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Can you explain? I'm curious how it's not "money supply inflation". The only difference I see is that it's predictable monetary inflation.

SondreB 2w ago

If an artist creates a collection of 21 art pieces. It is announced up-front, each art piece is numbered. He sells one of them to first customer. Is it inflation of his art pieces when he sells is second piece? No, it's not. His art is in the hands of different people, and more and more other people as he sells more, but it doesn't change anything that his art changes hands.

All the Bitcoins are already "made", we just make them available. This is not inflation, even though it might look like it as it has some similar features. Calling it (what happens on Bitcoin) inflation, detracts from the evils of inflation.

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tree 木 2w ago

I'm saying Bitcoin's security model literally requires continuous creation of new coins to pay miners. Whether you call that "inflation" or not is semantic, but the security dependency on ongoing issuance is the actual point.

Chad Lupkes 2w ago

What you're saying is a complete misunderstanding of the supply. When miners solidify a block and get a block reward, they are NOT creating new coins. They are releasing coins from the locked supply. The system already has 21 million Bitcoin embedded in the code. That number cannot be changed except by a hard fork that nobody would support. The inflation rate is for circulating supply, not total supply.

Garbage nsec 2w ago

You could say that about anything. Everything has a total number that will ever exist, even raindrops, it's just a question of whether we know what the total is or not.

In fact I'm looking at a number of raindrops that just got "released from the total supply" outside my window right now.

And as you point out a hard fork could change Bitcoin so we don't even REALLY know the total number there either. Nobody has a time machine.

Chad Lupkes 2w ago

that's like complaining about how little matter there is on the Earth when Jupiter and Sol have so much more. Or how little energy Earth gets from Sol because we only get 4.534 X 10^-10 of the total radiation emitted, and even then half of that is reflected by the atmosphere or deflected by the magnetic field.

I mean, if you want to argue semantics just to be contrarian, bring it.

Garbage nsec 2w ago

The point dude was making about bitcoin is correct. It is inflation, and "we're kind of planning to stop at 21 million" doesn't magically change "creating" into "revealing".

Chad Lupkes 2w ago

So you're saying that you would vote to boost the total supply beyond the 21 million, or that you would stand by and continue to lise the fork of the protocol that would allow that, because you don't think you have any agency or power.

Interesting.

Garbage nsec 2w ago

Sometime in the next10 years (or whenever) bitcoin is going to be forked where the fork becomes the new bitcoin, that's for quantum. That’ll once again demonstrate that nothing about bitcoin is “locked in”. It's software that gets updates, that's what it is.

It's not whether you or I would get behind a fork with a different number coins, it's whether such a fork could happen before all the coins are mined. If it could happen, even in circumstances we'd find hard to imagine in 2025, even 50 years from now, then it's just not a hard limit.

Chad Lupkes 2w ago

Sometimes I think the only constant in the universe is human stubbornness.

Hanshan 2w ago

circulating supply IS total supply. differentiation is meaningless, except maybe to point out that the supply cap is already priced into the fiat valuation.

we just have reasonable assurance the circulating supply inflation stops at 21M.

pretending that the block reward already existed somewhere before the block was mined and were simply "released" is just semantic slight of hand so people can say "Bitcoin doesn't have supply inflation"

the point is that Bitcoin depends on supply inflation to pay miners to secure the network. as long as you and I are alive, miners are "robbing" us of our stored value by diluting the supply.

which is true.

Chad Lupkes 2w ago

Interesting perspective. I just don't share it.

Hanshan 2w ago

its not a matter of perspective.

the coins dont exist in any meaningful way until the block is mined.