If you’re considering the welfare of the individuals concerned: “a few wealthy people make multiple millions” is not as good an outcome as “dozens of not-so-wealthy people make hundreds of thousands” because of diminishing marginal returns.
If you’re considering cryptocurrency gains only as fuel for effective altruism or something, then “a few wealthy people make multiple millions” might be as good an outcome, but then it’s no longer so plausible that “hundreds of millions is a substantial fraction as good as billions”.
If you’re considering cryptocurrency gains only as fuel for some narrow kind of effective altruism (say, donations to help AI safety work) then both halves might be right, but then it seems reasonable to ask whether those hundreds of millions have in fact gone to AI safety donations. My impression is that most of the money has just gone into the personal fortunes of the people who bought cryptocurrency. That’s fine, but if so then I think we’re back with my first paragraph.
From a selfish point of view, I don’t think most rationalists would benefit significantly from a bit of extra money, so it doesn’t make much sense to be dedicating their truly precious resource (time and attention) to identifying high-risk high-return investments like bitcoin and in this case figuring out how to buy/store them safely. And I’m someone who bought bitcoin for the sake of entertainment.
From an altruistic point of view, yes I expect hundreds of millions of dollars to be donated, and the current flow is consistent with that—I know of 5 million in the last few months, and there’s probably more than hasn’t been declared.
“then it’s no longer so plausible that “hundreds of millions is a substantial fraction as good as billions”.”
If you’re considering the welfare of the individuals concerned: “a few wealthy people make multiple millions” is not as good an outcome as “dozens of not-so-wealthy people make hundreds of thousands” because of diminishing marginal returns.
If you’re considering cryptocurrency gains only as fuel for effective altruism or something, then “a few wealthy people make multiple millions” might be as good an outcome, but then it’s no longer so plausible that “hundreds of millions is a substantial fraction as good as billions”.
If you’re considering cryptocurrency gains only as fuel for some narrow kind of effective altruism (say, donations to help AI safety work) then both halves might be right, but then it seems reasonable to ask whether those hundreds of millions have in fact gone to AI safety donations. My impression is that most of the money has just gone into the personal fortunes of the people who bought cryptocurrency. That’s fine, but if so then I think we’re back with my first paragraph.
From a selfish point of view, I don’t think most rationalists would benefit significantly from a bit of extra money, so it doesn’t make much sense to be dedicating their truly precious resource (time and attention) to identifying high-risk high-return investments like bitcoin and in this case figuring out how to buy/store them safely. And I’m someone who bought bitcoin for the sake of entertainment.
From an altruistic point of view, yes I expect hundreds of millions of dollars to be donated, and the current flow is consistent with that—I know of 5 million in the last few months, and there’s probably more than hasn’t been declared.
“then it’s no longer so plausible that “hundreds of millions is a substantial fraction as good as billions”.”
At the full community level the marginal returns on further donations also declines, though more slowly: https://80000hours.org/2017/11/talent-gaps-survey-2017/#how-diminishing-are-returns-in-the-community