Suggested change to future mining rate.

[omri]

  I would like to suggest that instead of the number of BitCoins generated per block being halved every 4 years, thus being 50*2^-(n/4) it will be 50/(n/4).
  This will have no effect on the first two periods (first 8 years) but will from then on generate more coins, but at an ever slowing rate.
  This may solve several problems, it will keep miners motivated, it will generate some rate of inflation which will deter hoarders which destabilize the value of the BitCoin.
  While in theory this leads to infinite growth of BitCoin supply, which will eventually overflow 63 bits, it's logarithmic growth, so 63 bits will not overflow the the lifetime of the sun. IEEE double precision will be able to represent the total number of Satoshi for another 10000 years. (Does anyone use doubles for exact BitCoin count?)

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[Sukrim]

(Does anyone use doubles for exact BitCoin count?)

Hopefully not, as it would be "stupid (tm)".

Anyways: There is a near 100% chance that changes to the system are NOT going to happen, unless you can give very good reasons.
Possible behaviour of miners/sellers etc. is NOT a good reason. Possible number overflows or something like this would be a good reason.

Everyone doing mining/trade/whatever with BTC right now knows what they're up to and signed up for. You want to change this system, to keep people motivated or whatever, but this comes at the much higher expense of people loosing trust in the whole thing ("Wait, they can change the rules?!"). Also to have a different ruleset, you'd need to have a LOT of miners and nodes agree to installing your new implementation...


Long story short:
Not gonna happen.

[omri]

  Another option is to make it 100/((n/4)^2) with special adjustment to 50 for n=1, this still keeps the first 8 year the same as today, thus limiting short term effect, and also guarantees a finite total number of BitCoins.
 If wanted some other adjustments can be made to make the total 21,000,000 but still have a heavy enough tail.

[interfect]

  Another option is to make it 100/((n/4)^2) with special adjustment to 50 for n=1, this still keeps the first 8 year the same as today, thus limiting short term effect, and also guarantees a finite total number of BitCoins.
 If wanted some other adjustments can be made to make the total 21,000,000 but still have a heavy enough tail.

If you release a version of the Bitcoin client with this change made, and 51% of the network starts using it, then congratulations, you've changed the rules.

[FreeMoney]

  Another option is to make it 100/((n/4)^2) with special adjustment to 50 for n=1, this still keeps the first 8 year the same as today, thus limiting short term effect, and also guarantees a finite total number of BitCoins.
 If wanted some other adjustments can be made to make the total 21,000,000 but still have a heavy enough tail.

If you release a version of the Bitcoin client with this change made, and 51% of the network starts using it, then congratulations, you've changed the rules.

Not really, the 49% will just keep using Bitcoin with Bitcoin rules.

[interfect]

  Another option is to make it 100/((n/4)^2) with special adjustment to 50 for n=1, this still keeps the first 8 year the same as today, thus limiting short term effect, and also guarantees a finite total number of BitCoins.
 If wanted some other adjustments can be made to make the total 21,000,000 but still have a heavy enough tail.

If you release a version of the Bitcoin client with this change made, and 51% of the network starts using it, then congratulations, you've changed the rules.

Not really, the 49% will just keep using Bitcoin with Bitcoin rules.

What happens when the longest chain doesn't match the client's rules for what a chain is supposed to look like? If I tell my client that, say, new generations can only be 5.0 BTC, what will it do?

[Sukrim]

It will say to itself "This is humbug!" and not forward this block to others/not include this block into it's own database.

More or less a become a "hole" in the network, where "illegal" blocks get dumped.

[FreeMoney]

  Another option is to make it 100/((n/4)^2) with special adjustment to 50 for n=1, this still keeps the first 8 year the same as today, thus limiting short term effect, and also guarantees a finite total number of BitCoins.
 If wanted some other adjustments can be made to make the total 21,000,000 but still have a heavy enough tail.

If you release a version of the Bitcoin client with this change made, and 51% of the network starts using it, then congratulations, you've changed the rules.

Not really, the 49% will just keep using Bitcoin with Bitcoin rules.

What happens when the longest chain doesn't match the client's rules for what a chain is supposed to look like? If I tell my client that, say, new generations can only be 5.0 BTC, what will it do?

Bitcoin rejects invalid generates (and other tx) regardless of how long a chain they are in. This is why the >50% attack is double spending or stopping tx only not magic creating money.

You can have your chain with as many or few people as you like, it just isn't Bitcoin and no Bitcoin client will ever accept it.