Monero Economy

[FreeTrade]

Right, my proposal fixes block reward at 0.117061151915 once the chain reaches that.

Sounds fine. Unless you have a particular economic theory to test, I think the 'pick a number' between 0% and 2% approach is reasonable. 

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[Keyboard-Mash]

Right, my proposal fixes block reward at 0.117061151915 once the chain reaches that.

Sounds fine. Unless you have a particular economic theory to test, I think the 'pick a number' between 0% and 2% approach is reasonable. 

Agreed!

There was tons of stuff on the FreiCoin forums about this sort of thing, and maaku etc spent months on the problem to eventually abandon it for demurrage. If there is an answer, it's not an obvious one.

Any idea which FreiCoin forums/threads? Would be nice to have a link, that was a bit before I started posting here. If not I'll look around when I get time.

[aminorex]

One approach not yet considered, which is motivated by the lost coins issue, would be to emit in the following year however many coins have remained unmoved for the past 10 years.  Actually, it would make more sense to make it a full human lifespan, but the emission curve is too aggressive to do that gracefully, and lifespans may change a lot, so whatevs.  If you don't want to get diluted, just be sure to move your coins every 10 years.  Sadly I can't control whether someone else moves their coins, so it's a bit unsatisfactory in that regard.  

Regardless of such minor issues, recycling lost coins as rewards does make a lot of sense.  It would be a deeply compelling idea if the emission curve tapered over 80 years or so.  But even on a shorter frame, if the shelf period is uncorrelated with the demographic cycle, this would also have an adaptive effect, with respect to velocity fluctuations resulting from that cycle -- assuming that newly issued coins have higher than average velocity (which seems certain).

Adjusting emission depending on velocity read directly from the blockchain is such a bad idea that I won't go there again.  But counting idle coins provides a somewhat similar benefit, without all the pitfalls.  It is certainly less dependent on committing to a particular economic theory.

Edit:  I should not have said "recycling".  I was thinking in terms of recycling the days-destroyed, rather than the coins themselves.  "Recycling" per se would only be reasonable if actual lost coins could be identified, but they can't, in principle, so actual recycling attempts would be ill-advised.

[drawingthesun]

Would fixing the rate at 1 Monero per block be too much?

I much prefer the immortal final reward to be something really nice and even, like 1 instead of 0.1 or 0.12.

I feel this might be ok because Monero is quite a fast release coin with 80% mined in the first 4 years. I really think we could justify 1 Monero per block.

I still prefer something like 0.5% - 1%

Someone said that 0.69% is the same as the doubling of the coin supply every 100 years (not including lost coins). I liked that idea.

I think we need to have a simple solution (fixed % or amount) without worrying about lost coins. Over time there will be less and less lost coins and I doubt we'll ever have the same lost coin situation as Bitcoin.

Monero is worth about $1 in it's first month, it took Bitcoin years to get to that point.

[drawingthesun]

One approach not yet considered, which is motivated by the lost coins issue, would be to emit in the following year however many coins have remained unmoved for the past 10 years.  Actually, it would make more sense to make it a full human lifespan, but the emission curve is too aggressive to do that gracefully, and lifespans may change a lot, so whatevs.  If you don't want to get diluted, just be sure to move your coins every 10 years.  Sadly I can't control whether someone else moves their coins, so it's a bit unsatisfactory in that regard.  

Regardless of such minor issues, recycling lost coins as rewards does make a lot of sense.  It would be a deeply compelling idea if the emission curve tapered over 80 years or so.  But even on a shorter frame, if the shelf period is uncorrelated with the demographic cycle, this would also have an adaptive effect, with respect to velocity fluctuations resulting from that cycle -- assuming that newly issued coins have higher than average velocity (which seems certain).

Adjusting emission depending on velocity read directly from the blockchain is such a bad idea that I won't go there again.  But counting idle coins provides a somewhat similar benefit, without all the pitfalls.  It is certainly less dependent on committing to a particular economic theory.

I'm not sure, if a miner holds many coins they are inclined to leave as many as possible sitting idle so that their mining rewards in 10 years are higher. Anything like this can be gamed too easily.

[aminorex]

I'm not sure, if a miner holds many coins they are inclined to leave as many as possible sitting idle so that their mining rewards in 10 years are higher. Anything like this can be gamed too easily.

