Deflation and Bitcoin, the last word on this forum

[alexk]

You are either new or joking. It looks like it's the former.

Yes, i'm new in this forum. I don't know why you get the impression that i'm joking.


alexk

No, we are not going to change bitcoin protocol just because you arrived. All those things you've talked about have been discussed over and over. You should either accept built-in deflation or leave bitcoin economy, that's my advice.

Thanks for your advice, even though i didn't ask for it.

I'm not expecting anyone to change the system of how bitcoins are generated, right now. I was just giving my opinion of what I would do, I think forums are a place to discuss opinions. I sense that you don't like my idea but that's fine with me. If you like, you can point out what you don't like about my idea and we can discuss that.

The point of my post was to find other people which share my opinion, that a currency should have a stable value. Several people together might be able to create a new bitcoin network with different rules, then we can let the people decide which currency they choose.


alexk

[Marxian]

The way I see it is, that the bitcoin economy is growing much faster than the money supply which leads to higher and higher prices for bitcoins, one can verify that by taking a look at mtgox. Also I think it's impractical for the bitcoin economy to stop growing when 21 million bitcoins are reached.

Very good point. Few people see this problem. It is absolutely necessary that money can be created at no cost whenever it is needed. If this is not possible, production can not be extended. Normally, money is created by credit. Bitcoin doesn't have this possibility. Whatever it is, it's not a functional currency.

I wonder how Satoshi came up with his magical number of 19% deflation p.a. Did he study some secret economics to arrive at his absurd "insight"? I guess he just set this value because he thought 19% would be a nice annual increase of his fortune.

alexk, I think the monetary system you are looking for, which has not the flaws of Bitcoin, already exists. What do you think of the Ripple project?

[Sjalq]

The way I see it is, that the bitcoin economy is growing much faster than the money supply which leads to higher and higher prices for bitcoins, one can verify that by taking a look at mtgox. Also I think it's impractical for the bitcoin economy to stop growing when 21 million bitcoins are reached.

Very good point. Few people see this problem. It is absolutely necessary that money can be created at no cost whenever it is needed. If this is not possible, production can not be extended. Normally, money is created by credit. Bitcoin doesn't have this possibility. Whatever it is, it's not a functional currency.

I wonder how Satoshi came up with his magical number of 19% deflation p.a. Did he study some secret economics to arrive at his absurd "insight"? I guess he just set this value because he thought 19% would be a nice annual increase of his fortune.

alexk, I think the monetary system you are looking for, which has not the flaws of Bitcoin, already exists. What do you think of the Ripple project?

Bitcoin is highly divisible, this solves the availability problem until it reaches its natural price.
What do you refer to when you say 19% deflation per annum? The decreasing rate of currency introduction?

Checked out the earliest edits on the Ripple Project, apparently it's been going since 2006, what is it's current USD exchange rate?

[kokjo]

the only thing that is bad about bitcoin, is that right now its more deflationary then gold... you may lose gold is very small amounts(like a ring or something).
but with bitcoin: 1 btc lost is roughly the same as ~0.25 kilo gold. in a few years. and 1 kilo gold just don't gets lost, but bitcoins do, rigth now.

i think this will not matter much when people are using it in everyday transactions, and nobody owns much money(some do, and their wallets will be heavily guarded).
talking about transactions of the size ~0.0001 btc thats no problem.
the coins that gets lost everyday worldwide is maybe 1-2 btc. but see now how many bitcoins we have thrown away already now, that the real problem...

[deti]

If you think deflation is just the devil, then fine, don't use bitcoin, just watch

I wish for deflation to increase even more because I mined quite a bit of coins last year and I'm sitting on them. The only problem is that it's too good to be true. Nothing keeps rising forever, period. You're committing the same sin of modern governments who keep borrowing and think it can go on forever, just in reverse. Stability is the keyword here. The hell with deflation AND INFLATION. Nobody takes a currency which skyrockets ten-fold in a month then drops to half in 10 days seriously.

