Bitcoin halving to be canceled?

[deisik]

Suppose that in future the coin supply changed to 1 bitcoin per block forever, then the yearly coin supply is less than 0.25% of the total coin supply, thus will not be able to trigger any observable inflation. But I guess by that time the fees from transactions are already higher than 1 bitcoin per block, so that it does not make a lot of sense from miner's perspective

There are too many variables that cumulatively and non-linearly affect an inflation rate (inflation in the sense of money depreciation, to avoid further confusion), and yet greater amount of variables in the case of an exchange rate. The effect of annual money supply can be easily overridden by other factors, e.g. expansion of adoption, turnover rate, amount of coins burned, etc...

In short, taken separately from other factors, the annual money supply doesn't tell us much if we want to correctly gauge future inflation

[densuj]

To everyone concerned

Guys you seem to be missing the whole point I was trying to make. Please answer the following questions:

1) What is the purpose of Bitcoin halving
2) Does it contribute to the Bitcoin infrastructure and Bitcoin overall robustness in any positive way
3) Who profits most by this
4) If there were no such thing from the beginning, would it change anything in the long run (for the worse)

1) To have a limited total money supply, and by doing so, to be on the opposite side of today's monetary system, where central banks rob the wealth of the currency user by printing more money. This is clearly indicated in the genesis block

The halving doesn't contribute to this in any viable way. You could just set the block reward lower from the start, and be done with that

2) The system will provide maximum protection for its users' wealth, thus get maximum support from its users and increase its robustness for the whole ecosystem

This still remains to be seen, since the last (and the first ever) halving had been in 2012, before Bitcoin started to get real momentum

3) Currency users are benefited most

I would narrow the beneficiaries to just holders and savers. Now we see that they are not the ones that could and would change the Bitcoin story. Enterprise would, but they are not interested in an ever appreciating currency and limited money supply. Kinda seems they are not very interested in cryptocurrencies at all

4) Bitcoin from the beginning can have many other reward halving schemes, or a constant supply,  or even constant inflation rate like Milton Friedman suggested. But without forced circulation like fiat money, it is very likely no one will care about it if it does not have a clear benefit of limited total money supply

Then again, the halving scarcely contributes to this in any sensible way. I could even say it is the most risky and strange way of doing just this

Imagine that from the beginning bitcoin have constant supply 50 coins per block forever, then very likely another coin with reward halving will become more popular among users (due to stronger long term appreciation potential), attracting more capitals and eventually overtake bitcoin. Because the cryptocurrency are voluntarily used, if you don't have a good long term incentive mechanism for its users, no one will care

This is a weak argument since it can be countered by stating that you can always create another coin with a reward halving of every 6 months, for example

Do you mean bitcoin can be manipulated?

[deisik]

Do you mean bitcoin can be manipulated?

This is not a secret, as soon as you get enough hashing power

[VirosaGITS]

Do you mean bitcoin can be manipulated?

This is not a secret, as soon as you get enough hashing power

Anywhere from 30%~ to 80% let you do increasingly crazy stuff over Bitcoin. Basically bitcoin is protected by the cost to attack. Even small attacks have a cost.

If someone wants to destroy Bitcoin and they have many millions to throw away to do it, it's entirely possible. I don't see Bill Gates deciding to make a mega center to destroy Bitcoin, or the military to research a super computer that have millions time the processing power of a standard unit. But it's definitively possible to do.

Just not economical.

[sidhujag]

The very idea of bitcoin to me almost classifies as John Nash's ideal money concept because work is exchanged for proof of work trustlessly. Because of this now supply is controlled by real productiveness of society as a whole based on the efficiency of producing electricity (mining equipment efficiency). Any boom will lead to a miner that can mine faster and give more supply to that person(s).

How much one gets per round is different than the overall supply schedule which is set to promote a deflationary cycle which leads to network effect.

Ide

[deisik]

In my opinion, a constant money supply model have 2 difficulties:

1. Economy always goes up and down, expanding, contracting, eventually getting slower and slower. So if the number of coins will always increase while the economy can not grow forever, the coin have a risk of losing their value in future for sure, thus give people a bad long term perspective

Though I agree with this (in general), the always decreasing money supply is not actually much better, since it is just another extreme (and I would say, of a higher order). Economy expands and contracts in cycles, but cumulatively it still goes up in the long term. Therefore such a schedule of emitting new coins seems to be more potentially detrimental than the constant rate of new money supply...

