ballofrubber

This mixes up real depreciation with monetary debasement.

Lettuce rotting is not an argument for money rotting. Perishable goods decay, machines depreciate, buildings need maintenance, and inventories have storage costs. Prices can reflect all of that. The measuring unit does not also need to decay.

Money is not supposed to preserve lettuce. It is supposed to preserve a claim on value across time. If I produce value today and save the proceeds, I should not be forced to lose purchasing power just because the unit of account was designed to leak.

Also, “forced to keep earning money” and “forced to become an investor” are not the same thing. In every system, people have to keep producing if they want to keep consuming. The difference is that under inflation, even after producing and saving, your savings are diluted unless you buy risk assets. That does not necessarily mean “generating real value.” Often it just means bidding up existing assets.

Bitcoin’s volatility is not simply “caused by deflation.” It is caused by uncertain demand, adoption cycles, liquidity, leverage, regulation, speculation, and the fact that it is still monetizing. A fixed supply makes price more sensitive to demand shocks, sure, but that is not the same as saying deflation mechanically causes volatility. Monero’s tail emission is also tiny, under 1% and declining over time, so it is hardly a normal inflationary currency.

And the Elon Musk example basically proves the opposite point. Rich people already escape inflation by holding scarce assets: land, equity, businesses, real estate. Poor people are the ones stuck holding wages and cash. A harder money system does not eliminate inequality, but it at least stops making cash itself a guaranteed melting ice cube.

PoW makes green energy investments possible. Today. https://figshare.com/articles/journal_contribution/_b_Green_...

I don't know if this is comparable.

Even if UN would finally vote to deem the invasion illegal (note: it apparently is not by the democratic votes of the UN), it probably wouldn't be stopped either.

I think comparing real world war scenarios with how consensus is found in decentralized open source protocols is a bit intellectually dishonest

Good point. I think the subtle difference is that the traditional political democracy coerces the minority to use the system how they like it (ofc. not everywhere, maybe more on the money/legal tender side of things), whereas with Bitcoin there is no coercion by the majority. The majority would accept one set of currency, while others might use another, however markets will probably always decide on a winner when it comes to currency, which could feel as if you are "forced". Definitely a nuanced topic.

Well there are no votes, so you can't force anyone to run anything. You run what you like and hope others do as well. As I said miners follow users, not companies.

It might not be "democratic", to me personally it seems fair as you are not forced to run the rules that are imposed by others. It might not be the wise decision, but the market will decide on the "better" rules.

Additionaly it's also different as in "the majority does not change my rules", they can be wrong in the long run and my rules become majority again.

Arguably a lot of discussion is open to anyone (Bitcoin mailing list, Core github repo), where anyone is free to post their opinion on topics themselves.

It is not democratic as in "you have a vote to force others to comply to the majority", but more a democratic in "you can try to convince enough people that the major chain becomes how you like it, while the others run a minority fork".

People think "where the money goes, is where the miners go", but the blocksize wars showed that "where the users go, is where the miners go". Miners themselves don't decide on bitcoin rules, users do.

So I personally think that bitcoin is not necessarily democratic, but still highly people/community vs money driven.

Reducing headcount _should_ be normalised. Here in Germany companies are almost forced to not lay off people.

IMO this creates bad dynamics and makes people dependant on companies. If switching company would be easier, workers could demand higher wages etc.

The second point is objectively wrong. PoW needs participants to spend capital in order to keep the organization running, thus not the rich get richer, but the more efficient get richer. PoS participants have no sell pressure and no way of being "better" than their peers, which is why it is incredibly broken.

In a PoW system you have fierce competition and the drive to the cheapest energy. Which today is stranded energy, that the market would never buy.

It is hard to estimate what percentage is truly renewable. The biggest source of energy was hydroelectric. It is estimated that during rain season the renewable percentage is up to 70%. However even if you look at the lowest estimate of renewable energy (~25%) you get double the percentage of the best country.

Bitcoin is the true solution to monetizing cheap energy production. It removes a large risk associated with investing in renewables as the network is a buyer of last resort. Thus you know that your energy always sees 100% usage (which is a big problem with grids today)

Just a small thought experiment. Lets assume you want to build a charging station for EVs powered by your own solar farm at a somewhat remote location. 4 hours of the day you have a peak consumption of 100 units, the rest you only have 80 units consumption. Moving energy over large distances is incredibly expensive. Having a buyer for your energy (Bitcoin network) means that the investment carries a lot less risk.