Suggester, the BTC price will become much more stable as soon the worth of all BTC (~ 21 million) is around the worth of all currencies of the world (BTC is a global currency), or already if it is much below, lets say 1/3 of the global money worth.
If the day comes you have to pay 1 million USD for 1 BTC, I guess the price will become more stable.      But even then it will vary from minute to minute as normal currencies do.
The stability of real and widely use will make it stable in price. At the moment the use is far from stable and so is its worth. This will take time!!!
Later the deflation will be around the average increase of the economic growth on earth (in case of decrease => inflation).

I think one reason governments don't like deflating currencies is because then they can't pay back their liabilities (because the worth of the money they have to pay back increases) or they have to increase the taxes much, what people (voters) don't like!!! For a government it's easier to let the worth of the money decrease by inflation, then increase the taxes to solve the financial problems. Normally central banks do the money regulation so the politicians are not the bogeymen, but when increasing taxes they are.
Using a deflating currency will force governments to increase taxes or they will not be able to fulfill their social obligations. But it will also give incentive to governments to save money because its better for them to hold the money and spend it later, the opposite behavior as at the moment! I think also in this point (taxes/real social costs) BTC can be a more honest/clearer currency then the currencies nowadays.

Give BTC a chance!

[alexk]

The way I see it is, that the bitcoin economy is growing much faster than the money supply which leads to higher and higher prices for bitcoins, one can verify that by taking a look at mtgox. Also I think it's impractical for the bitcoin economy to stop growing when 21 million bitcoins are reached.

Very good point. Few people see this problem. It is absolutely necessary that money can be created at no cost whenever it is needed. If this is not possible, production can not be extended. Normally, money is created by credit. Bitcoin doesn't have this possibility. Whatever it is, it's not a functional currency.

I wonder how Satoshi came up with his magical number of 19% deflation p.a. Did he study some secret economics to arrive at his absurd "insight"? I guess he just set this value because he thought 19% would be a nice annual increase of his fortune.

alexk, I think the monetary system you are looking for, which has not the flaws of Bitcoin, already exists. What do you think of the Ripple project?

Thank you for your reply.

In my opinion, a fractional reserve banking system for bitcoin, that creates money by credit, would be possible in principle. It would not be practical though. Because of the constant deflation in bitcoins, a business would need to have an roi > deflation rate, to be able to pay a positive interest rate to the bank. Many businesses will not be able to generate that kind of roi. This further emphasizes the need for a currency with a stable value.

I don't think satoshi had the agenda of having a nice annual increase for his fortune. The system for generating bitcoins in place right now seems sensible to "start up" a bitcoin economy.

If I understand ripple correctly, it's not a currency, so it's hard to compare ripple with bitcoin. I would prefer to keep the discussion in this forum to bitcoins, but thank you for the link.


alexk

[Suggester]

My suggestion for keeping the value of bitcoins stable is to change the number of bitcoins generated per block dynamically and link it to some average of the number of transactions that took place.

Plagiarism!
Just kidding. Please repost that in my thread, and vote "Yes".

What do you refer to when you say 19% deflation per annum? The decreasing rate of currency introduction?

He was referring to my infamous thread

I wonder how Satoshi came up with his magical number of 19% deflation p.a. Did he study some secret economics to arrive at his absurd "insight"? I guess he just set this value because he thought 19% would be a nice annual increase of his fortune.

I know. I repeated this over and over again. Satoshi (not is real name, which is unknown) is definitely not stupid. He probably designed the system specifically for that reason so he could profit as a "risk-taking early adopter" and run with the money before the system collapses. He had a chance to produce the whole 144 daily blocks (7200 coins/day) for quite some time before anyone else joined the network. He's almost definitely a millionaire now with quite a bit of coins stashed on the side in case it reaches $100 or more.

Other "early adopters" defend the current design for the same reason. My proposal removes the "early adopter" advantage albeit it doesn't negate the already attained profits.

You should either accept built-in deflation or leave bitcoin economy, that's my advice.

