Why is bitcoin supply curve as it is?

[JoelKatz]

Sorry, I implied that we cut off the supply at the same time (~2140) with the same eventual amount of bitcoins.

The block reward needs to be a sufficient incentive to provide enough proof of work to keep the Bitcoin system secure until transaction fees have enough value to take over. If the block reward was too high, the price would keep dropping and everyone would be playing "hot potato" with their Bitcoins. If the block reward was too low, the network would be insecure and unreliable.

My guess is that Satoshi underestimated how successful Bitcoin would be and as a result there is much more mining than there needs to be.

[moolaching]

If due to this by-design artificial scarcity the dollar price of BTC increases 10,000x, then by definition the value of us dollars has decreased by 1/10,000. If BTC is to be the only decentralized crypto-currency and be used by everyone, then the net worth of the broad population must become devalued by 1/10,000.

After only a small percentage of the broad population has purchased Bitcoin, the price will be several doublings higher than it is now and the net worth of rest of the broad population will be devalued by the reciprocal of several doublings. Five doublings is 32x. Bitcoin has already risen from pennies to $350, which is roughly 15 doublings.

So logically one can only conclude mathematically that Bitcoin's supply curve was either chosen to create a war between early adopters and the broad population of the world, or it is to motivate the creation of alternative crypto-currencies.

Bitcoin is the antithesis of the moolaching coin of the people.

[JoelKatz]

If due to this by-design artificial scarcity the dollar price of BTC increases 10,000x, then by definition the value of us dollars has decreased by 1/10,000. If BTC is to be the only decentralized crypto-currency and be used by everyone, then the net worth of the broad population must become devalued by 1/10,000.

After only a small percentage of the broad population has purchased Bitcoin, the price will be several doublings higher than it is now and the net worth of rest of the broad population will be devalued by the reciprocal of several doublings. Five doublings is 32x. Bitcoin has already risen from pennies to $350, which is roughly 15 doublings.

While the value of dollars relative to Bitcoin will drop, the value of the dollars themselves won't change very much. For example, dollars will still buy about the same amount of gold, the same number of apples, the same number of Euros, and so on.

Bitcoin can only capture value it creates. Alternative currencies will have to create value in order to capture it.

[deepceleron]

In computing, having an undetermined machine state is bad. If there wasn't a limited amount of Bitcoin that will be produced, the size of the variable holding it would eventually overflow, memories would overflow, etc. A compiler can see that if mining were to continue forever there would be more bitcoins than molecules in the universe, and optimize out the indeterminate state by removing mining entirely. It is easier to program without bugs when there is a maximum number of Bitcoin base units, we know how many digits need to be shown in the user interface and such.

As for why this particular curve? It's better than 50 BTC for 8 years and then no rewards after. In hindsight, the halving times should have been longer so that half the currency wasn't already mined before it really became popular, but you could not have anticipated the adoption rate of the currency - it could still be a few cryptographer's experiment, or it could have gone gangbusters the first year.