PoW is a lot different, as burning real world resources (energy) brings sell-pressure to miners, whereas PoS only has cost of locking the funds. This means that regardless of the size of your "operation" cost scales very flat.

PoS also does not come with the property of innovation and disruption. In a PoW (especially ASIC-based) system you will find new ways to outperform your peers and disrupt old players.

PoW incentivices cheap energy in developing countries more than anything before. It is the fix for environmental problems.

I'm astonished that you have such a strong opinion, while not even trying to understand how pricing works. Good thing you're not gambling on that!

Media hype typically drives demand, not supply. Supply in bitcoin is a very fundamental concept and controversial topic, which is a function of proof of work, difficulty adjustment and block subsidy.

What exactly in supply and demand is manipulation? You can't just shout manipulation and argue with "media hype", which historically for bitcoin is very mixed[0] and affects any asset class?

[0]https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin-obituaries/

Unfortunately my salary is fixed today as well and not only does it shrink as a portion of global productivity, but also as a portion of the monetary supply.

And that is financial manipulation how?

The supply got less, while the demand didn't decrease. The intrinsic value increased because of the network and lindy effect, which is why institutional investors jumped in. Bitcoin entered a speculative bubble the moment the first block was created.

I would say we just don't know the price of bitcoin yet, hence the heavy volatility.

What would you price it at? Are you shorting it?

Tbh. my very basic knowledge comes from strongly opinionated austrian economics literature, which tends to confirm my bias, and from [0], which at least gives me some data points to refer to.

Do you mind giving me some of your arguments why it's terrible?

[0] https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

No authoritarian would EVER cut off or filter the internet in their country. Nope, has never happened, will never happen.

You're right, Myanmar just did that! Scary to think of it. Fortunately Bitcoin works over more communication protocols, but no internet is certainly not in any way easily defendable today. But i still think that physical and banked usd, euros and gold are more easily seizable by a government. A no internet scenario is probably economic suicide by any government.

I really don't get what you mean by financial manipulation in regards to bitcoin.

That's great for you, honestly!

Rich get richer today by being closer to the money source. In the "bitcoin standard" non-rich people can even keep their money in the bank and don't lose purchasing power by not risking it.

Rich and non-rich will always want to take risk to increase their net worth, however the assets must perform much better to outperform the money. Unlike today where almost all investments appreciate when measured in fiat.

edit:

That's a political issue, it has nothing to do with how currencies work

Would you agree that it would be a good thing if the base monetary layer would enable that? I only see that happening with a monetary policy that respects savings and is not alterable by a few elected and unelected officials

I think that the chairmen of the fed and ecb arguing about bitcoin is a strong signal of a challenge.

As I and the video mentioned Euro and USD is not easily accessible in those countries, Bitcoin doesn't need permission though.

What you refer to as private manipulation is called supply and demand, maybe try reading Econo101 :)

Salaries are negotiable and the renegotiation lever is skewed towards the employee. e.g. "i accept the pay cut of 3%, but will need 2 days of vaction more" vs "please employer pay me 3% more to combat inflation"

You won't get more rich by sitting on your salary, but you will also not get more poor like you do today.

If the milk seller doesn't lower his prices a competitor will do that, as he is able to do that with the bigger margin the better productivity brought.

In a non-inflationary monetary system cost of goods decreases every year, thats how productivity growth works.

You seem to have it backwards, this is where the Econo101 book from the parent comment might help ;) /s

Inflation drives down the purchasing power, hence why milk gets more expensive every year, even though we get much more efficient at producing it. Remove inflation and 1 bitcoin buys you a liter today and 1.03 litres next year.

Like I said, most of the rest is just a rehash of gold standard stuff.

Exactly, however bitcoin is infinitely better money than gold and makes the "gold standard" viable. Fortunately the gold standard has a lot of proponents globally, some of whom started embracing bitcoin.

I just hope that the experiment bitcoin keeps on going and I'm guessing we will see some form of resolution, maybe even in this decade. There is a lot to learn still.

