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> You have this backwards. It is miners who cannot ignore the interest of the users. Miners can only profit by selling the bitcoin that people want to buy, and

> You have this backwards. It is miners who cannot ignore the interest of the users. Miners can only profit by selling the bitcoin that people want to buy, and the bitcoin people want to buy is the one which is inflation-free. The market decides the correct chain and the miners follow it. The Bitcoin people will want to buy is the one with a network that hasn't collapsed. That's far more important than a little bit of inflation. Other cryptocurrencies without a fixed supply are successful as well, it's not the most important factor. > If a majority attempted to mine a forked chain, the minority chain would just become unfairly cheap to mine (due to difficulty reduction), and cause more people to mine it again. If a majority is priced out of mining, the network would be vulnerable to a 51% attack and blocks would take long time to mine until difficulty adjusts. What's that going to do to the value of Bitcoin, the "most secure" of all the networks? > If bitcoin cannot be sustained by fees alone, the experiment is a failure. If Bitcoin cannot be sustained by fees alone, block reward will return. What else do you think is going to happen, everyone will just give up on Bitcoin and make it become worthless, rather than accept inflation? > That's because Ethereum is a personality cult and not an experiment in sound money. The market has decided Ethereum Classic is not the way to go. I don't think that's down to a personality cult. The "code is law" attitude on the other hand is pure ideology. > It is unlikely that a hard-forked bitcoin will ever gain traction. [..] Those with the mindset that they are in charge, rather than the market, have all left. It will gain traction through the market if the situation that I described should arise.

