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When did the 'bitcoin is not fair' narrative take off?
298 sats \ 12 comments \ @stack_harder 12 Feb bitcoin
I've heard this one popping up more recently, I suppose it has become more popular with more NGU. I don't think I saw this narrative pop up pre-2024.
the logic seems to be when bitcoin price is down people don't care, then when it's back up, it's not fair.
Of all the wrong crap media says and no coiners say, i think find this one of the most retarded because bitcoin is one of the most fair things there is, anyone can get involved, at any price point, in any country, with as little as a dollar. also, there wasn't a pre-mine.
I also have never seen this mentality of 'not fair' applied to stocks or investments. nobody is telling goldbugs it's not fair they bought at a lower price in , say 2018. nobody is saying Meta and Apple stock isn't fair because people got in earlier. etc etc
it's one of the laziest arguments of them all because the people saying it don't apply their own 'fairness standards' to any other class of asset, just to bitcoin. shit, I don't even think I have seen media or 'experts' say eth isn't fair, and this would actually be a valid point for eth because of the pre-mine and the cost to stake.
just hodlers just taking shit and getting abused by all MMS for a decade. no wonder maxis end up toxic, it's infuriating.
when was the first time you guys saw people talking about how it wasn't fair, maybe it was way earlier and I missed it.
I wonder what new BS arguments will pop up as time goes on and BTC continues to grow.
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31 sats \ 5 replies \ @0393c53fc8 12 Feb
I've always believed that halvings were unfair. And I say this as an OG who reaped significant benefits. I don't deserve massive gains just for being born a bit earlier. I use Bitcoin to opt-out of the system, not to get rich. 50% of total supply mined in the first 4 years doesn't seem fair For Dogecoin and Monero the numbers are even sharper: 80% of total supply mined in the first 4 years 50% of total supply mined in the first year
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0 sats \ 4 replies \ @alt 13 Feb
You didn't get the gains just for being born earlier though. You picked up an a quieter signal, researched when there were fewer resources, and risked time and money on something with less of an established history. Anybody at the time could have done what you did, but they didn't.
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10 sats \ 3 replies \ @0393c53fc8 14 Feb
I think research was easier back then. The whitepaper is all you need really and the bitcoin wiki is great. Nowadays there is information overload, much more buzzwords, scamcoins and false information. But then again 4 years is a very short timeframe IMHO. What if it were 15 minutes? Would you call it instamine? Where would you draw the line? I think DOGE and XMR are scamcoins for this very reason: they have a very sharp coinbase decline shortly after genesis, benefitting early miners disproportionately.
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32 sats \ 2 replies \ @alt 14 Feb
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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32 sats \ 1 reply \ @chaoticalHeavy 12 Feb
The first I heard of this was a European Central Bank paper in October 2024.
early adopters exactly increase their real wealth and consumption at the expense of the real wealth and consumption of those who do not hold Bitcoin or who invest in it only at a later stage
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @stack_harder OP 12 Feb
i think that was where i heard this one first as well, the 'not fair' line of thinking might have even started there
it wont be dethroning the 'no intrinsic value' argument anytime soon though i don't think
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32 sats \ 1 reply \ @SimpleStacker 12 Feb
Hmm, I haven't heard this one much, to be honest. But I'd reply with something like,
"Is the dollar system more fair, where money can be printed out of thin air, and those with the most political connections gets first access to them?"
"Bitcoin is fair because even if the distribution starts uneven, you can't keep accumulating more bitcoin without providing value to someone else first."
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @stack_harder OP 12 Feb
exactly, nothing about the whole fiat system is in any way fair, of course, anti btc people seem incapable to rational logic
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22 sats \ 1 reply \ @alt 13 Feb
It's a testament to the huge growth of Bitcoin really. If gold goes up 3% a year, well it will probably do that next year, so John Smith with his $1000 to invest only missed out on $30 by not investing a year ago.
But with Bitcoin, John sees the price going up by factors of ten or more, and thinks how unfair it is that he didn't put his $1000 in a few years ago. Surely now, he thinks, it cannot continue, he has missed the boat and the hype is over, so the opportunity is no longer available to him.
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @stack_harder OP 13 Feb
that's why he will remain poor and salty forever lol
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