4 years the number of new bitcoin that can be minted is cut in half. Secondly the average joe has had years to front run bitcoin. Unlike stocks where the rich only can get involved with presales and then dump it on the backs of retail investors with bitcoin the institutions only really started to get into it in the last year or two and they've been pumping the bags of retail investors. 

Maybe not the old rich, but it's definitely designed to make the creators trillionaires. Every 4 years the number of new bitcoin that can be minted is cut in half. If that doesn't scream designed to make the early investors super wealthy, then what does. It's upside down. What does the average Joe, walking around in the 3rd world (the majority of the population of this planet) benefit? We (on here) all are the rich, part of the 1%!

It's designed to appreciate over the course of time.  Sure with anything that gets big the early you go in the better it is for you. I think it's a bit presumptuous to suggest that when someone creates something new they should build features into it that is sure to benefit a poor person in a 3rd world country. That's a straw man argument if I've ever seen it. Many things could be dismissed automatically if that standard was applied equally to all creations. And oddly enough Bitcoin is indeed benefitting those in 3rd world countries. El Salvador is getting big into it and are finding a way to monetize natural volcanic energy to mine for bitcoin. It's creating an industry in a 3rd world country where opportunities for new industries and jobs are limited. The early adopters are of course doing well if they held their bitcoin but they also took tremendous risks. There was no certainty that it would take off the way that it did. Had there been certainty many more people would have invested at that time.