If you leave coins idle past the shelf time, you get diluted.  It's an incentive to move coins.  Incentives to move coins are good for the economy.  As I see it, there is no downside to the game.  It's just a question of how much win there is.  (Probably one would cap the maximum emission, so that massive hoarding would not be incentivized.)

[tacotime]

Would fixing the rate at 1 Monero per block be too much?

I much prefer the immortal final reward to be something really nice and even, like 1 instead of 0.1 or 0.12.

I feel this might be ok because Monero is quite a fast release coin with 80% mined in the first 4 years. I really think we could justify 1 Monero per block.

I still prefer something like 0.5% - 1%

Someone said that 0.69% is the same as the doubling of the coin supply every 100 years (not including lost coins). I liked that idea.

I think we need to have a simple solution (fixed % or amount) without worrying about lost coins. Over time there will be less and less lost coins and I doubt we'll ever have the same lost coin situation as Bitcoin.

Monero is worth about $1 in it's first month, it took Bitcoin years to get to that point.

Well, me and someone else personally destroyed 600 by accident, I'm sure there will be more.

Additionally, it's likely that hundreds or thousand of monero were lost due to TFT's block reward bug: http://monerochain.info/charts/reward

[smooth]

I'm not sure, if a miner holds many coins they are inclined to leave as many as possible sitting idle so that their mining rewards in 10 years are higher. Anything like this can be gamed too easily.

If you leave coins idle past the shelf time, you get diluted.  It's an incentive to move coins.  Incentives to move coins are good for the economy.  As I see it, there is no downside to the game.  It's just a question of how much win there is.  (Probably one would cap the maximum emission, so that massive hoarding would not be incentivized.)

I don't really see how moving coins to yourself is good for the economy. In fact it seems like a waste of resources, though the benefit of certainly over lost coins might be worth it.

[aminorex]

I don't really see how moving coins to yourself is good for the economy. In fact it seems like a waste of resources, though the benefit of certainly over lost coins might be worth it.

It's not.  But keeping coins moving is.  Any waste of resources in this instance is negligible.  But I am more likely to spend coins if I am consciously aware of them as a resource, as would be required in order to move them.  The good for the economy part is emission which compensates for lost coins.  They will have higher velocity than average.

[smoothie]

Would fixing the rate at 1 Monero per block be too much?

I much prefer the immortal final reward to be something really nice and even, like 1 instead of 0.1 or 0.12.

I feel this might be ok because Monero is quite a fast release coin with 80% mined in the first 4 years. I really think we could justify 1 Monero per block.

I still prefer something like 0.5% - 1%

Someone said that 0.69% is the same as the doubling of the coin supply every 100 years (not including lost coins). I liked that idea.

I think we need to have a simple solution (fixed % or amount) without worrying about lost coins. Over time there will be less and less lost coins and I doubt we'll ever have the same lost coin situation as Bitcoin.

Monero is worth about $1 in it's first month, it took Bitcoin years to get to that point.

Well, me and someone else personally destroyed 600 by accident, I'm sure there will be more.

Additionally, it's likely that hundreds or thousand of monero were lost due to TFT's block reward bug: http://monerochain.info/charts/reward

What did you accidentally do?

Is it a pitfall others could avoid if you tell us? 

[adept]

Anyone else think this coin is undervalued?

[hbadger]

I don't really see how moving coins to yourself is good for the economy. In fact it seems like a waste of resources, though the benefit of certainly over lost coins might be worth it.

It's not.  But keeping coins moving is.  Any waste of resources in this instance is negligible.  But I am more likely to spend coins if I am consciously aware of them as a resource, as would be required in order to move them.  The good for the economy part is emission which compensates for lost coins.  They will have higher velocity than average.

Inflation is not an incentive to spend unless you are forced into using only that currency, like governments do to their own people.

Do you have plans on forcing everyone to use Monero? Because if you don't, this will fail. I love everything about this coin, except for the inflation. And I talked to many bitcoiners and they independently arrived to the same opinion.

One of the main uses for Bitcoin that a lot of people like, is as a store of value. It rewards saving, like gold, as opposed to what fiat does, which punishes saving and responsible spending.

This also has ethical implications, like supporting or not consumerism and its ecological impact. Why do you want to force people into buying things they don't need? The economy can't grow undefinitely, sometimes it has to shrink for the benefit of the world and all of us. If someone is selling a product that people don't need anymore, what's wrong with him moving into something else? Why not "force" him into building things we need (if anything at all), instead of forcing us into buying them anyway? Inflation goes against the free market in that sense.

