Post
Topic
Board Economics
Re: Uncapped coin vs capped coin supply
by
sidhujag
on 17/06/2013, 20:34:35 UTC
This is what I don't get from the general proponents of BTC why do you think adding more decimal places will solve the problem? That is not increasing supply. This will have no effect on fixing the issue. It's like saying I want to buy an apple with $1 usd, but it will be cheaper if i use miniUsd which is $0.5 usd instead. Seems as though everyone is on the same page by saying hey we will just add more decimal places, yet I have not had a simple explanation as to how this would solve the problem. Think of the demand supply curve.
If you wanted to buy that apple with a miniUSD, you couldn't, you'd have to pay two miniUSD.

My point being we'd begin referring to the Bitcoin as mBTC and uBTC because it'll be too inconvenient to say BTC as there'd be too many decimal places. That doesn't change the fact that a mBTC is worth as much as one thousand BTC. Something you could buy for one BTC could be paid for with one BTC or a thousand mBTC, depending on the way you look at it. Unless someone's a gullible stooge, you wouldn't be buying that for the wrong price.

Your point is taken on the psychological affects of using mBTC or uBTC and that is not really the issue here. Wolverine actaully made a good point in that deflation is always a good thing as it rewards those to innovate to eliminate waste, but we've seen from the past that deflation can lead to a halt in spending and either we would need to go all out, go through a bad recession and force people to look in the mirror, or we adapt our current situation to use something like DVC and slowly move towards a purely deflationary-hybrid scheme.

I'll make it more clear for you using our example of the apple and btc.

At 21 million the apple costs a certain amount. Now there are more and more people fighting for the same apple as population grows. Since there are no more coins available we divide them up as things become "cheaper"... the incentive is the hold money as it grows in value and then spend when you "need" to. That will drive the cost of the apple down to uBTC numbers from mBTC numbers. The Apple farmer wants to get more BTC so he innovates new ideas to make his apple grow cheaper yet doesn't sacrifice quality otherwise people won't buy from him at all. However, it is to be seen to see if this is feasible as my argument was that this may be well on paper but practically breaks down when spending grinds to a halt and noone will buy the apple, they will sacrifice to hold off until the apple farmer goes out of business and shuts down. There is a competitive cycle of driving prices down to a poitn where it is always less and less profit to build the same thing, and you will have less and less people willing to take risks to provide service to the industry whereas you can just hold your money and gain more "wealth". See where I'm going with this?

On the other end of the spectrum, as more people want the apple the price should go up, while more people need coin to buy it and thus the price drops back down, equalizing as population(demand) grows for both currency and product. The key is the incentive of what to do with the money and where to spend. Yes the apple price may be fixed in terms of btc but what about investment, innovation, wealth? Will people want to create a service when profits are minimized to a point where it may not be a benefit in becoming an apple farmer for some length of time? Why not just work 9-5 and save up as money becomes worth moreand more, but then who's offering you your job, what incentive do they have to keep offering you work? If noone works how can we put food on the table? What is the true price of the apple?