sparkie 6y ago
> What else do you think is going to happen, everyone will just give up on Bitcoin and make it become worthless, rather than accept inflation? Precisely. Bitcoin with inflation is just fiat money, but less efficient. If there is a cabal which can set an inflation policy, then it would be more efficient to just let them run the show and do away with the mining process. Would be kinda like what we have today. Bitcoin will only succeed if it is superior money to fiat, and the way that it is superior money is its hardness to inflate. In fact, if a policy of inflation were to be necessary, then better than what we have today would be one where people can vote on the policy, or at least, elect those who decide it. What we have today is a system where the people making the decisions are unelected and unaccountable. Bitcoin with a cabal of miners deciding the policy would be no improvement whatsoever.
- gridlockd 6y ago
  > Bitcoin will only succeed if it is superior money to fiat, and the way that it is superior money is its hardness to inflate. Currency that can't be inflated in times of a liquidity crisis is inferior. That's exactly what happened during the great depression - the gold standard only exacerbated the problem. Sure, some Bitcoiners have such a narrow understanding of economics that they think the permanently fixed supply is somehow really important. It's not. Think about it, why would you not want inflation? Because you want a stable currency! There's no other reason. Yet, for cryptocurrencies, the amount of inflation barely affects price at all. What affects the price is mainly speculation. It's far more important that the system be stable than the fact that maybe over 10 years the supply of Bitcoin grows by another 10% or 20%. It's far more important that people actually use the system to conduct trade, creating actual demand for Bitcoin. Long-term inflation just doesn't matter for trade. It may matter for investors, but investing long-term in a currency is total nonsense. I think your definition of failure is "people who believe in certain things abandon it". Sure, maybe that'll happen, but that doesn't mean the network is going to disappear or that Bitcoin will become worthless. It's going to adapt against beliefs that threaten its survival.
  - sparkie 6y ago
    > Currency that can't be inflated in times of a liquidity crisis is inferior. Inferior to whom? The problem of MMT is it thinks that the collective is more important than the individual. Individuals who save money for a rainy day don't need inflation - they've already accounted for potential liquidity crises. The fact that the rest of you can't save is not my problem, it is yours. Please deal with it without devaluing my savings, thanks. > Sure, some Bitcoiners have such a narrow understanding of economics that they think the permanently fixed supply is somehow really important. It's not. It's not important to you. What you lack in understanding of economics is the most basic tenet - that value is subjective. The entire field of Austrian economics, which largely gets ignored by mainstream "economists", is based upon this. Fixed supply is important to savers of money, who don't want to see their savings devalued. Instead of their savings decaying with time, there's fair chance that they'll appreciate in value due to increased demand and deflation due to lost wallets. > What affects the price is mainly speculation. It's far more important that the system be stable than the fact that maybe over 10 years the supply of Bitcoin grows by another 10% or 20%. It's far more important that people actually use the system to conduct trade, creating actual demand for Bitcoin. You're still ignoring that saving is a valid use of money. Demand for bitcoin is almost entirely driven by people wanting to save and/or profit from the market for exchange. The "spending" use case just doesn't really exist yet - there's little demand because people can already do this with fiat money. Bitcoin just doesn't bring big enough benefits for spending yet, and people don't want to spend it because it is harder money and they'd rather spend the softer money first (Gresham's Law). > Long-term inflation just doesn't matter for trade. It may matter for investors, but investing long-term in a currency is total nonsense. Saving is investing. You are investing in the medium of storage retaining its purchasing power over time. When you hold a stack of USD, you are investing in the dollar. If you suspected that the dollar was not going to retain its purchasing power, then you would certainly not invest in it. The dollar is just a commodity like any other. Saving in BTC and saving in dollars are the same kind of "investment", except one of them is very likely to always lose some purchasing power over time and makes a poor investment. The other one is risky for now, but it's purchasing power is subject only to conditions of the market and not the decisions of unelected bureaucrats. > I think your definition of failure is "people who believe in certain things abandon it". Sure, maybe that'll happen, but that doesn't mean the network is going to disappear or that Bitcoin will become worthless. It's going to adapt against beliefs that threaten its survival. The issue is, as you've suggested yourself, that bitcoin just isn't used that much for spending. It is not going to survive as a medium for exchange if people aren't using it as such. Bitcoin would become worthless because it no longer offers the benefits over fiat money. The "programmable money" thing is complete hogwash that doesn't need an expensive and inefficient blockchain to perform - it can be done with centralized services offering fiat. Bitcoin is savings technology. There will be plenty of ways for people to spend bitcoin in future, but I suspect that once people become exposed to it, their time preference will rapidly decrease and they'll probably find themselves spending less.
tromp 6y ago
> If Bitcoin cannot be sustained by fees alone, block reward will return. Somewhere in the next 20 years, before Bitcoin has another 5 halvings (which would reduce the reward to 0.195312 BTC), I expect there will be a proposal for Bitcoin LTS (Long Term Security, sounds better than Bitcoin TE for Tail Emission) which will be a Hard Fork to end further halvings. The ensuing debate could make the 2015 scaling debate look pretty tame...

sparkie 6y ago

> What else do you think is going to happen, everyone will just give up on Bitcoin and make it become worthless, rather than accept inflation? Precisely. Bitcoin with inflation is just fiat money, but less efficient. If there is a cabal which can set an inflation policy, then it would be more efficient to just let them run the show and do away with the mining process. Would be kinda like what we have today. Bitcoin will only succeed if it is superior money to fiat, and the way that it is superior money is its hardness to inflate. In fact, if a policy of inflation were to be necessary, then better than what we have today would be one where people can vote on the policy, or at least, elect those who decide it. What we have today is a system where the people making the decisions are unelected and unaccountable. Bitcoin with a cabal of miners deciding the policy would be no improvement whatsoever.

