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Comment by tokenadult

Charlie Stross writes in the article kindly submitted here: "Bitcoin violates Gresham's law: Stolen electricity will drive out honest mining. (So the greatest benefits accrue to the most ruthless criminals.)" I try to follow most of the Bitcoin threads here on HN, but I've missed that argument before. It makes sense that mining-by-theft will eventually displace mining-by-buying-hardware, and that is indeed not a behavior to encourage by the incentives of Bitcoin.

"Moreover, The Gini coefficient of the Bitcoin economy is ghastly, and getting worse, to an extent that makes a sub-Saharan African kleptocracy look like a socialist utopia" is an argument that tests people's commitment to neutral principles. If you don't like badly skewed differences in wealth, I suppose you wouldn't like badly skewed ownership of Bitcoin. Or do you like that anyway, as long as you have more Bitcoin than the other guy?

parent tokenadult 13 years ago

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