OR he can lobby in an attempt to prevent some hard-headed people from ruining such a beautiful concept just because they believe they can get free money forever.

[Findeton]

You should either accept built-in deflation or leave bitcoin economy, that's my advice.

OR he can lobby in an attempt to prevent some hard-headed people from ruining such a beautiful concept just because they believe they can get free money forever.

Bitcoin is what it is because it is a deflationary currency inside. If you want something else, the best thing you can do is to create a competing currency.

[unk]

i've mostly ignored all the discussions of deflation because i think the whole thing's a red herring, but it seems like many people are making the same kind of mistake. neither inflation nor deflation of a voluntarily chosen instrument matters on its own, theoretically; the expected inflation or deflation will be factored into the price of the commodity. what matter are unexpected inflation and deflation.

if i sell you a device that i advertise as inflationary, it's just the inverse of seignorage (ex post reduction in value rather than an ex ante payment). if i sell you a device that i advertise as deflationary, presumably you're willing to pay more for it, which thus makes it more expensive than the inflationary commodity for those who haven't yet bought it.

bitcoin's strength in this regard is that it has fixed rules, at least as long as it remains secure and as long as the network participants don't change the rules. whether it's inflationary or deflationary doesn't matter fundamentally. it may matter as a component of marketing, of course, and it may of course affect the distribution of the seignorage or its equivalents. (e.g., one model can encourage and enrich early adopters while another might not. as another example, 'there are only a limited number; get them while they last' can fuel psychological demand, but that may be either helpful or misleading depending on context.) deflation is neither a strength nor a weakness otherwise, any more than the number 21,000,000 is a strength or a weakness compared to ten times that amount. conceptually that may be hard to understand, but it's exactly analogous technically.

(if it's still conceptually hard, consider the following thought experiment: functionally and economically, what are the differences between bitcoin and a system just like it except for two differences: (1) the block subsidy never halves, but (2) the block chain itself pays 'interest' for all holders of bitcoins each block, computed to make up for the difference between deflation in bitcoin and the moderate inflation in the hypothetical alternative?)

[Suggester]

i've mostly ignored all the discussions of deflation because i think the whole thing's a red herring, but it seems like many people are making the same kind of mistake. neither inflation nor deflation of a voluntarily chosen instrument matters on its own, theoretically; the expected inflation or deflation will be factored into the price of the commodity. what matter are unexpected inflation and deflation.

if i sell you a device that i advertise as inflationary, it's just the inverse of seignorage (ex post reduction in value rather than an ex ante payment). if i sell you a device that i advertise as deflationary, presumably you're willing to pay more for it, which thus makes it more expensive than the inflationary commodity for those who haven't yet bought it.

bitcoin's strength in this regard is that it has fixed rules, at least as long as it remains secure and as long as the network participants don't change the rules. whether it's inflationary or deflationary doesn't matter fundamentally. it may matter as a component of marketing, of course, and it may of course affect the distribution of the seignorage or its equivalents. (e.g., one model can encourage and enrich early adopters while another might not. as another example, 'there are only a limited number; get them while they last' can fuel psychological demand, but that may be either helpful or misleading depending on context.) deflation is neither a strength nor a weakness otherwise, any more than the number 21,000,000 is a strength or a weakness compared to ten times that amount. conceptually that may be hard to understand, but it's exactly analogous technically.

(if it's still conceptually hard, consider the following thought experiment: functionally and economically, what are the differences between bitcoin and a system just like it except for two differences: (1) the block subsidy never halves, but (2) the block chain itself pays 'interest' for all holders of bitcoins each block, computed to make up for the difference between deflation in bitcoin and the moderate inflation in the hypothetical alternative?)

Tell me, how much are you willing to pay for..

1. A magical dollar which pops 30 cents each year?
2. As if that wasn't difficult enough, how much are you willing to pay for it if it pops anywhere between 20>infinity cents each year?
3. I see you're getting irritated. That's why I'll add a notion that there's a possibility of it malfunctioning all of a sudden without a warning.
4. And to make things worse, I'm offering this magical dollar for everyone on the market, which has led to people like you speculating and investing in it.

