10% premine and run by a private company? No thank you! I don't care what cool ZKP crypto they use; one of the critical aspects of Bitcoin's success is that there was no premine (no unfair advantage for the creator) and no company to go after if someone starts feeling litigious. Bitcoin is a protocol, this is a product.
Regardless, he didn't premine unfairly; he released it to the public before mining began. Also, 1m is a very high-end estimate. Most estimates come in on the order of several hundred K.
Barely. He created them with about no effort at all while other peoples hard work and real dollars spent would turn it into a fortune later. That counters wyager's claim a bit where there's definitely an unfair advantage in terms of financial distributions. Quite like the U.S. system it intends to replace. :)
There were a number of people who were mining within the first few days. They had no idea if it would pay off or not; they put a fair amount of effort into an extremely high-risk investment. They deserve everything they got out of it.
I'm not arguing they shouldn't get a first-mover benefit. I'm saying it was designed for that to happen. It's totally rigged so the early players do almost no work while getting the highest gain. Just like the banking system it replaces. Just like VC's. It's no different except it's so radical the ROI was way less guaranteed. More risk.
The wealth distribution of the Bitcoin accounts vs the U.S. dollar is interesting. Here's a visual one:
Note: There's also the other problem of hoarding happening a lot since it's a commodity rather than a currency. I'm not sure if that's changed since I last looked at it.
It's basically claiming all unspent Bitcoins mined during the first year were mined by Bitcoin's creator. But there is _no_ evidence linking them to Bitcoin's creator except pure handwaving.
