> Who, we ask, is so altruistic as to create a new monetary system but not use it to enrich themselves?
Bitcoin's supply schedule, in which half of all Bitcoin is mined in the first four years, guaranteed a Bitcoin wealth concentration on the early miners, especially considering how few there were. At long intervals, Satoshi would be the only one, mining on his laptop.
A truly altruistic system would not confer such a huge advantage on early miners, for example by fixing the block reward. Then each generation would be able to mine the same amount of bitcoin, instead of each next generation getting 32x less than the current one. Such a steady supply would also make Bitcoin much less the vehicle for speculation that it has turned into.
Of course, then the supply wouldn't have a finite cap, it would be limited by time only. Still, that would already make it very different from fiat, with the yearly supply inflation rate going down steadily toward 0 (known as being dis-inflationary). Eventually, the supply rate would more or less balance the inevitable coin loss rate [1].
[1] https://john-tromp.medium.com/a-case-for-using-soft-total-su...
Bitcoin's supply schedule, in which half of all Bitcoin is mined in the first four years, guaranteed a Bitcoin wealth concentration on the early miners, especially considering how few there were. At long intervals, Satoshi would be the only one, mining on his laptop.
A truly altruistic system would not confer such a huge advantage on early miners, for example by fixing the block reward. Then each generation would be able to mine the same amount of bitcoin, instead of each next generation getting 32x less than the current one. Such a steady supply would also make Bitcoin much less the vehicle for speculation that it has turned into.
Of course, then the supply wouldn't have a finite cap, it would be limited by time only. Still, that would already make it very different from fiat, with the yearly supply inflation rate going down steadily toward 0 (known as being dis-inflationary). Eventually, the supply rate would more or less balance the inevitable coin loss rate [1].
[1] https://john-tromp.medium.com/a-case-for-using-soft-total-su...