As many enthusiasts tell it, bitcoins pose a radical challenge to entrenched powers. In fact, U.S. authorities "are afraid and concerned because a lot of countries are looking at us, and they will follow our leadership," El Salvador's Ambassador to the U.S. Milena Mayorga told CoinDesk recently of her country's experiments with the cryptocurrency.
But this is hard to square with the staggering inequality of bitcoin wealth. A recent paper by finance professors Antoinette Schoar and Igor Makarov examined the structure of bitcoin ownership (as well as the structure of the bitcoin system generally) and found ownership is incredibly concentrated — more than twice that of normal, non-bitcoin wealth.
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