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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?

armstrys 2y ago

Fundamental assumption that you should try to refute if you respond: social consensus and fair distribution are far more important than scarcity as long as the distribution schedule is known, transparent, and can only be changed with broad social consensus.

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Discussion

Emcot 2y ago

Social consensus on the finite scarcity of bitcoin will persist over time because of human nature. Greed.

Suggesting an arbitrary inflation rate does two things: 1) shows you don’t respect the gift of perfect scarcity. We now have a definition of value that will not change over time- as with distance, temperature, weight…

And 2) that “fair” distribution can be anything but Discovery -> Extraction/Production -> Market Fit over Time. How does something distribute otherwise? Subjective intervention, sure. But there is nothing “fair” about that.

armstrys 2y ago

Sure. I agree with much of your statement especially in the fact that changing the protocol is a potentially a bigger problem than anything it would purport to solve.

However, I don’t buy into the “perfect scarcity” argument. “Perfect scarcity” would be a bitcoin protocol with no inflation whatsoever, unless you would also consider an alternate universe where Satoshi invented bitcoin with no hard cap as “perfectly” scarce just because future supply is always known and can’t be changed?

To me the conversation of scarcity and known supply are two different things. Suggesting any change to the issuance obviously violates the issuance transparency and that is a bigger problem than violating scarcity.