Now it's totally impossible to accurately and objectively price it, right?

That's bitcoin.

Now compare that to selling a normal, boring dollar and you'll immediately realize which one makes life much easier.

[AntiVigilante]

The way I see it is, that the bitcoin economy is growing much faster than the money supply which leads to higher and higher prices for bitcoins, one can verify that by taking a look at mtgox. Also I think it's impractical for the bitcoin economy to stop growing when 21 million bitcoins are reached.

Very good point. Few people see this problem. It is absolutely necessary that money can be created at no cost whenever it is needed. If this is not possible, production can not be extended. Normally, money is created by credit. Bitcoin doesn't have this possibility. Whatever it is, it's not a functional currency.

I wonder how Satoshi came up with his magical number of 19% deflation p.a. Did he study some secret economics to arrive at his absurd "insight"? I guess he just set this value because he thought 19% would be a nice annual increase of his fortune.

alexk, I think the monetary system you are looking for, which has not the flaws of Bitcoin, already exists. What do you think of the Ripple project?

The 21 Million will never be reached. It will never run out. We will simply drift over a few decimals.

[jtimon]

The way I see it is, that the bitcoin economy is growing much faster than the money supply which leads to higher and higher prices for bitcoins, one can verify that by taking a look at mtgox. Also I think it's impractical for the bitcoin economy to stop growing when 21 million bitcoins are reached.

Very good point. Few people see this problem. It is absolutely necessary that money can be created at no cost whenever it is needed. If this is not possible, production can not be extended. Normally, money is created by credit. Bitcoin doesn't have this possibility. Whatever it is, it's not a functional currency.

Money is credit. When you accept USD you're giving credit to the FED, when you accept BTC, you're giving credit to the block chain. People pay higher and higher prices for BTC because they give it more credit. Credit is being transfered from other currencies to bitcoin.
BTCs, USDs and gold are just certificates that you gave something to another one.
Again, like Morgan said: "Gold is money, everything else is credit".
No, Morgan, Gold is credit too.

"Normally, money is created by credit."
Always.

"Bitcoin doesn't have this possibility."
Yes, you can create a bitcoin bank with fractional reserve, but there's no law that allows you to have a certain minimum reserve by default: you will have to convince your customers. You can even be your own zero reserve bank with ripple (denominated in bitcoins).

"It is absolutely necessary that money can be created at no cost whenever it is needed."
Creating money is not the only way to improve liquidity. I prefer demurrage for scarce currencies, and/or mutual credit money (like ripple).

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

Very good point. Few people see this problem. It is absolutely necessary that money can be created at no cost whenever it is needed.

I wonder how much longer i will be able to stand this keynesian bullshit...

FYI, Bitcoins CAN be created in any moment at will using division into smaller pieces (just like gold). Just add more decimal places and you have enough for everybody.

[altoid]

Forgive me if someone already made this point, but bitcoin is inflationary, not deflationary, according to the Austrian definition, right?  Expanding money supply = inflation...  I suppose this will change at 21 million, or when the rate of lost coins exceeds the rate of mined coins

[coel]

I've been thinking about the deflation theme, too, because all I had in mind about it before I got to know bitcoin was the old "in deflation, nobody buys anything because money will be worth more tomorrow than it is worth today, and so the economy comes to a screeching halt".

I'm not an economist, so forgive me if my thoughts a naive or plain wrong, but if they are, please tell me and above all tell me why.

First, where is the difference between bitcoin and any investment? I put fiat currency into the investment hoping that it will be worth more at a later point in time. The higher the risk, the better the possible returns. bitcoin is the same, at the moment. Nobody knows if it will prevail, so it's highly risky, and the growth rates are enormous. Like any other good investment, I'll try to use cash before I touch my BTC wallet, or sell not-so-good investments (or even the other way round: hoping that the not-so-good investments will go back up again, I might prefer to sell BTC first if I can make profit there). Like any other risky investment, I'll also try to watch the markets and decide if it's time to get rid of it when they are plummeting.