I think from a scientific view, allowing and observing the experiment bitcoin is extremely interesting. Nothing like it has challenged economic thinking in the last decades.

It is very productive for a large population of the world.[0]

Not everyone gets paid in a stable currency or has easy access to it.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLYYh4aPXAM

As an employee, in a growing economy denominated in bitcoin, you would see your pay drop frequently as the money supply gets stretched. There's no reason at all to think BTC-denominated salaries would be able to stay constant as the value of the money rises.

Assuming the world productivity is denominated in 21 million bitcoin, if world productivity grows by 3% per year, my salary of 1 bitcoin gets more purchasing power. This is where you get a lever with your employer, he needs you to earn less, you don't have to negotiate to earn more (same applies to minimum wage, it needs to be adjusted upwards in a inflationary monetary system)

Every money is inherently more valuable yesterday than today, as you can divest it. I would argue that it is very much in the interest of the wider society to have their savings not inflated.

The best way to make your money work will always be to invest it in productivity, be it in educating yourself or investing it in companies. This investments need to be a lot more smarter and more sustainable than those of today, as the base money is not worth less every year.

I think wasteful spending is a property of an inflationary money, where smart spending would be a required property in a non-inflationary money.

As an employee I would rather have the lever in renegotiations. I also would like to be able to save without having to put my economic output at risk.

If you don't invest your bitcoin in productive assets you will be behind peers who do that, however they carry a risk.

Today you carry risk if you don't invest your savings. However with low-income you can't, as you need emergency funds.

(1) I think people assume that just because bitcoin exists banks will vanish. Bitcoin is the protocol that banks can use, but individuals as well. Also, micropayments on Bitcoin exist today. I encourage you to download a lightning network wallet (e.g. Breez Wallet: non-custodial and open source) and send me a "lightning-invoice" I can pay you in the sub-cent range.

(2) It requires real world resources to be spend and uses the most globally available resource, energy. I see it as a feature not a bug.

Renewable energy is the cheapest though[0] and thus the one that competitive miners need to use. Non-competitive miners get driven out very fast thanks to the difficulty adjustment.

Any percentage of optimization you can get in your energy production you can use to outperform other miners, thus get more of the block subsidy and drive out inefficient miners.

Bitcoin mining de-risks investments in energy producing facilities. You always have a buyer for your energy, which is a problem especially in renewables. [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13640...

I would say that it shouldn't be the role of a government to govern over money.

The economy is very complicated. There are no models that can predict the output of changing its parameters. It wasn't possible before to have the properties in money that we have with bitcoin (a gold standard was easily removable by a powerful government). The current central banking system is an experiment as much as anything before it and anything that will follow.

I see it like this. I want my economic output to be measured in something that is:

- salabale over time (1 btc is always 1/21 million of the monetary base)

- salabale over space (i want to work remote)

- understandable and auditable (the bitcoin concept can be understood by everyone, the code is auditable by mid-level developers)

These low hanging counters have been discussed over a lot.

Transaction cost is pretty low in multiple views:

- You can globally settle billions of dollars worth of bitcoin for less than 10$ [0]

- FIAT Settlements between banks is a complicated and non-auditable process, which is internationally speaking also very slow

- You can build layers on top of bitcoin, i.e. the Lightning Network or liquid, which reduces transaction costs and time by a lot (sub cent range in the lightning network)

Energy usage is not tied to transaction throughput. It is vital to be very high in the future, as it secures this global and auditable settlement network. Mining is a very competitive business. Renewable and unused energy IS the cheapest energy available (without govt. subsidies), thus the most competitive miners will use them. Mining also "subsidizes" research in cheap energy, as it gives you a competitive advantage.

[0] https://twitter.com/CoreFeeHelper/status/1366787351985287168

Would you care to share your Econo101 knowledge?

I'm not an economist, but nothing has convinced me yet that bitcoin is not the best form of money.

The amount of electricity consumed every year by always-on but inactive home devices in the USA alone could power the Bitcoin network for 1.7 years

I don't know about you, but I see people escaping tyranny in monetary policy as less wasteful than US standby devices.

The motivation is extremely simple, as you can just short bitcoin, do your stunt and then cash in the rewards as you just crashed bitcoin.

However the game theory behind what you are saying is completely nonsense, which is why no one ever did nor will do your technically and economically impossible stunt.