Also, if you want the price to go up, there's nothing better than having people use it as a store of value. Being able to use the currency (utility) also drives the price up, though not immediately (but the good news can have a fast effect). Forcing people into spending it won't. And it will certainly not attract new savers.

[smooth]

I don't really see how moving coins to yourself is good for the economy. In fact it seems like a waste of resources, though the benefit of certainly over lost coins might be worth it.

It's not.  But keeping coins moving is.  Any waste of resources in this instance is negligible.  But I am more likely to spend coins if I am consciously aware of them as a resource, as would be required in order to move them.  The good for the economy part is emission which compensates for lost coins.  They will have higher velocity than average.

Inflation is not an incentive to spend unless you are forced into using only that currency, like governments do to their own people.

Do you have plans on forcing everyone to use Monero? Because if you don't, this will fail. I love everything about this coin, except for the inflation. And I talked to many bitcoiners and they independently arrived to the same opinion.

One of the main uses for Bitcoin that a lot of people like, is as a store of value. It rewards saving, like gold, as opposed to what fiat does, which punishes saving and responsible spending.

This also has ethical implications, like supporting or not consumerism and its ecological impact. Why do you want to force people into buying things they don't need? The economy can't grow undefinitely, sometimes it has to shrink for the benefit of the world and all of us. If someone is selling a product that people don't need anymore, what's wrong with him moving into something else? Why not "force" him into building things we need (if anything at all), instead of forcing us into buying them anyway? Inflation goes against the free market in that sense.

Also, if you want the price to go up, there's nothing better than having people use it as a store of value. Being able to use the currency (utility) also drives the price up, though not immediately (but the good news can have a fast effect). Forcing people into spending it won't. And it will certainly not attract new savers.

I come at this not from a macroeconomic point of view (I consider virtually all macroeconomics to be junk science) but from a practical one. I want to continue to pay miners without relying on transaction fees, because the latter forces consolidation, and worse, to give miners the market power to charge more than marginal cost. 

If you don't have inflation (or demurrage, which I consider equivalent) how are you going to pay miners?

[tacotime]

Well, me and someone else personally destroyed 600 by accident, I'm sure there will be more.

Additionally, it's likely that hundreds or thousand of monero were lost due to TFT's block reward bug: http://monerochain.info/charts/reward

What did you accidentally do?

Is it a pitfall others could avoid if you tell us? 
[/quote]

Check out the behaviour of "make clean" in the makefile
Before I changed it, it didn't used to prompt you to remove the build directory...

[astor]

I don't really see how moving coins to yourself is good for the economy. In fact it seems like a waste of resources, though the benefit of certainly over lost coins might be worth it.

It's not.  But keeping coins moving is.  Any waste of resources in this instance is negligible.  But I am more likely to spend coins if I am consciously aware of them as a resource, as would be required in order to move them.  The good for the economy part is emission which compensates for lost coins.  They will have higher velocity than average.

Inflation is not an incentive to spend unless you are forced into using only that currency, like governments do to their own people.

Do you have plans on forcing everyone to use Monero? Because if you don't, this will fail. I love everything about this coin, except for the inflation. And I talked to many bitcoiners and they independently arrived to the same opinion.

One of the main uses for Bitcoin that a lot of people like, is as a store of value. It rewards saving, like gold, as opposed to what fiat does, which punishes saving and responsible spending.

This also has ethical implications, like supporting or not consumerism and its ecological impact. Why do you want to force people into buying things they don't need? The economy can't grow undefinitely, sometimes it has to shrink for the benefit of the world and all of us. If someone is selling a product that people don't need anymore, what's wrong with him moving into something else? Why not "force" him into building things we need (if anything at all), instead of forcing us into buying them anyway? Inflation goes against the free market in that sense.

Also, if you want the price to go up, there's nothing better than having people use it as a store of value. Being able to use the currency (utility) also drives the price up, though not immediately (but the good news can have a fast effect). Forcing people into spending it won't. And it will certainly not attract new savers.

On the ethical side, you need to look at the equilibrium between the cost of electricity and the value paid out to miners.

Let's use CPI, consumer price index as the unit.

If we assume for simplicity that mining power per CPI is flat over time (no new CPU tech), then mining equipment can be bought once and after some time it is the business of converting eletricity to coins.