Like any other investment, bitcoins will be turned into cash again when the money is needed. It's as simple as that.

That's the current situation. Not so much a currency, more like a highly volatile, but promising investment. BTW, like other investments, it's also the case for bitcoin that those who hopped on when others didn't know about it or didn't trust it enough yet will make the most profit.

Why should the deflationary nature of bitcoin be a threat to the economy if all the different investment products are not?

Because banks invest the money themselves (even if it's a simple account with a small interest rate) to earn the profit and give you some share of it? True, nobody needs to put money anywhere if he just waits for his BTC to become more and more valuable. There's no incentive to give money to people to help them bring their inventions to the market, as bitcoin itself will probably bring more profit than these new products would.

But will it, actually? There'll come the time when everyone who wants to invest in such a "currency" will have heard of bitcoin, and the current huge demand will decrease. So will the value of BTC at that point (and probably a lot of people here will become very unhappy if they didn't smell it in time). Just like the houses that were hyped to ridiculous "exchange rates" (to stay in the picture) and dropped to more reasonable prices later.

Mind you, we're still in the time when bitcoin is produced and becomes more and more widely adopted—as a financial investment.

There could come a huge crash of bitcoin exchange rates, it could also rise more and more slowly as demand nears offers. That nature of this "event" will probably have a lot to do with how widely adopted bitcoin will still be afterwards.

Let's assume it all went well more or less, and bitcoin stays more or less popular.

If it then gets widely adopted by traders, not only by investers, I don't think there will be much of a problem. Most people will still see bitcoin as an investment, but now it's an investment that can directly be used to make payments without having to turn it into cash first. Which is a very good thing, actually. :-) But as long as other currencies are still the primarily used, there will always be the exchange rate risk, so buying stuff in bitcoin will probably be more expensive than buying in the local currency.

What if the economy starts taking over bitcoin as main currency? If my wages are paid in bitcoin and it's normal to pay in the shop using a bitcoin wallet on the smartphone?

Sincerely, I doubt that this will ever happen. But let's say it does.

At that time, no or next to no new bitcoins will be created. Wages will decrease every year (or even every month?), which is psychologically not the best of ways to do it, but maybe the people will get used to it. Firms will be at good health even if their turn-over decreases.

I don't think there will a problem with day-to-day consume. After all, I'm buying computers and smartphones today, too, although I'd get much more for the same money in half a year. So, where someone needs (or wants) something, he will buy, deflation or not.

But what about people who need money? Startups? Would you lend bitcoins to them? They're growing in worth, anyway—will these people be able to outperform bitcoin?

I think they will. Just like they outperform inflation now. In great simplification, demand for money is now met by creating new money and would then be met by reduced prices.

It's true, though, that a fast-growing economy would lead to fast-falling prices, which would make it hard for startups to get credit (and for big players to cough up the money for new projects). Thus, the economy would slow down (and people get fired etc.) until everything reaches reasonable levels again.

Today, it seems to me, everyone gets credit, much more so than there is actual creation of value. Which will lead to all sorts of economical breakdowns just like the ones we saw in the recent decades.

That's how I think it might be. :-) Please comment on my errors as you find them, I'm really interested in that.

[AntiVigilante]

This whole thread fails at Zeno's Paradox.

Needed money? The only thing that can be done when you don't have money is to create it?

Dammit I have better things to do than explain this.

[altoid]

This whole thread fails at Zeno's Paradox.

Needed money? The only thing that can be done when you don't have money is to create it?

Dammit I have better things to do than explain this.

you can borrow money

[Nefario]

Or you can work for it, which is what most people do.

[AntiVigilante]

Or you can work for it, which is what most people do.

Exactly. I just calculated that Bitcoin hardware total cost is $8M and total BTC value is 12.5x that. If everyone moved BTC to move $ around we'd have a monster.

[jtimon]

Nefario, did you lock this thread or was Guy Inkognito?

http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=11582.msg163681#msg163681

I really want to reply on it.