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32 sats \ 2 replies \ @alt 14 Feb \ parent \ on: When did the 'bitcoin is not fair' narrative take off? bitcoin

All good points. To be fair, I don't think there is any way you can launch something like bitcoin and have it be truly "fair", because there will always be some degree of information asymmetry - cypherpunks and cryptographers knew about it and understood it before most other people, and could benefit from getting in early.

Is that unfair? It depends what you mean by unfair. There are always going to be some people who, by pure circumstance, find themselves at the right place and time to profit from new technology.

The key things with bitcoin that I believe make it fair:

  • Fixed supply from the start. The max number of Bitcoins was set in stone from day one, as was the supply issuance schedule.
  • No pre-mine. The developer did not mine anything until the network was active and open to all participants. They had a knowledge advantage, but they played by the same set of rules as everybody else.
  • Open protocol. Anybody could access the network as an equal participant from day one. Anybody could have spun up 1000 machines to mine bitcoin as soon as the genesis block was broadcast, if they wanted.
  • Protocol was described before the software implementation. This is quite important - Satoshi released the whitepaper before releasing the software implementation. It would have been possible for another person to read the whitepaper and launch their own Bitcoin network before Satoshi did.
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @hueso 19 Feb

The whitepaper did not specify any emission schedule or halvings.

Consider this scenario: If halvings happened every 2100 blocks instead of 210.000 (producing 90% of supply in the very first month) would you still consider it fair? I think most would agree to call it instamine. So 2100 is clearly not fair but somehow 210.000 is? What about 21.000? Fair-ish? Halvings introduce distribution imbalances and they are not necessary part of the system.

Don't get me wrong: I think bitcoin is one of the most fairly distributed forms of money, but it's not perfect. The 'bitcoin not fair' narrative has some valid points.

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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @alt 20 Feb

Yes, it would still be fair. To me, it's fair because the key principles haven't changed: the supply and issuance are still fixed, the system is open and no participant is intrinsically privileged over another.

Even with halvings every 2100 blocks, anybody could come in and start mining at any time. This is fundamentally different to a pre-mine, where even if you wanted to, you can't start mining until a privileged group allow it, which is actually unfair.

Fair doesn't mean equal outcomes. Just because most people didn't know about the network doesn't make it unfair, because the information was still published openly on the internet for anybody to seek out.

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