Therefore it is an equilibrium between the value of electricity and what miners are paid.

In a society where the M1 money supply consists mostly of XMR, spending 1% on miners a year means that of the total money supply, the equivalent to 1% of that money supply is exchanged for electricity, and wasted.

This can be a significant part of the power produced in the world.  Therefore, the ethical solution is not to fix this as a percentage of the total money supply.

There is no logic to having a linear correlation between the value of the money supply and what miners are paid.  Having 100x as many miners does not make the system 100x as secure.  Having 2x the miners and spending 98x on developing mathematical proofs for the code base is probably a much better proposition.

The only sensible action is for miner profits to go down, in percentage of the total money supply, almost to zero.  This is based on the assuption that XMR increases in value.  There is simply no point in having 100k miners to secure the ledger.   That's like chasing insignificant risks when the big elephant in the room is the fact that the code base is written in C++ instead of Haskell.

[hbadger]

I don't really see how moving coins to yourself is good for the economy. In fact it seems like a waste of resources, though the benefit of certainly over lost coins might be worth it.

It's not.  But keeping coins moving is.  Any waste of resources in this instance is negligible.  But I am more likely to spend coins if I am consciously aware of them as a resource, as would be required in order to move them.  The good for the economy part is emission which compensates for lost coins.  They will have higher velocity than average.

Inflation is not an incentive to spend unless you are forced into using only that currency, like governments do to their own people.

Do you have plans on forcing everyone to use Monero? Because if you don't, this will fail. I love everything about this coin, except for the inflation. And I talked to many bitcoiners and they independently arrived to the same opinion.

One of the main uses for Bitcoin that a lot of people like, is as a store of value. It rewards saving, like gold, as opposed to what fiat does, which punishes saving and responsible spending.

This also has ethical implications, like supporting or not consumerism and its ecological impact. Why do you want to force people into buying things they don't need? The economy can't grow undefinitely, sometimes it has to shrink for the benefit of the world and all of us. If someone is selling a product that people don't need anymore, what's wrong with him moving into something else? Why not "force" him into building things we need (if anything at all), instead of forcing us into buying them anyway? Inflation goes against the free market in that sense.

Also, if you want the price to go up, there's nothing better than having people use it as a store of value. Being able to use the currency (utility) also drives the price up, though not immediately (but the good news can have a fast effect). Forcing people into spending it won't. And it will certainly not attract new savers.

I consider virtually all macroeconomics to be junk science) but from a practical one.

I agree. I'm not saying "This is true because my teacher said so". I only had one class of economics at school and it sucked, it was all dogma. I'm just using observation and logic. Everyone is free to tell me "your observation/reasoning is wrong because X".

I want to continue to pay miners without relying on transaction fees, because the latter forces consolidation, and worse, to give miners the market power to charge more than marginal cost.  

If you don't have inflation (or demurrage, which I consider equivalent) how are you going to pay miners?

You are going to have to pay them one way or another. I only see two ways: inflation or transaction fees. The former would be paid by everyone (inflation is not free money), the latter only by those who need to transact. I don't know why you believe it's right to make everyone pay for a service they are not using. That sounds a lot like a government. What's wrong with letting people pay for the services they use? Nothing good can come out from letting people (in this case the senders) spend money that isn't theirs. Let's imagine an extreme scenario: A currency with zero fees. People would generate a ton of transactions they don't need at all, just because it's free. It would also attract trolls and spammers, and other scourges. That can't happen if it is their own money they are spending.

Ok, you say it forces consolidation. That doesn't seem intuitive at all. Do you have any evidence for it? All PoW coins seem to favor consolidation. I don't think it has anything to do with the relation between fees and inflation. Can you elaborate on this?

[smooth]

Ok, you say it forces consolidation. That doesn't seem intuitive at all. Do you have any evidence for it? All PoW coins seem to favor consolidation. I don't think it has anything to do with the relation between fees and inflation. Can you elaborate on this?

In a competitive market prices converge to marginal cost. In the case of transactions, this includes things like the cost of electricity to actually verify the transactions as valid, bandwidth, and the increased risk of orphans if you include more transactions in your block. It does not include the cost of performing proof-of-work. The only way miners who are "paid by transactions" are able get paid for performing proof-of-work is by overcharging by the transactions themselves, and they can only do this if they have some sort of market power. Thus it is impossible for mining to be competitive if proof-of-work is paid by transaction fees. It also results in further destructive incentives, as miners try to scoop up and horde transactions (for example using a sybil attack), since transactions are no longer competitively priced, but no represent a source of profit to be "mined."