gridlockd 6y ago
> Bitcoin will only succeed if it is superior money to fiat, and the way that it is superior money is its hardness to inflate. Currency that can't be inflated in times of a liquidity crisis is inferior. That's exactly what happened during the great depression - the gold standard only exacerbated the problem. Sure, some Bitcoiners have such a narrow understanding of economics that they think the permanently fixed supply is somehow really important. It's not. Think about it, why would you not want inflation? Because you want a stable currency! There's no other reason. Yet, for cryptocurrencies, the amount of inflation barely affects price at all. What affects the price is mainly speculation. It's far more important that the system be stable than the fact that maybe over 10 years the supply of Bitcoin grows by another 10% or 20%. It's far more important that people actually use the system to conduct trade, creating actual demand for Bitcoin. Long-term inflation just doesn't matter for trade. It may matter for investors, but investing long-term in a currency is total nonsense. I think your definition of failure is "people who believe in certain things abandon it". Sure, maybe that'll happen, but that doesn't mean the network is going to disappear or that Bitcoin will become worthless. It's going to adapt against beliefs that threaten its survival.
- sparkie 6y ago
  > Currency that can't be inflated in times of a liquidity crisis is inferior. Inferior to whom? The problem of MMT is it thinks that the collective is more important than the individual. Individuals who save money for a rainy day don't need inflation - they've already accounted for potential liquidity crises. The fact that the rest of you can't save is not my problem, it is yours. Please deal with it without devaluing my savings, thanks. > Sure, some Bitcoiners have such a narrow understanding of economics that they think the permanently fixed supply is somehow really important. It's not. It's not important to you. What you lack in understanding of economics is the most basic tenet - that value is subjective. The entire field of Austrian economics, which largely gets ignored by mainstream "economists", is based upon this. Fixed supply is important to savers of money, who don't want to see their savings devalued. Instead of their savings decaying with time, there's fair chance that they'll appreciate in value due to increased demand and deflation due to lost wallets. > What affects the price is mainly speculation. It's far more important that the system be stable than the fact that maybe over 10 years the supply of Bitcoin grows by another 10% or 20%. It's far more important that people actually use the system to conduct trade, creating actual demand for Bitcoin. You're still ignoring that saving is a valid use of money. Demand for bitcoin is almost entirely driven by people wanting to save and/or profit from the market for exchange. The "spending" use case just doesn't really exist yet - there's little demand because people can already do this with fiat money. Bitcoin just doesn't bring big enough benefits for spending yet, and people don't want to spend it because it is harder money and they'd rather spend the softer money first (Gresham's Law). > Long-term inflation just doesn't matter for trade. It may matter for investors, but investing long-term in a currency is total nonsense. Saving is investing. You are investing in the medium of storage retaining its purchasing power over time. When you hold a stack of USD, you are investing in the dollar. If you suspected that the dollar was not going to retain its purchasing power, then you would certainly not invest in it. The dollar is just a commodity like any other. Saving in BTC and saving in dollars are the same kind of "investment", except one of them is very likely to always lose some purchasing power over time and makes a poor investment. The other one is risky for now, but it's purchasing power is subject only to conditions of the market and not the decisions of unelected bureaucrats. > I think your definition of failure is "people who believe in certain things abandon it". Sure, maybe that'll happen, but that doesn't mean the network is going to disappear or that Bitcoin will become worthless. It's going to adapt against beliefs that threaten its survival. The issue is, as you've suggested yourself, that bitcoin just isn't used that much for spending. It is not going to survive as a medium for exchange if people aren't using it as such. Bitcoin would become worthless because it no longer offers the benefits over fiat money. The "programmable money" thing is complete hogwash that doesn't need an expensive and inefficient blockchain to perform - it can be done with centralized services offering fiat. Bitcoin is savings technology. There will be plenty of ways for people to spend bitcoin in future, but I suspect that once people become exposed to it, their time preference will rapidly decrease and they'll probably find themselves spending less.

tromp 6y ago

> If Bitcoin cannot be sustained by fees alone, block reward will return. Somewhere in the next 20 years, before Bitcoin has another 5 halvings (which would reduce the reward to 0.195312 BTC), I expect there will be a proposal for Bitcoin LTS (Long Term Security, sounds better than Bitcoin TE for Tail Emission) which will be a Hard Fork to end further halvings. The ensuing debate could make the 2015 scaling debate look pretty tame...