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Author Topic: Prices Cannot Stabilize  (Read 7544 times)
Anth0n (OP)
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January 11, 2012, 09:27:52 PM
 #1

The supply of coins grows at the same rate regardless of demand. Stability requires a flexible supply increase to correspond with demand increase. This limitation will be an impediment to the growth of Bitcoin commerce.
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January 11, 2012, 09:39:30 PM
 #2

Meh supply growth is predictable and now less than 0.1% per day. 

Swings in price as much as 40% daily can't be explained by 0.1% supply growth. 

Gold supply continues to grow roughly 3% per year.  While gold has volatility we don't see it $1800 one day and $720 the next.
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January 11, 2012, 11:29:56 PM
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The supply of coins grows at the same rate regardless of demand. Stability requires a flexible supply increase to correspond with demand increase. This limitation will be an impediment to the growth of Bitcoin commerce.

You're completely incorrect. Prices cannot do anything BUT stabilize in the long-run.

Now, in a Bitcoin world we may see the price for a coin change every day, but that change will asymptotically shrink over years and decades.

What's important in a currency is that changes in money supply are A) minimal, B) predictable, C)not arbitrarily decided by specific actors. Bitcoin satisfies these requirements - and in fact Bitcoin offers the most predictable money supply ever created in any form of money.
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January 11, 2012, 11:34:16 PM
 #4

The supply of coins grows at the same rate regardless of demand. Stability requires a flexible supply increase to correspond with demand increase. This limitation will be an impediment to the growth of Bitcoin commerce.

You're completely incorrect. Prices cannot do anything BUT stabilize in the long-run.

Now, in a Bitcoin world we may see the price for a coin change every day, but that change will asymptotically shrink over years and decades.

What's important in a currency is that changes in money supply are A) minimal, B) predictable, C)not arbitrarily decided by specific actors. Bitcoin satisfies these requirements - and in fact Bitcoin offers the most predictable money supply ever created in any form of money.

+1.
Evoorhees: Thank you for answering all the economics-challenged people out there when they post threads like this.  Nobody else bothers, but you are providing a very important service to this forum and the Bitcoin community.  

(Also, note that I am not ridiculing people who are confused about economics, just saying that someone has to answer them when yet another thread like this gets posted)

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January 12, 2012, 01:22:09 AM
 #5



You're completely incorrect. Prices cannot do anything BUT stabilize in the long-run.

Now, in a Bitcoin world we may see the price for a coin change every day, but that change will asymptotically shrink over years and decades.

What's important in a currency is that changes in money supply are A) minimal, B) predictable, C)not arbitrarily decided by specific actors. Bitcoin satisfies these requirements - and in fact Bitcoin offers the most predictable money supply ever created in any form of money.

I'm not economically confused. Bitcoin is a virtual commodity that happens to have properties that allow for easy exchange. Like any commodity, or any other good/service on the market for that matter, an increase in demand leads to an increase in prices, leading to an increase in production/supply, which decreases prices to balance them out.

Normally on the market, this process yields stable prices (technically, it leads to decreasing prices due to greater efficiency of capital with time, but Bitcoin supply increases the same amount regardless of capital so capital efficiency cannot improve for Bitcoin). As a result, I theorize that Bitcoin price increases exponentially the more demand exceeds supply, and decreases exponentially the more supply exceeds demand. This off-the-top-of-my-head theory was concocted by reasoning that moving up/down on a demand curve exponentially increases the area between it and its corresponding supply curve. Given the relatively small user base we have, demand is going to be finite over a small period of time. So once demand decreases beyond the equilibrium point, boom turns to bust and we have an exponentially decreasing price even with just a linear increase in sellers. I predict that with an increase in user base, the boom/bust cycles will take longer and be larger but still occur.

Now my theory and prediction could be complete nonsense, but the bit about prices being unstable (without trying to quantify) should be accurate.
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January 12, 2012, 02:21:55 PM
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You're completely incorrect. Prices cannot do anything BUT stabilize in the long-run.

Now, in a Bitcoin world we may see the price for a coin change every day, but that change will asymptotically shrink over years and decades.