There is also the free rider argument. If long-term-holders just hold and don't perform transactions (i.e. generate fees), miners won't do work, and the block chain won't be secure. The holders could do the mining themselves, but again only if they collude. Individually the incentive is for each holder to sit out and let the others holders pay the costs. The higher transactions fees go (to pay for proof of work, remember?), the greater the incentive to just sit on your coins and not pay them. This only reaches an equilibrium if some individual or group acquires all or most of the long-term holdings, so that individual or group can pay the mining costs without being exploited by free riders. Failing that, you have insufficient security, and likely such a coin will never become very successful (this includes bitcoin, although I think its possible now that bitcoin becomes a version of fiat).

So no structural mining reward means either extreme concentration of power, either in mining or holdings or both. One way to look at a structural reward is a consensus among the holders to share costs (since all holdings are being diluted by inflation) instead of relying on individual decisions to incur costs and suffer from a free rider problem.

Pricing remains an issue though, as no one has come up with a good model for how much mining should be performed, and how it should be paid for. "None" is clearly wrong though, in the proof-of-work model. Using proof-of-stake (if that can be made to actually work) or something else is another question.

[hbadger]

Ok, you say it forces consolidation. That doesn't seem intuitive at all. Do you have any evidence for it? All PoW coins seem to favor consolidation. I don't think it has anything to do with the relation between fees and inflation. Can you elaborate on this?

In a competitive market prices converge to marginal cost. In the case of transactions, this includes things like the cost of electricity to actually verify the transactions as valid, bandwidth, and the increased risk of orphans if you include more transactions in your block. It does not include the cost of performing proof-of-work. The only way miners who are "paid by transactions" are able get paid for performing proof-of-work is by overcharging by the transactions themselves, and they can only do this if they have some sort of market power. Thus it is impossible for mining to be competitive if proof-of-work is paid by transaction fees. It also results in further destructive incentives, as miners try to scoop up and horde transactions (for example using a sybil attack), since transactions are no longer competitively priced, but no represent a source of profit to be "mined."

There is also the free rider argument. If long-term-holders just hold and don't perform transactions (i.e. generate fees), miners won't do work, and the block chain won't be secure. The holders could do the mining themselves, but again only if they collude. Individually the incentive is for each holder to sit out and let the others holders pay the costs. The higher transactions fees go (to pay for proof of work, remember?), the greater the incentive to just sit on your coins and not pay them. This only reaches an equilibrium if some individual or group acquires all or most of the long-term holdings, so that individual or group can pay the mining costs without being exploited by free riders. Failing that, you have insufficient security, and likely such a coin will never become very successful (this includes bitcoin, although I think its possible now that bitcoin becomes a version of fiat).

So no structural mining reward means either extreme concentration of power, either in mining or holdings or both.

Pricing remains an issue though, as no one has come up with a good model for how much mining should be performed, and how it should be paid for. "None" is clearly wrong though, in the proof-of-work model. Using proof-of-stake (if that can be made to actually work) or something else is another question.

Bitcoin can't be a version of fiat even if it is consolidated. For example:

- Miners can't steal your savings
- Miners can't add inflation or anything like that, because they can't change the protocol

No one will hold forever just because it is deflationary. And even if someone does, he doesn't need to secure his own coins. Like I said your coins can't be stolen. You only need security at the time of receiving money, because you don't want to be played by a double-spender. Of course you also want security for the coins to hold value. But everyone spends. You can't live without spending. Imagine a world in which Bitcoin has reached its full potential. There will be no "Herp derp, I will hoard coins and only spend fiat". Even today, bitcoiners like myself are already paying for everything or almost everything in Bitcoin, simply by refilling their wallet after a spend, or periodically. A deflationary currency won't make you do anything you don't already want to do. Not letting people save is just cruel.

Forgive me for saying this again, but using inflation as a means to pay miners (or anyone else) sounds a lot like a government "trick". "Not enough money? No problem, just print more! Steal from the savers! Those idiots, lol!".