But bitcoin isint a typical fiat currency subject to inflation, instead it promote interest into holding it by gradually reducing supply. The sole reason for this is attracting long term investors. If you remove the halving and even double it instead, you just create inflation which would stimulate dumping, devaluing, etc.

However counter-intuitive it may look, this is not a good thing long-term, since holding decimates the very base that Bitcoin is built upon. Its value is derived from Bitcoin's utility as a payment system, whereas bitcoins taken from circulation actually devalue it in the long run (this is a counter-intuitive part)...

[VirosaGITS]

In my opinion, a constant money supply model have 2 difficulties:

1. Economy always goes up and down, expanding, contracting, eventually getting slower and slower. So if the number of coins will always increase while the economy can not grow forever, the coin have a risk of losing their value in future for sure, thus give people a bad long term perspective

Though I agree with this (in general), the always decreasing money supply is not actually much better, since it is just another extreme (and I would say, of a higher order). Economy expands and contracts in cycles, but cumulatively it still goes up in the long term. Therefore such a schedule of emitting new coins seems to be more potentially detrimental than the constant rate of new money supply...

But bitcoin isint a typical fiat currency subject to inflation, instead it promote interest into holding it by gradually reducing supply. The sole reason for this is attracting long term investors. If you remove the halving and even double it instead, you just create inflation which would stimulate dumping, devaluing, etc.

However counter-intuitive it may look, this is not a good thing long-term, since holding decimates the very base that Bitcoin is built upon. Its value is derived from Bitcoin's utility as a payment system, whereas bitcoins taken from circulation devalue it...

Why? What does it decimate? At worse it will deflate instead of inflate, which is not a problem with the infinite decimal Bitcoin can work on. (More decimal can be added) And then you're using uBTC instead of BTC.

[deisik]

In my opinion, a constant money supply model have 2 difficulties:

1. Economy always goes up and down, expanding, contracting, eventually getting slower and slower. So if the number of coins will always increase while the economy can not grow forever, the coin have a risk of losing their value in future for sure, thus give people a bad long term perspective

Though I agree with this (in general), the always decreasing money supply is not actually much better, since it is just another extreme (and I would say, of a higher order). Economy expands and contracts in cycles, but cumulatively it still goes up in the long term. Therefore such a schedule of emitting new coins seems to be more potentially detrimental than the constant rate of new money supply...

But bitcoin isint a typical fiat currency subject to inflation, instead it promote interest into holding it by gradually reducing supply. The sole reason for this is attracting long term investors. If you remove the halving and even double it instead, you just create inflation which would stimulate dumping, devaluing, etc.

However counter-intuitive it may look, this is not a good thing long-term, since holding decimates the very base that Bitcoin is built upon. Its value is derived from Bitcoin's utility as a payment system, whereas bitcoins taken from circulation devalue it...

Why? What does it decimate? At worse it will deflate instead of inflate, which is not a problem with the infinite decimal Bitcoin can work on. (More decimal can be added) And then you're using uBTC instead of BTC.

If you get all the coins in the world, will you become super-rich? Nay, all your wealth will immediately become worthless. That's the crux and essence of the matter. And decimals are not a problem even in the fiat world...

A central bank can denominate its money as it sees appropriate

[Itun]

Halving is a part of the nature of bitcoin.

It's bound to happen.

The effects of it though are of course arguable.

IMO, it will only benefit the value of bitcoins if bitcoins are already in a high demand.

If not, the halving will just make it worse.

[sana9821]

i doubt that it might be canceled as all the system would be kinda destroyed i doubt that someone would risk to destroy bitcoin only to delay its halving time

[countryfree]

We NEED a new Bitcoin halving. The sooner, the better. Miners are still creating more than one million BTC per year. Without any other halving, we would reach the 21M limit by 2020, and the BTC world is not ready yet for a limited money supply.

[VirosaGITS]

We NEED a new Bitcoin halving. The sooner, the better. Miners are still creating more than one million BTC per year. Without any other halving, we would reach the 21M limit by 2020, and the BTC world is not ready yet for a limited money supply.

That's why OP was suggesting to remove it, basically, its the halving that cause the 21M limit. And when its reached, the block chain doesn't stop there... will still be miner reward.
To prevent inflation, the halving was introduced, but the 21M limit isint something that can be reached anytime soon, everything is working like a clockwork. Basically the whole thread is moot since no, its no, the halving won't be canceled and if it is, no, this means removing the 21M limit. You can't not halve and then reach 21M.

The limit is caused by the halving, not the other way around.

