First of all, I've wanted to write a post like the OP's blog post for a while, but haven't gotten to it. Mine was going to include more math about deflationary

First of all, I've wanted to write a post like the OP's blog post for a while, but haven't gotten to it. Mine was going to include more math about deflationary spirals. It seems that most commenters here are nitpicking the OP's individual points mostly due to their snarky/inflammatory wording and due to imperfect analogies like the comparison to the gold standard. No, bitcoin isn't exactly like the gold standard. However, does it peg the value of the currency to an invisible standard (the money supply curve [mining])? Yes. Yes it does. Does this remove any and all flexibility from the currency? Yes. It is, in fact, bitcoin's decentralization that is its core weakness. It makes it impossible to expand the economy without devaluing the currency (see wikipedia for deflationary spiral). Transaction fees don't count, since they don't expand the money supply: they simply help the mining metaphor continue when the injection curve has been exhausted (by redistributing, not creating).