I have one example that might help further explain the unfairness of this. Imagine a person that is a huge saver, very responsible, very austere life, only spends on what he needs, and is always thinking about his and his family's future. If there is inflation, at some point the person won't be able to earn any more money. At some point, the percentage that is taken from him will be equal to what he earns. How is this possible? How can this be fair? One should be able to do whatever one wants with his own wealth. Want to save everything for harsher times? Good for you. No "Hey, u have too much! Gimme some!" bullshit.

I definitely think PoW consolidation is bad, and I'm excited about proposals like this one: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=584719.0

But I continue to disagree on that inflation can stop consolidation, or that it will let miners not "overcharge". Transactions cost what the free market decides they cost. If transactions end up being too expensive for small buys like a soda, I don't see what's the problem. Just use offchain transactions (like Satoshi predicted) or a separate and less secure currency (which you could think of as a subtype of offchain transactions).

Also, if you let miners live without transaction fees, won't they be able to manipulate us by overcharging? If you don't pay a huge fee, they don't add your transaction. They don't need it anyway, because inflation will pay for everything. Nothing good can come up from giving people free or unconditional money.

But if they need your transaction fees, an equilibrium will be reached between their need for the fees and your need for the service, or else they will run out of business.

[Johnny Mnemonic]

hbadger, please take the time to read upthread. You are making assumptions left and right:

Nobody says crypto inflation is "free" money. That's the point. All new coins require work, inflation or not.

If it is true that inflation is not an incentive for spending, then we are in trouble because fiat does have incentive to spend, and we won't be able to compete.

It is well established that finite money supplies don't work over the long term.

Why?

- Hoarding + privileged mining = shrinking supply in circulation
- Little to no block reward means tx witholding and competitive fee escalations
- Perpetually increasing value means disincentivized spending
- Perpetually increasing tx fees mean disincentivized spending

What is the takeaway here? You are punishing the spenders. Not a promising strategy in a currency.

[hbadger]

It is well established that finite money supplies don't work over the long term.

Not a promising strategy in a currency.

Gold has done just fine for thousands of years. There are only two reasons why nobody spends it:

- The problems it has due to its physical nature
- Government bans

But a lot of people including the biggest banks use it as a store of value, hence the price it has.

Smooth was just telling us how he sees economics as a pseudoscience, and I agreed. So please don't say things like "it is well established that" inflation is good and deflation is bad. It's like a fallacious appeal to authority. Precisely one of the things Satoshi wanted to experiment was going against mainstream economics. If we want Monero to succeed, we shouldn't change every aspect of Bitcoin.

Nobody says crypto inflation is "free" money. That's the point. All new coins require work, inflation or not.

I know. I'm just saying it's unfair to make people pay for services they don't use. The discussion would be easier if instead of saying "inflation will pay for  that" we simply said "savers will pay for that".

If it is true that inflation is not an incentive for spending, then we are in trouble because fiat does have incentive to spend, and we won't be able to compete.

Agreed. And I think this is the case and we are in trouble, unless we back off from this idea that inflation is good for a currency that people is not forced to use. For a currency that people is forced to use, it's not good or bad, it simply doesn't matter for its survival because people will have to use it anyway. But it's bad for the people.

- Hoarding + privileged mining = shrinking supply in circulation
- Little to no block reward means tx witholding and competitive fee escalations
- Perpetually increasing value means disincentivized spending
- Perpetually increasing tx fees mean disincentivized spending

What is the takeaway here? You are punishing the spenders.

I wouldn't say you are punishing spenders, since you are not forcing them to do anything, and you are not stealing anything from them. In the case of an inflationary currency you are punishing the savers by stealing from them. You could say they shouldn't have saved in such a currency to begin with, but where will that leave the price?

There is a common belief that the amount of transactions is far more important for the price than the savers/investors, which is absolutely false. Number of transactions is only an interesting indicator that the currency has a lot of utility, that it's accepted everywhere. Utility drives the price up, spending for no reason does not. One guy above was even suggesting that we punish stale coins, and that we move our coins for the sake of it. That's dogma right there.

If you, like me, want to see the price go "to the moon", what you want is savers/investors. It's a virtuous circle, and we have seen it on Bitcoin: Investors jump in, price goes up, mining becomes more profitable which brings more hashing power, therefore more security, which makes it more interesting for more conservative investors, prices goes up, we hit the news, and so on.

Also nobody answered this: What's wrong with using offchain transactions for small buys? That way nobody is punished, not even spenders.