Replying to Avatar armstrys

Bitcoiners: I like to ask hard questions.

Generally, I see the tendency to complain about how the previous generation used the financial system to create debt and bring forward a wealth of assets at our expense today.

What keeps future generations from looking at the “HODLer” generation the same way? In 50 years when the mining fees have dropped significantly, the majority of redistribution would in theory would have to come from our generation and their heirs spending their wealth. Is this better for anyone but you and yours? What’s your best argument for a bitcoin with a hard cap over bitcoin with a fixed inflation rate - say at the current ~1.8% inflation paid to miners today?
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graycat 2y ago

Aren’t we all born with nothing, except what our parents give us? We exceed that by producing wealth in our own lifetimes. Bitcoin doesn’t change that.

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armstrys 2y ago

True, but where does the money we earn come from. In today’s system it comes from other humans who might be closely connected to those who printed it. In bitcoin it comes from either

1. someone who adopted bitcoin before you or

2. from a miner who competed in an open protocol to earn it.

What I’m asking is if the shift from more 2 to more 1 over time is a good thing. 1 feels more like the status quo than 2

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graycat 2y ago

Money is not wealth. Bitcoin could be modified to reward miners with 1000 BTC per block, forever. That wouldn’t create any more goods or services that human beings can consume.

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armstrys 2y ago

Correct… it would just change the relative future distribution of bitcoin.

It the mining reward is effectively a socially agreed upon “tax” that gets redistributed by POW. In the current mechanism that tax is decreasing in absolute terms. In the mechanism you just mentioned it is decreasing in relative % terms, and you could also imagine a mechanism where it remains a constant % and increases in absolute terms.

I’m basically just asking what the trade-offs of these 3 policies really are. Again, fully aware that actually trying to change bitcoin would have its own major negative implications for social consensus.