What's important in a currency is that changes in money supply are A) minimal, B) predictable, C)not arbitrarily decided by specific actors. Bitcoin satisfies these requirements - and in fact Bitcoin offers the most predictable money supply ever created in any form of money.

I'm not economically confused. Bitcoin is a virtual commodity that happens to have properties that allow for easy exchange. Like any commodity, or any other good/service on the market for that matter, an increase in demand leads to an increase in prices, leading to an increase in production/supply, which decreases prices to balance them out.

Normally on the market, this process yields stable prices (technically, it leads to decreasing prices due to greater efficiency of capital with time, but Bitcoin supply increases the same amount regardless of capital so capital efficiency cannot improve for Bitcoin). As a result, I theorize that Bitcoin price increases exponentially the more demand exceeds supply, and decreases exponentially the more supply exceeds demand. This off-the-top-of-my-head theory was concocted by reasoning that moving up/down on a demand curve exponentially increases the area between it and its corresponding supply curve. Given the relatively small user base we have, demand is going to be finite over a small period of time. So once demand decreases beyond the equilibrium point, boom turns to bust and we have an exponentially decreasing price even with just a linear increase in sellers. I predict that with an increase in user base, the boom/bust cycles will take longer and be larger but still occur.

Now my theory and prediction could be complete nonsense, but the bit about prices being unstable (without trying to quantify) should be accurate.

Unstable price will attract speculators, and today almost everything is to be speculated, bitcoin will be the best candidate for speculation, due to its limited supply nature

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January 13, 2012, 04:35:05 PM
 #7

I read an assumption of price or market size staying at exponential growth.

Read the above sentence a few times, remember what an exponential is, and it will be obvious that evoorhees is correct. He even put in a reasonable time-scale: "over years and decades".

Of course it won't be stable tomorrow. But the market learns at the speed the volatility happens, and exponential growth cannot last forever, so there is no problem after enough time has passed.
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January 13, 2012, 04:40:11 PM
 #8

The supply of coins grows at the same rate regardless of demand. Stability requires a flexible supply increase to correspond with demand increase. This limitation will be an impediment to the growth of Bitcoin commerce.

You're completely incorrect. Prices cannot do anything BUT stabilize in the long-run.

Now, in a Bitcoin world we may see the price for a coin change every day, but that change will asymptotically shrink over years and decades.

What's important in a currency is that changes in money supply are A) minimal, B) predictable, C)not arbitrarily decided by specific actors. Bitcoin satisfies these requirements - and in fact Bitcoin offers the most predictable money supply ever created in any form of money.

And you are completely ignorant and stupid. How do you know what must happen in the long-run? Why are these things important? How do you know that they are important?

What a fucking idiot you are. It is really mind-boggling.
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January 13, 2012, 05:10:27 PM
 #9

The supply of coins grows at the same rate regardless of demand. Stability requires a flexible supply increase to correspond with demand increase. This limitation will be an impediment to the growth of Bitcoin commerce.

You're thinking of the total in existence.

But what's important is the supply for sale. That's what "supply" means in an economic sense. Just because an average of 7200 BTC are mined daily doesn't mean all those bitcoins will always be thrown onto the market. Miners have the option of holding onto and/or spending their bitcoins rather than putting them up for sale on the exchanges. Also, holders of bitcoins have the option of throwing their previously-purchased coins back onto the market for sale.

At any given time, between zero and all available bitcoins in existence can be for sale. That's as flexible as any other asset/resource/whatever.

Bitcoin is the ultimate freedom test. It tells you who is giving lip service and who genuinely believes in it.
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In the future, books that summarize the history of money will have a line that says, “and then came bitcoin.” It is the economic singularity. And we are living in it now. - Ryan Dickherber
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ATTENTION BFL MINING NEWBS: Just got your Jalapenos in? Wondering how to get the most value for the least hassle? Give BitMinter a try! It's a smaller pool with a fair & low-fee payment method, lots of statistical feedback, and it's easier than EasyMiner! (Yes, we want your hashing power, but seriously, it IS the easiest pool to use! Sign up in seconds to try it!)
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The idea that deflation causes hoarding (to any problematic degree) is a lie used to justify theft of value from your savings.
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January 13, 2012, 05:16:29 PM
 #10

I think there is another problem here.. What do you mean by stabilize?
From what I've seen, there is no such thing out there. No world currency or commodity stabilizes... they always fluctuate due to millions of little and big pressures in the market.
I'd say bouncing between 6 and 7 for the past week is pretty stable... :p for bitcoins.

