272 sats \ 7 replies \ @elvismercury OP 22 Nov 2023 \ parent \ on: Stranded sats bitcoin
The dynamics are the most fun thing, and also the hardest: the thought experiments like with the archeologists reveal something, but of course it's only a thought experiment. So as things evolve incrementally, how do these ideas manifest?
In more realistic scenarios, I think you're right, the archeologists would have a faction of supporters. This comes up in some of the RBF game trees, where the attacker / victim provide increasingly large "bribes" to the miners hoping to get them to select their preferred version of reality. In the limit case a pissed off victim gives the whole stash as a mining fee, I suppose.
Both forks would exist alongside each other - the conservative / purist one and the 'fair' one, and the market would choose which to give value to.
"Fair" meaning what people consider fair. Now, generally bitcoiners consider it fair that those who work hard and spend less should be wealthier than those who work less or spend more. So in extreme cases, the archeologist's Cantillon effect-driven wealth would be viewed as extremely unfair.
Now I may be going off on a tangent, but there are many other ideas of fairness. For example, socialists might prefer a coin that results in a more equal wealth distribution. E.g. a Bitcoin-like network that airdrops money into your wallet every month and expires it if you don't spend it, to prevent accumulation. And these ideas of equality are quite popular if you look at politics. This can easily be achieved with a CBDC, but can they materialize in the form of a decentralized network like Bitcoin? I can see a hurdle here, namely it would have to ensure one person can only have / control one wallet, which would require a system of centralized identity issuance.
Even if it's possible to overcome these seemingly technical obstacles (which may actually be more fundamental than technical), another question arises: who decides what money gets adopted and gets to dominate? Is it those most able to accumulate wealth after all? They surely would milk their SocialistCoin airdrops by selling them for BTC as soon as they land in their wallets, transferring value to what allows one to store value.
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Yet, fairness varies; socialists might favor a coin promoting wealth equality, like a Bitcoin network with monthly airdrops and expiry to prevent hoarding. Wealth accumulators might exploit such a system, converting their 'SocialistCoin' airdrops to Bitcoin, favoring a currency that maintains value.
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😇 This discussion is great! Funny thought, it can become like democracy all over again. The archaeologist who finds mega stash just needs to keep in the favour/vote of the 51% most easily influenced people/node runners.... They would probably come up with a plan to spread out the spending and in this way would have a government/pharro like function.
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Exactly. Once you start playing it out in your mind, you realize this is all about social interaction; and at scale, basically, it's politics.
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Long live the lucky digger!
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I love thinking about Bitcoin history and the far future.
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This is one of those places where game theory struggles, but that probably is the Nash equilibrium.
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