Did you actually read the article you cited? It's pretty obvious that the authors (among others) feel that the 1,500 BTC/day loss rate claimed by this one fring

Did you actually read the article you cited? It's pretty obvious that the authors (among others) feel that the 1,500 BTC/day loss rate claimed by this one fringe analyst is a massive exaggeration based loosely on outdated statistics. Sure, lots of bitcoins were lost in the beginning, when they weren't worth much. Most of the reports are from people who had bitcoins early on and only recently realized that they should have kept better care of them. The wallet UIs and best practices have been steadily improving, and with prices where they are right now there is no good reason for anyone to "lose" their bitcoins any more than they would accidentally "lose" a $100 bill (which is similarly irreversible). Any artificially-induced inflation of the money supply is economically destructive, promoting malinvestment and waste. Some inflation in the beginning is inevitable, of course—you have to start from somewhere—but it's a very good thing that Bitcoin will have an supply inflation rate on par with, or lower than, most national currencies before it becomes prevalent enough to significantly influence pricing in the investment markets. Inflation does have an important role in the economy. When it happens naturally it tells investors that we are in desperate need of more capital investment, and it basically doesn't matter what kind of ROI can be expected as long as it's at least somewhat positive. The issue is that this same investment behavior readily leads to diverting resources from more productive investments to less productive ones when the economy should be deflationary (indicating a positive average expected ROI) but the money supply is manipulated to make it look like there is a shortage of capital.