ZOMG Moo!
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January 13, 2012, 06:53:53 PM
 #11

The supply of coins grows at the same rate regardless of demand. Stability requires a flexible supply increase to correspond with demand increase. This limitation will be an impediment to the growth of Bitcoin commerce.

You're thinking of the total in existence.

But what's important is the supply for sale. That's what "supply" means in an economic sense. Just because an average of 7200 BTC are mined daily doesn't mean all those bitcoins will always be thrown onto the market. Miners have the option of holding onto and/or spending their bitcoins rather than putting them up for sale on the exchanges. Also, holders of bitcoins have the option of throwing their previously-purchased coins back onto the market for sale.

At any given time, between zero and all available bitcoins in existence can be for sale. That's as flexible as any other asset/resource/whatever.


You are correct if you assume miners hold when prices are low and sell when prices are high. But if most miners behave the same way as most of the market, they will constrict supply during uptrends and beef up supply during downtrends. In that case, supply moves in the opposite direction of demand.

Think about the original suppliers for gold and for Bitcoins. Gold miners mine more gold when prices go up. Alternatively, we can say that the earth supplies more gold to the miners due to the miners investing more mining resources into extracting it. For Bitcoin, the network gives miners the same amount of Bitcoins when prices rise. This remains true no matter the quantity of mining resources invested.
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January 13, 2012, 07:17:13 PM
 #12

Yawn.

A) The supply curve is not linear and stops at exactly 21M BTC (to use your jargon: it doesn't
    grow at a constant rate. And as pointed by someone else in the thread, said rate is currently
    fairly small). Your first point is thereby made moot.

B) The headroom for demand increase is almost infinite because it can potentially grow to
    become a sizable fraction of the world's economy.

C) The price stability problem for e-commerce is already being dealt with by enterprising
     folks offering instant BTC to USD conversion (for a fee, of course).

So: nope.

A) I should have clarified. I meant fixed rate, not constant. The rate is simply fixed differently depending on amount of time passed.

B) This proves my point. Yes, demand can increase substantially, and supply will not adjust to match, thus creating a greater price increase than would otherwise occur. That's why I believe prices will be sky high at some points, but I think you're assuming that I'm trying to bash Bitcoin and say it's worthless. I'm just saying that prices will be less stable than they should otherwise be, and so this imperfection might make Bitcoin commerce less efficient. We will have cycles of people hoarding coins en masse during upturns and then spending coins en masse during downturns.

C) This is not really a solution to the problem. It is equivalent to saying "because Bitcoin is unstable, people can substitute Bitcoin for other money".
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January 13, 2012, 07:21:45 PM
 #13

The supply of coins grows at the same rate regardless of demand. Stability requires a flexible supply increase to correspond with demand increase. This limitation will be an impediment to the growth of Bitcoin commerce.

You're thinking of the total in existence.

But what's important is the supply for sale. That's what "supply" means in an economic sense. Just because an average of 7200 BTC are mined daily doesn't mean all those bitcoins will always be thrown onto the market. Miners have the option of holding onto and/or spending their bitcoins rather than putting them up for sale on the exchanges. Also, holders of bitcoins have the option of throwing their previously-purchased coins back onto the market for sale.

At any given time, between zero and all available bitcoins in existence can be for sale. That's as flexible as any other asset/resource/whatever.


You are correct if you assume miners hold when prices are low and sell when prices are high. But if most miners behave the same way as most of the market, they will constrict supply during uptrends and beef up supply during downtrends. In that case, supply moves in the opposite direction of demand.

Think about the original suppliers for gold and for Bitcoins. Gold miners mine more gold when prices go up. Alternatively, we can say that the earth supplies more gold to the miners due to the miners investing more mining resources into extracting it. For Bitcoin, the network gives miners the same amount of Bitcoins when prices rise. This remains true no matter the quantity of mining resources invested.


You made an important point here: "Gold miners mine more gold when prices go up."