[johnyj]

Suppose that in future the coin supply changed to 1 bitcoin per block forever, then the yearly coin supply is less than 0.25% of the total coin supply, thus will not be able to trigger any observable inflation. But I guess by that time the fees from transactions are already higher than 1 bitcoin per block, so that it does not make a lot of sense from miner's perspective

There are too many variables that cumulatively and non-linearly affect an inflation rate (inflation in the sense of money depreciation, to avoid further confusion), and yet greater amount of variables in the case of an exchange rate. The effect of annual money supply can be easily overridden by other factors, e.g. expansion of adoption, turnover rate, amount of coins burned, etc...

In short, taken separately from other factors, the annual money supply doesn't tell us much if we want to correctly gauge future inflation

You can not prove something is good or bad by just talk, that's the reason bitcoin money supply scheme is setup on the other extreme of the spectrum to test how a totally different model will work in reality

As I analyzed, a constant money supply model and a limited supply model works almost the same from long term point of view, but have very different psychology expectation. So select a limited supply model made its deflative promise very clear, it is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong

And bitcoin's soul is consensus, if there is a widely reached consensus that a constant money supply model is much superior for all of the participants, then the money supply scheme will be changed. Since over 99% of the people do not understand what kind of money supply model FED should use, I guess such a consensus will never be reached in bitcoin community

[forzendiablo]

What?

Who has the most power over Bitcoin? Right, these are mining pools. Who is most interested in preserving the current block reward? The same mining pools...

wll if it havles, price *propably* doubles.. so they stay on the same ledger

[unholycactus]

I'm not sure if it was mentioned in the thread already as I didn't bother to read the 5 pages of non-sense.

But here's my point: If miners manipulate Bitcoin in a dishonest way, the value will plummet and miners with holdings in BTC will lose a ton of money. It would be absurd from a profit point of view.

Halving is a core feature of Bitcoin. If you can't get consensus on changing much smaller things like the block size limit, imagine what it will be like for the halving/bitcoin supply.

[bajing]

it's that true, i have waiting halving coming because i believe after halving bitcoin price will increase

[VirosaGITS]

it's that true, i have waiting halving coming because i believe after halving bitcoin price will increase

Just don't hold your breath too much, see what happened with the LTC halving? Sweet fuckall. xD

Since its been and still tied to BTC, maybe that's why, and since BTC is well, BTC, maybe it really will have the believed effect but anyways, upward pressure might just mean +10% over 1 year, its not like the BTC price will double for miner to keep up.

[deisik]

Suppose that in future the coin supply changed to 1 bitcoin per block forever, then the yearly coin supply is less than 0.25% of the total coin supply, thus will not be able to trigger any observable inflation. But I guess by that time the fees from transactions are already higher than 1 bitcoin per block, so that it does not make a lot of sense from miner's perspective

There are too many variables that cumulatively and non-linearly affect an inflation rate (inflation in the sense of money depreciation, to avoid further confusion), and yet greater amount of variables in the case of an exchange rate. The effect of annual money supply can be easily overridden by other factors, e.g. expansion of adoption, turnover rate, amount of coins burned, etc...

In short, taken separately from other factors, the annual money supply doesn't tell us much if we want to correctly gauge future inflation

You can not prove something is good or bad by just talk, that's the reason bitcoin money supply scheme is setup on the other extreme of the spectrum to test how a totally different model will work in reality

If your premises are correct and your logic is flawless, then you inevitably come to the right conclusion. Just by talk, or, rather, consideration. That said, we have actually already tested that model in reality, for over a hundred years (I mean under stress)...

The gold standard has failed

[deisik]

it's that true, i have waiting halving coming because i believe after halving bitcoin price will increase

Just don't hold your breath too much, see what happened with the LTC halving? Sweet fuckall. xD

Since its been and still tied to BTC, maybe that's why, and since BTC is well, BTC, maybe it really will have the believed effect but anyways, upward pressure might just mean +10% over 1 year, its not like the BTC price will double for miner to keep up.

What's happened to LTC and its halving? Did it fail and the outcome of halving was opposite to what had been expected? I don't keep an eye on this coin, just curious...

Always considered Litecoin as stillborn

[Slark]

If something like bitcoin halving ever get cancelled and changed how exactly devs are gonna explain this?
Crucial matter like halving is precisely planned, designed and anticipated bye everyone. Changing it would shaken bitcoin economy and put it in very uncomfortable spot because if halving can be changed then maybe devs will next change total number of bitcoin?