Post
Topic
Board Economics
Re: [CHART] Bitcoin Inflation vs. Time
by
whitslack
on 06/11/2013, 11:54:09 UTC
I still think that the deflationary tendency of bitcoin is damaging, for example because it creates speculative price bubbles.

What creates price bubbles is not the deflationary nature of Bitcoin (which we aren't even observing yet); it's the fact that the supply is perfectly inelastic. With most commodities, when a speculative price bubble begins to form, profit motive drives production to increase, and the increasing supply counteracts the growth in price. But Bitcoin is different: no matter what the price does, the production is always at an approximately constant rate. Thus, there is no moderating effect on an increasing price, and we get speculative price bubbles. I personally believe we will continue seeing this "plateau-ramp-crash" cycle throughout Bitcoin's adoption. However, I do think it will moderate in amplitude as the market grows.