But they do so by expending more effort and resources to mine more.

The equivalent, in the world of bitcoin mining, would be to apply more processing power to mining when prices go up, giving themselves a bigger cut of the block rewards.

And still, the point remains: the supply of bitcoins for sale at any point is as flexible as any other commodity (more than some others, really.) Even with all miners selling all coins ASAP, there are still 8 million bitcoins in existence; that's potentially about 22K bitcoins per day if sold off throughout the course of the year, far more than the miners produce.

So there's really no need to worry--some of these reserves will join the public market supply if the price rises enough, just like with gold, wheat, etc.

Bitcoin is the ultimate freedom test. It tells you who is giving lip service and who genuinely believes in it.
...
...
In the future, books that summarize the history of money will have a line that says, “and then came bitcoin.” It is the economic singularity. And we are living in it now. - Ryan Dickherber
...
...
ATTENTION BFL MINING NEWBS: Just got your Jalapenos in? Wondering how to get the most value for the least hassle? Give BitMinter a try! It's a smaller pool with a fair & low-fee payment method, lots of statistical feedback, and it's easier than EasyMiner! (Yes, we want your hashing power, but seriously, it IS the easiest pool to use! Sign up in seconds to try it!)
...
...
The idea that deflation causes hoarding (to any problematic degree) is a lie used to justify theft of value from your savings.
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January 13, 2012, 09:04:27 PM
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You made an important point here: "Gold miners mine more gold when prices go up."

But they do so by expending more effort and resources to mine more.

The equivalent, in the world of bitcoin mining, would be to apply more processing power to mining when prices go up, giving themselves a bigger cut of the block rewards.

And still, the point remains: the supply of bitcoins for sale at any point is as flexible as any other commodity (more than some others, really.) Even with all miners selling all coins ASAP, there are still 8 million bitcoins in existence; that's potentially about 22K bitcoins per day if sold off throughout the course of the year, far more than the miners produce.

So there's really no need to worry--some of these reserves will join the public market supply if the price rises enough, just like with gold, wheat, etc.


Bitcoin is only like gold if all of the gold miners were competing over the same mine. You would have either one miner get X amount of gold, or N miners getting X/N *(mining power/total mining power) gold per miner. I understand that scarcity is a fundamental qualification for a commodity to become a currency, so maybe it's OK for Bitcoin to have such extreme scarcity since it is so highly divisible. Maybe I should rethink my knowledge on theory of money, since I'm familiar with the basic properties required for something to be money but have never thought about how those properties can counterbalance one another. In fact, maybe a theoretically optimal currency is one that approaches infinite scarcity and infinite divisibility. Thanks for contributing to the discussion and getting me to reconsider my initial complaints.
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January 13, 2012, 09:23:22 PM
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Bitcoin is only like gold if all of the gold miners were competing over the same mine. You would have either one miner get X amount of gold, or N miners getting X/N *(mining power/total mining power) gold per miner. I understand that scarcity is a fundamental qualification for a commodity to become a currency, so maybe it's OK for Bitcoin to have such extreme scarcity since it is so highly divisible. Maybe I should rethink my knowledge on theory of money, since I'm familiar with the basic properties required for something to be money but have never thought about how those properties can counterbalance one another.

Nah, you're pretty much right. There will definitely be booms and busts, regardless of what currency we use, and you're right that people will buy up more when the price goes up, and sell more when it goes down. Hopefully price rising up will drive holders to cash out, and prices going down will cause willing investors to buy it up, but if that barely works in the stock market, I would expect for it to work for bitcoin either. Our main hope is that in the long run people will understand that the value of a bitcoin is mainly as exchange, not as investment, and resist running to it every time they see it increase in value a bit, but considering it's a strong and dependable store of value, I fully expect everyone to run to it every time the economy hits a snag. Maybe eventually we'll end up with a self-interested party holding a vast store of bitcoin, and releasing it into the market or buying it up to try to keep the prices stable, the way DeBeers does for diamonds now.
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January 13, 2012, 10:10:17 PM
 #16

Bitcoin is only like gold if all of the gold miners were competing over the same mine. You would have either one miner get X amount of gold, or N miners getting X/N *(mining power/total mining power) gold per miner. I understand that scarcity is a fundamental qualification for a commodity to become a currency, so maybe it's OK for Bitcoin to have such extreme scarcity since it is so highly divisible. Maybe I should rethink my knowledge on theory of money, since I'm familiar with the basic properties required for something to be money but have never thought about how those properties can counterbalance one another. In fact, maybe a theoretically optimal currency is one that approaches infinite scarcity and infinite divisibility. Thanks for contributing to the discussion and getting me to reconsider my initial complaints.

