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If You Expected Bitcoin to Mimic Gold, You Haven't a Clue About Gold

4 points by RickJWagner 4y ago

codefreeordie 4y ago
This article's thesis is that their is a singular commodity whose price is absolutely and perfectly immobile -- gold -- and that any time the price of gold moves, what has actually happened is that the dollar has changed value against the only constant in the universe. That's just absurd. Gold is a very useful commodity and a great store of value, but its value is no more constant than anything else. If gold's price were perfectly constant, futures contracts for gold would have much less exciting price movements, as the only input to the future price would be the amount of inflation vs the cost of storage, both of which are much easier to forecast than gold price movements.
- j7ake 4y ago
  An obvious counter example to the author is if an asteroid hit the earth containing thousands of tons of gold, the price of gold would plummet overnight.
  - Proven 4y ago
  - VGltZUNvbnN1 4y ago
    The prize for everything would plummet because there wouldn't be anything left if a meteor with a mass of thousands of tons after impact would hit earth.
tromp 4y ago
If bitcoin mimicked gold, it would not emit 50% of all supply in the first 4 years and only a fraction of a percent after 30 years. Gold mining is much better mimicked by a pure linear emission. That would take about 70 years to get yearly supply inflation lower than gold, something that Satoshi apparently wanted to see happen in just 12 years. Along with capped supply for better FearOfMissingOut...
- atweiden 4y ago
  There isn’t an infinite amount of gold on earth, whereas there _is_ an infinite amount of any linearly emitted $COIN. Linear emissions models don’t resemble terrestrial gold mining. Linear emissions are a security tax paid for by investors. Do investors enjoy paying this tax? Investors generally don’t “enjoy” being debased through inflation. Ethereum got away with having no defined emissions policy early on, but they pulled it off during an era when information was low and ignorance was widespread. Many of their investors assumed Ethereum had a fixed supply just like Bitcoin did — and they had to scramble to rectify this years later. “Governed emission” is achievable via systems of on-chain governance. Non-stakers get debased by tail emissions measures voted in by stakers. Stakers profit from the inflation measure or are hardly debased at worst. While antithetical to gold, it achieves the stated goal of incentivizing ongoing chain security while also benefiting investors, particularly assuming staking yield is widely accessible to all in a decentralized manner.
  - tromp 4y ago
    > there _is_ an infinite amount of any linearly emitted $COIN The amount emitted at any time is not only finite, but limited by time, with the yearly supply inflation going down toward 0. There's no essential difference with a capped supply [1]. [1] https://john-tromp.medium.com/a-case-for-using-soft-total-supply-1169a188d153 https://john-tromp.medium.com/a-case-for-using-soft-total-su...
    - atweiden 4y ago
      A tail emissions rate of 0.03% or less annually seems acceptable. #!/usr/bin/env raku use v6; multi sub inflate($n, $r, $y) { my $m = $n; loop (my $i = 0; $i < $y; $i++) { $m = inflate($m, $r); } $m; } multi sub inflate($n, $r) { $n * (1 - $r); } sub MAIN(:$rate = 0.0003, :$years = 100) { my $purchasing-power = 1; my $inflate = inflate($purchasing-power, $rate, $years); my $output = qq:to/EOF/.trim; After $years years of inflation at a rate of {$rate * 100}% per year, purchasing power is {$inflate * 100}% of what it was initially. EOF $output.say; } All else equal, a 1% annual rate of inflation costs you over half of your purchasing power per century. Even a 0.1% yearly inflation rate charted out over several centuries results in a collapse of purchasing power. This level of inflation practically requires investors to take countermeasures, like searching for alternative stores of value... Expanding the supply on demand through on-chain governance in a way stakers can profit from, while sacrilege to “digital gold”, would be more palatable to me than rates of tail emission higher than 0.03% or so.
musicale 4y ago
I have to admit that bitcoin is a pretty good non-corroding conductor that is commonly used in electronics, and a nonreactive material for medical and food applications, and it also can be easily worked into attractive jewelry or used in art projects.

