A Quantum Immortal

Out of the many arguments people have against Bitcoin, one of the strong ones seems to be what I call “the early adopter problem”. The argument goes as follows: suppose that Bitcoin eventually does succeed and becomes a significant portion of the world’s currency or store of value. Over 6 of the eventual 21 million bitcoins have already been mined and are in the hands of a fraction of the worlds population. If bitcoin is successful, this means that too much wealth will be concentrated into the hands of too few people, who just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

There are a few reasons why this is not, in fact, a real problem:

• Bitcoin was not designed to be a fair currency, just a more efficient currency than its alternatives. Dollars and Yens aren’t “fair” either.
• It is not random luck that is rewarded – it is one’s ability to research and arrive at correct conclusions. In this scenario, the people that found out about bitcoin at “an early stage” and made the decsicion to either mine or buy them, are rewarded for a smart technological and economical decision – much like early investors in successful startup companies are rewarded.
• It is not too late – in this “bitcoin wins” scenario”, the final value of bitcoin will be a few orders of magnitudes higher than its current value. If you’re reading this now and think that “it’s not fair only a few early adapters win”, you can still join us.
• Perhaps the strongest argument IMO is the economical argument – If bitcoin “wins”, but its wealth remains concentrated in too few hands, it won’t be as useful to the rest of the world because of over-pricing and scarcity. As a result, this will be reflected in bitcoin prices, because the public will not be willing to pay the outrages amounts demanded by the early adopters – in fact, it will make bitcoin “lose a little bit”, or not reach its full potential. In turn, this will motivate said early adopters to sell some of their stash (nobody likes to be on a losing horse), thus moving bitcoin to other parts of the population. Once the market believes this is no longer a problem, the price of bitcoin may rise to its “real” and full value. In shorts, the market will auto-correct any such problem.