It takes a bigger man to rethink his initial assumptions, than stubbornly hold on. Good sports.

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January 14, 2012, 01:11:09 AM
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Bitcoin is only like gold if all of the gold miners were competing over the same mine. You would have either one miner get X amount of gold, or N miners getting X/N *(mining power/total mining power) gold per miner. I understand that scarcity is a fundamental qualification for a commodity to become a currency, so maybe it's OK for Bitcoin to have such extreme scarcity since it is so highly divisible. Maybe I should rethink my knowledge on theory of money, since I'm familiar with the basic properties required for something to be money but have never thought about how those properties can counterbalance one another.

Nah, you're pretty much right. There will definitely be booms and busts, regardless of what currency we use, and you're right that people will buy up more when the price goes up, and sell more when it goes down. Hopefully price rising up will drive holders to cash out, and prices going down will cause willing investors to buy it up, but if that barely works in the stock market, I would expect for it to work for bitcoin either. Our main hope is that in the long run people will understand that the value of a bitcoin is mainly as exchange, not as investment, and resist running to it every time they see it increase in value a bit, but considering it's a strong and dependable store of value, I fully expect everyone to run to it every time the economy hits a snag. Maybe eventually we'll end up with a self-interested party holding a vast store of bitcoin, and releasing it into the market or buying it up to try to keep the prices stable, the way DeBeers does for diamonds now.

DeBits?

*shudders at thought of a single entity controlling 60+% of all bitcoins*

Bitcoin is the ultimate freedom test. It tells you who is giving lip service and who genuinely believes in it.
...
...
In the future, books that summarize the history of money will have a line that says, “and then came bitcoin.” It is the economic singularity. And we are living in it now. - Ryan Dickherber
...
...
ATTENTION BFL MINING NEWBS: Just got your Jalapenos in? Wondering how to get the most value for the least hassle? Give BitMinter a try! It's a smaller pool with a fair & low-fee payment method, lots of statistical feedback, and it's easier than EasyMiner! (Yes, we want your hashing power, but seriously, it IS the easiest pool to use! Sign up in seconds to try it!)
...
...
The idea that deflation causes hoarding (to any problematic degree) is a lie used to justify theft of value from your savings.
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January 14, 2012, 07:59:41 AM
 #18

Maybe eventually we'll end up with a self-interested party holding a vast store of bitcoin, and releasing it into the market or buying it up to try to keep the prices stable, the way DeBeers does for diamonds now.

What you are describing are speculators: http://mises.org/daily/4466

Price stability depends largely on market size and history, and bitcoin doesn't have much of either yet.

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January 14, 2012, 02:43:41 PM
 #19

speculators
Maybe eventually we'll end up with a self-interested party holding a vast store of bitcoin, and releasing it into the market or buying it up to try to keep the prices stable, the way DeBeers does for diamonds now.

What you are describing are speculators: http://mises.org/daily/4466

Price stability depends largely on market size and history, and bitcoin doesn't have much of either yet.

I wouldn't call DeBeers speculators. They don't so much guess and try to make a profit of market movements as they actually determine and control the market by having a near monopoly on production and distribution, and holding huge reserves of diamonds, keeping them off the market and buying up any new diamonds to keep the market from being flooded. A wealthy self interested party could theoretically do the same with bitcoin, buying up large quantities, making more wealth off of their large holdings, and using that wealth to buy up any unexpected bitcoin flooding the market (such as during start of a panic sell), just to preserve the value of their holdings. DeBeers is more of a powerful and sophisticated hoarder than a speculator.
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January 16, 2012, 02:52:19 PM
 #20

Artificial scarcity, a very special character of BTC, in a world that almost everything can be mass produced without limit

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