Quote from: tvbcof on June 23, 2015, 06:57:29 AM

Quote from: Melbustus on June 23, 2015, 05:20:05 AM

I like Satoshi's quote on this:

Quote from: satoshi

...
Coins have to get initially distributed somehow, and a constant rate seems like the best formula.
...

http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography%40metzdowd.com/msg09979.html

The nonchalance, to me, indicates a nice trust in markets to do their job of optimizing allocation over time. But - if Bitcoin ever starts to become a serious global economic force, mainstream economists are going to flip out over the above quote, given the initial-distribution algo didn't go through some deep analysis, etc...

I think it's interesting how the engineering decision of making a simple/transparent (easy to implement, thus more secure) distribution algorithm trumped any potential detailed economic complexity, presumably due to Satoshi's understanding that the market would eventually allocate the capital optimally anyways, given the transparency of the current and future supply.

One of the nice things about having a 'benevolent dictator' is that it will be much easier to make decisions about these things going forward.

We already know that in the noble interest of getting a 'critical mass' in order to 'outrun regulation', it is critical to subsidize transaction costs. We also know with some reasonable certainty that one of the early attractions of Bitcoin was that people could 'make free money' with only a token effort. People like free shit. Always will.

In order to spread the wealth there are two choices.

- make more wealth and give it away (e.g., screw the obsolete 21 million cap thingy.)

- appropriate existing or lost money and hand it out.

Idea! We can be pretty sure that if/when XT takes over, coin tainting is not far behind. Why don't we use the otherwise wasted value to pass around to the masses. Maybe like a dividend to be distributed to all existing addresses. To be more fair and reduce gaming, however, it makes sense that people would need to appropriately register their true identities in order to receive the dividend though.

You've just restated Gresham's Law.

Hard money is a delusion.

What you really want is soft money that is decentralized and thus remains permission-less (censorship-free).

Kudos for this post because you've influenced some of my thinking about perpetual debasement in such an idealized system.

My prior comments on this issue:

Quote from: TPTB_need_war on June 22, 2015, 08:17:22 PM

Quote from: justusranvier on June 22, 2015, 07:08:37 PM

Quote from: Adrian-x on June 22, 2015, 06:53:24 PM

Subsidies are great if you want to get applicants who qualify, It should be called a subsidiary not a reward for good reason, the problem is there are developers who feel the economics are wrong and Bitcoin needs to be fixed, I may not be able to express why but to my understanding the mechanism seems well balanced and considered in my view, the onus is on the people who have a problem with how Bitcoin works to prove its broken, and build a better mousetrap not change this one.

My position is that it would be great if we could have started Bitcoin up without a block subsidy, but since the currency has to be issued via some method, and since the only way to produce a truly optimal initial distribution would require an entity that was both omnipotent and omniscient, issuing the currency via block subsidy spread out over time is the least terrible way to do it.

Other than the wealth effect, much of the real capital (at least initially until the NWO-directed ecosystem was bootstrapped) went to the utility, hardware, and usury industry to which miners are beholden. If that was the optimum way to bootstrap an ecosystem, then it was correct.

In my view, it was the only way to build a global ecosystem amongst conflicting interests because it is unassailable until it scales to the point where it becomes distributed but centralized, then at that point it can only be assailed by the TPTB.

Quote from: TPTB_need_war on June 21, 2015, 05:55:04 AM

Quote from: electerium on June 21, 2015, 05:51:43 AM

Similarly, because 95% has been mined, I am not so sure that people will use bitcoin over an altcoin as a means of p2p transfer. It's supply in 2024 will be far too small to facilitate hundreds of million of people buying in to actually use it. Because by 2024, either the legacy rail has taken over and bitcoin is far too expensive relative to it's supply OR, it will not have happened and bitcoin will be worth nothing. Perhaps this is too simplistic an argument to make, but 10 years is not actually very long.

It didnt use to concern me, but it does now.

Unless they are given BTC loans. The masses have always used leveraged money (fractional reserves) and not real money, because the capitalists have all the real money.

The real game here is not changing whether the masses will use leveraged money. (nothing will ever change that)

It is the game of protecting the (knowledge age) capitalists from the State (industrial age capitalists+masses).

I have argued that a Knowledge Age is replacing the Industrial Age and the age of high fixed capital is being replaced by active knowledge. Knowledge capitalists don't want to be dictated to by a State because it is incompatible with knowledge production.