Inflation and Deflation of Price and Money Supply

[Nortan12rx]

when more time than 0.10 btc, 0.01 btc, 0.001 btc, 0.0001 btc, etc.

[1714121865]

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[deisik]

If their real wealth is not confiscated or expropriated during the process of crytpo-currency adoption, they shouldn't care. Say, you have a house, and its price can be denominated both in dollars and bitcoins (or any other currency for that matter). Does this playing with figures change its real value?

For real estate value is more constant (thats why mortgages exist), however I indeed think the ultra-rich are sitting on heaps of money....well not literally but think of investments, shares, etc. I also think that the market cap that bitcoin represents is partly (mostly?) taken from the market cap of fiat. So yes, in a way, their wealth is expropriated from them because of devaluation.

Investments are different, so it all depends. If we take shares (for instance), the possible fiat currency depreciation due to bitcoin rise (which I agree with) would lead to shares appreciation in that fiat currency. And the notorious ultra-rich men still preserve the value of their wealth, hah. They are not fools, those ultra-rich, right?

[WynX]

Yeah thats right, appreciation in fiat would happen. Maybe there is no difference whatever currency we're looking at. If you buy a house of $500.000 now, and bitcoin adoption *happens* (lets say 15 year), you can sell the house for either 5BTC or $2.000.000. Wealth is preserved then.
However I still can't get my head around the 'new' to be notorious bitcoin ultra-rich just being added to the pool of rich people just out of thin air, it must come from somewhere. If I have the 5BTC now and hold them, I would be able to buy your house in 15 years, while currently it's almost worth nothing (lolz...well getting close).

[deisik]

Yeah thats right, appreciation in fiat would happen. Maybe there is no difference whatever currency we're looking at. If you buy a house of $500.000 now, and bitcoin adoption *happens* (lets say 15 year), you can sell the house for either 5BTC or $2.000.000. Wealth is preserved then.
However I still can't get my head around the 'new' to be notorious bitcoin ultra-rich just being added to the pool of rich people just out of thin air, it must come from somewhere. If I have the 5BTC now and hold them, I would be able to buy your house in 15 years, while currently it's almost worth nothing (lolz...well getting close).

Obviously, it can come from new real wealth being created through the economy expansion (bitcoin or dollar is not actually relevant here). Without bitcoin, this would necessitate the fiat money supply growth; with bitcoin, this is no longer necessary (otherwise, it would cause devaluation of the fiat currency). If we don't expect the economic growth to fill bitcoin with real wealth, then, no, you won't be able to buy anything with it in however significant amounts, despite its apparent market cap or exchange rate...

[deisik]

I definitely don't want to get into a pissing match with you (like some people seem to be doing in this thread) but perhaps I'd need you to explain this a little better.

Whom are you asking really and what exactly?

[ahmedjadoon]

Bitcoin is 135 at gox.WTF

[ZephramC]

Bitcoin is 135 at gox.WTF

Was 91.5, is 150. TTF.

[indijim]

This is a very interesting topic.

[mellertson]

First off, excellent post.  Thank you!

There are some great videos on Khan Academy that helped me understand money supply.  They are in the section: Finance and Capital Markets -> Money, banking and central banks.  Here's the URL:

http://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/core-finance/money-and-banking

Secondly, one other way money-supply deflation can occur with bitcoin (and all digital currency) is due to rounding errors in the bitcoin system.

Meaning, miners are paid BTC based on their hash rates (computational power of their mining computer).  Let's say a miner mines for 12 months, accumulating 100 bitcoin.  The bitcoin reward is paid out in many small transactions.  Let's say our miner was paid his/her 100 bitcoin in 1,000 separate transactions.  Some of the miner's rewards will be larger (e.g. 0.25 BTC).  Other reward payments will be much smaller (e.g. .00187 BTC). 

Later when the miner want to buy something for let's say 97.95 BTC, the computers have to figure out how much of each reward payment to add up to make the required 97.95 BTC.  Because some of the reward payments need to be divided into smaller parts to make up the exact amount of 97.95 BTC, over time it leads to very small remainders in some of the reward payments. 