4 points by RickJWagner 4y ago

This article's thesis is that their is a singular commodity whose price is absolutely and perfectly immobile -- gold -- and that any time the price of gold moves, what has actually happened is that the dollar has changed value against the only constant in the universe. That's just absurd. Gold is a very useful commodity and a great store of value, but its value is no more constant than anything else. If gold's price were perfectly constant, futures contracts for gold would have much less exciting price movements, as the only input to the future price would be the amount of inflation vs the cost of storage, both of which are much easier to forecast than gold price movements.

j7ake 4y ago
An obvious counter example to the author is if an asteroid hit the earth containing thousands of tons of gold, the price of gold would plummet overnight.
- Proven 4y ago
- VGltZUNvbnN1 4y ago
  The prize for everything would plummet because there wouldn't be anything left if a meteor with a mass of thousands of tons after impact would hit earth.

tromp 4y ago

If bitcoin mimicked gold, it would not emit 50% of all supply in the first 4 years and only a fraction of a percent after 30 years. Gold mining is much better mimicked by a pure linear emission. That would take about 70 years to get yearly supply inflation lower than gold, something that Satoshi apparently wanted to see happen in just 12 years. Along with capped supply for better FearOfMissingOut...

atweiden 4y ago
There isn’t an infinite amount of gold on earth, whereas there _is_ an infinite amount of any linearly emitted $COIN. Linear emissions models don’t resemble terrestrial gold mining. Linear emissions are a security tax paid for by investors. Do investors enjoy paying this tax? Investors generally don’t “enjoy” being debased through inflation. Ethereum got away with having no defined emissions policy early on, but they pulled it off during an era when information was low and ignorance was widespread. Many of their investors assumed Ethereum had a fixed supply just like Bitcoin did — and they had to scramble to rectify this years later. “Governed emission” is achievable via systems of on-chain governance. Non-stakers get debased by tail emissions measures voted in by stakers. Stakers profit from the inflation measure or are hardly debased at worst. While antithetical to gold, it achieves the stated goal of incentivizing ongoing chain security while also benefiting investors, particularly assuming staking yield is widely accessible to all in a decentralized manner.
- tromp 4y ago
  > there _is_ an infinite amount of any linearly emitted $COIN The amount emitted at any time is not only finite, but limited by time, with the yearly supply inflation going down toward 0. There's no essential difference with a capped supply [1]. [1] https://john-tromp.medium.com/a-case-for-using-soft-total-supply-1169a188d153 https://john-tromp.medium.com/a-case-for-using-soft-total-su...
  - atweiden 4y ago
    A tail emissions rate of 0.03% or less annually seems acceptable. #!/usr/bin/env raku use v6; multi sub inflate($n, $r, $y) { my $m = $n; loop (my $i = 0; $i < $y; $i++) { $m = inflate($m, $r); } $m; } multi sub inflate($n, $r) { $n * (1 - $r); } sub MAIN(:$rate = 0.0003, :$years = 100) { my $purchasing-power = 1; my $inflate = inflate($purchasing-power, $rate, $years); my $output = qq:to/EOF/.trim; After $years years of inflation at a rate of {$rate * 100}% per year, purchasing power is {$inflate * 100}% of what it was initially. EOF $output.say; } All else equal, a 1% annual rate of inflation costs you over half of your purchasing power per century. Even a 0.1% yearly inflation rate charted out over several centuries results in a collapse of purchasing power. This level of inflation practically requires investors to take countermeasures, like searching for alternative stores of value... Expanding the supply on demand through on-chain governance in a way stakers can profit from, while sacrilege to “digital gold”, would be more palatable to me than rates of tail emission higher than 0.03% or so.

musicale 4y ago

I have to admit that bitcoin is a pretty good non-corroding conductor that is commonly used in electronics, and a nonreactive material for medical and food applications, and it also can be easily worked into attractive jewelry or used in art projects.