From: coderman <coderman@gmail.com>
To: David Vorick <david.vorick@gmail.com>
Cc: "cypherpunks@cpunks.org" <cypherpunks@cpunks.org>
Sent: Monday, November 25, 2013 5:54 PM
Subject: Re: bitcoin as a global medium of exchange (was Re: Interesting take on Sanjuro's Assassination Market)

On Mon, Nov 25, 2013 at 5:43 PM, David Vorick <david.vorick@gmail.com> wrote:

>> ... How do you prevent the early adopters from becoming stupid
>> wealthy if the currency takes off?

>high risk, high reward.
>why should early adoption with high risk not pay more than late
>adoption with significantly less risk?

I certainly agree with 'high risk, high reward'.  But that begs the question of, 'how much risk v. how much reward?'.  I've already said that I fully agree that Satoshi should get $1 billion for what he's done.  (More, if BTC fully enables a system like Sanjuro's 'AM').  But, he's getting close to that level now, and everything I understand about bitcoin is that he isn't going to sell his BTC's, so he will get far more than that over the next few years.  _THAT_ level of 'reward' is absolutely uncalled-for, and I think when the public learns of that, there will be a great deal of anger.  If such a payoff were absolutely necessary to launch bitcoin, and there were no alternatives, I'd grudgingly say "yes".  But, I can imagine a digital currency with far-less early-adopter bias.  This is particularly true today:  We all know that the world needs something like BTC.  At this point, how much real 'risk' would there be in a new digital currency?  Far less than BTC.
        Jim Bell