What if Bitcoin’s issuance schedule is a defense against a Denial of Service attack where a hostile government could buy all the coins and burn them?
What if Satoshi’s million coins is insurance against such an attack?
Discussion
Interesting theory. We are well past that being a serious risk though. Long term holder statistics say most coins are in the hands of true believers, or lost.
I won't lie and say I wouldn't sell my #bitcoin to them if they succeed. My sales would be a trickle to cover my expenses only after they drove the price so high I could retire in luxury.
I don't think even the US could get there though. It is sort of like the rocket ship fuel problem, any added fuel adds weight that requires more fuel. The dollars they print to buy bitcoin cause inflation raising the nominal $ value of my bitcoin. I don't care about that, I care about the goods I can get for my stack. The inflation they caused means I need to exchange for more dollars to get the same number of goods. I think the inflation perfectly balances the nominal price rise in #bitcoin and my stack goes nowhere against goods, so I don't sell.
Unless new bitcoiners join during the process or existing ones up their allocation. That would change the #bitcoin to goods exchange rate.
After the country that tried collapsed, carry on watching your stack of msats be worth a fortune in hard assets.
Clearly any nation state that attempted such an attack would get rekt to oblivion. But I find it interesting to try and get into Satoshi’s head to gain certain insights:
1. The supply schedule has suggested that Satoshi intended for Bitcoin to be speculative but perhaps he was thinking about an DoS attack early on
2. His million coins is assumed to serve as a monument to his selfless intent but what if it is actually the insurance policy from the ultimate DoS attack?
What if the psy-op is so good that they get everyone to sell their coins? We’re probably taking about somethng like 10-100M or more per coin in todays dollars.
If there are assumed to be, say, 1m coins available and Satoshi comes back and moves a few thousand of his btc just to let us know that Bitcoin is backstopped.
THAT IS GAME OVER for Fiat. The moon isn’t high enough to describe this outcome.