And those small remainders can be unusable, because for each reward payment that's to be included in a transaction it takes computational power to validate the transaction.  A single transaction of 97.95 BTC might be comprised of 900 smaller transactions.   And theirs a cost, in the form of a payment fee, for such small transactions. 

That's part of the bitcoin architecture.  It's one way miner's get paid.  So if the required payment fee is greater than the value of the remaining bitcoin in a single transaction, it's not cost effective to use the transaction.  And thus, it can just sit there forever.

Over a long enough time those tiny little unusable transactions lead to money-supply deflation.  The money isn't gone, exactly.  It's just not economically viable to use it.  In other words, because it costs more to spend the remaining BTC than its worth, the result is a system that's deflationary over time. 

The good news is, the rest of your bitcoin will be worth more!!

[BitOnyx]

Well a lot stuff to read for someone who haven't encounter economics before but isn't here one major error. Bitcoins aren't exactly money as we know it. Supply of it is totally different thing. that might be some similarity but in long run it won't be just another currency.

[$40]

Great topic!

 Love stuff like this and it's very important

[Lethn]

Well a lot stuff to read for someone who haven't encounter economics before but isn't here one major error. Bitcoins aren't exactly money as we know it. Supply of it is totally different thing. that might be some similarity but in long run it won't be just another currency.

Bitcoin is money, it just has all the infrastructure ( Fraud checking and storage etc. ) already built in and only exists digitally, you just have a bunch of people who Bitcoin threatens denying everything and openly refusing to class it as money.

[K3nn3th]

Bitcoin is money, it just has all the infrastructure ( Fraud checking and storage etc. ) already built in and only exists digitally, you just have a bunch of people who Bitcoin threatens denying everything and openly refusing to class it as money.

How do you know it's money?

[deisik]

Bitcoin is money, it just has all the infrastructure ( Fraud checking and storage etc. ) already built in and only exists digitally, you just have a bunch of people who Bitcoin threatens denying everything and openly refusing to class it as money.

How do you know it's money?

It functions as money...

[Vanguard*]

interesting thread! 

[marcus1986]

Good topic! Very interesting information. I'll try to comprehend it.

[TonyT]

Trouble in bitcoin paradise...deflation will have to result in a more 'centralized' "governance structure" (see the complete article in the link below).


TonyT

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/525676/academics-spy-weaknesses-in-bitcoins-foundations/

Yet signs are emerging of more subtle flaws in the vision of Satoshi Nakamoto (which may or may not be a pseudonym), with analysis suggesting the rules governing how Bitcoin operates as a currency may be far from perfect. Some researchers claim that these rules leave room for cheats to destabilize Bitcoin. Others have concluded that major changes to the currency’s rules will be needed as the number of bitcoins in circulation increases.

The only solution Kroll sees is to rewrite the rules of the currency. “It would need some kind of governance structure that agreed to have a kind of tax on transactions or not to limit the number of bitcoins created,” he says. “We expect both mechanisms to come into play.”

[thecoinismine]

so much stuff to read, i think the biggest plus to bit coin the set rate of inflation. its just one less thing to worry about. the only way to really manipulate the price would be a mass adoption as a secondary currency. if we can keep pushing the adoption. With a set number of currency to be made, the only main issue to create price is velocity. since this velocity is so high and the inflation rate known. we could expect the price to jump again. the issue is more of a convinence thing. most people would just not get the crypto currency concept. they have probubly just invented another type of stock. its just that this product can be acsessed by a average person better. sorry for spelling its late where i am.

[deisik]

The only solution Kroll sees is to rewrite the rules of the currency. “It would need some kind of governance structure that agreed to have a kind of tax on transactions or not to limit the number of bitcoins created,” he says. “We expect both mechanisms to come into play.”

That would make it easy to track and extinguish by competitive agencies governments...

[Jacksquere]

Good topics for knowledge.