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If p2p cash was the purpose of Bitcoin, it was spectacularly poorly designed for that purpose. I don't mean the cryptographic properties which enabled distribu

If p2p cash was the purpose of Bitcoin, it was spectacularly poorly designed for that purpose. I don't mean the cryptographic properties which enabled distributed trust--that's cool. I mean the deflationary combination of a fixed total number of bitcoins, and ever-increasing amounts of energy and time to create new bitcoin. This creates tremendous incentive to create or buy bitcoins and then hold, hold, hold, hold. That's the opposite of what you want for a currency! You want people to spend a currency, and hold assets. Bitcoin today works like an asset, not currency. I don't know if this was the actual idea, and early adopters essentially lied about the currency aspects to prime the bubble; or if the early adopters actually did think it would be a great currency and just got hugely lucky.

tylersmith 9y ago
The topic I was responding to was that currencies were a poor use case for blockchains, so yes i was talking about the distributed trust aspects. I'm not an economist so I can't speak to what token economics Bitcoin may have gotten wrong. I do know that there is at least some usage of it as a currency because I work on a p2p marketplace and talk to people that buy and sell things almost every day.
oillio 9y ago
Bitcoin currently has almost 4% inflation per year of its token count and it has been higher in the past. While this will go down over time, I don't think you can blame any existing issues with the economics of Bitcoin on its long term deflationary nature. If you were around the Bitcoin community in the early years, you will remember that the community took a very dim view of ICOs. They were called "pre-mined" back then, and it was basically a slur that was synonymous with scam. It is the newer generation of enthusiasts that have embraced the ICO. Again, I don't think you can blame this on the fundamental design or original community around Bitcoin.
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tylersmith 9y ago

The topic I was responding to was that currencies were a poor use case for blockchains, so yes i was talking about the distributed trust aspects. I'm not an economist so I can't speak to what token economics Bitcoin may have gotten wrong. I do know that there is at least some usage of it as a currency because I work on a p2p marketplace and talk to people that buy and sell things almost every day.

oillio 9y ago

Bitcoin currently has almost 4% inflation per year of its token count and it has been higher in the past. While this will go down over time, I don't think you can blame any existing issues with the economics of Bitcoin on its long term deflationary nature. If you were around the Bitcoin community in the early years, you will remember that the community took a very dim view of ICOs. They were called "pre-mined" back then, and it was basically a slur that was synonymous with scam. It is the newer generation of enthusiasts that have embraced the ICO. Again, I don't think you can blame this on the fundamental design or original community around Bitcoin.

deleted 9y ago
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