The articles has quite a lot of arguments, so to pick just one manageable topic: I think it’s worth to dispute, on empirical grounds, the claim that cryptocurrencies lead to a redistribution of wealth which is somehow less centralized.
The claim in the OP was not that crypto’s wealth is currently less centralized, it was that crypto could lead to a massive redistribution/creation of wealth in general. And that if EAs could get involved, that could lead to a more even distribution of wealth on the whole.
It’s also misleading to use strong European states’ income numbers as a comparison. My understanding is that those are among the countries with the most equal societies and using income numbers is always more equal than using wealth numbers because rich people tend to have a large amount of assets which count as wealth but not income. For example, in America the top 1⁄10 of 1% hold more wealth than the bottom 60% of Americans.
The articles has quite a lot of arguments, so to pick just one manageable topic: I think it’s worth to dispute, on empirical grounds, the claim that cryptocurrencies lead to a redistribution of wealth which is somehow less centralized.
According to https://howmuch.net/articles/bitcoin-wealth-distribution about 4% of addresses own above 96% of wealt.
In comparison, in relatively strong European states the top 10% own just above 37% of income. (http://wir2018.wid.world/executive-summary.html)
The claim in the OP was not that crypto’s wealth is currently less centralized, it was that crypto could lead to a massive redistribution/creation of wealth in general. And that if EAs could get involved, that could lead to a more even distribution of wealth on the whole.
It’s also misleading to use strong European states’ income numbers as a comparison. My understanding is that those are among the countries with the most equal societies and using income numbers is always more equal than using wealth numbers because rich people tend to have a large amount of assets which count as wealth but not income. For example, in America the top 1⁄10 of 1% hold more wealth than the bottom 60% of Americans.
Very good points, particularly about how decentralized wealth distribution’s been using crypto-technology so far.