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Board Economics
Re: Deflation and Bitcoin, the last word on this forum
by
Suggester
on 03/06/2011, 23:44:47 UTC
No, you're just completely blind to the fact that even though the price of Bitcoin is 15 times what it was in early March, we're still seeing lots of days with high volume. Trade history on Gox directly contradicts your wishful thinking.
Are you saying that stabilizing the price wouldn't increase the number of transactions and/or the percentage of real transactions (i.e the ones not aimed at hoarding and speculation)?

It's not deflation what is rising $/BTC right now.

BTC deflation has a 20% rate, not a 10000% rate. What is bullying the market is especulation.
And deflation. That 20% (19% to be exact) is built into the system assuming the number of users stays constant. If the number of users double, the demand doubles, and the price skyrockets. That's called deflation. My proposal was to increase supply with demand to prevent that.

More and more people think that it could be possible that this currency is going to get mainstream. They especulate about it.
That's also true. Which is why a flexible-supply system beats a fixed-supply one. The flexible supply doesn't give speculators any incentive because the price is constant anyway.

If we just had discovered gold, wouldn't that happen too? I'm just saying. Right now BTC is a small very modest commodity that can be used to pay some things. Will BTC suceed as currency? We'll see. If it suceeds, it won't be without bumps on the road.
Gold is a total different story. Had humanity run out of gold within 16 years of its discovery there would have been perpetual deflation. Nobody would've spent their gold except for emergencies. They would've used silver or seashells or grain while carefully keeping their gold under the mattress.

I mean, what if in 2-4 years Bitcoin  is worth 10 billion dollars maintaining the actual price/difficulty rate? what if it moves then more than 80 millions each day? Would you start to take it seriously? I would, for sure. And because I think it's possible, I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is.
Bitcoin isn't useless. But currently it's only good for "hit and run" transactions. You can't wait for too long (too long being about 12+ hours!) before liquidating your received coins lest the price dives down. You'd also be worried if you spent them now lest the price doubles in a month. What sort of currency is this? We need stability. Why do some people have a problem with that?

I hope you understand that an economy is not proportional to the number of people in it.
On average, it is. Sure, maybe 20% of users control 80% of transactions, but if the number of users double then on average the number of transactions will double accordingly with another 20/80.