Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: Andreas' current use of BTC
by
witcher_sense
on 01/11/2021, 11:44:35 UTC
Personally, I don't think it leads in the right direction, because sooner or later most of the BTC will end up in the hands of those who will have the most money - and it will happen in a completely natural way, on the way up ordinary people will sell, the rich will buy.

The question is what will eventually remain for the average Joe? Probably a lot of worthless fiat...
What you have described here is a well-known economic problem called "The problem of hoarding." However, many economists, especially those of Austrian school, argue that this is not actually a problem at all, but, instead, beneficial to society. Let's take your example, companies accumulate bitcoin and keep it in their cash balances, right? But why do they do that in the first place? Obviously, they expect bitcoin's price to increase, so it will be easier for them to overcome any obstacles in the future. Like the average Joe, they have no idea what will happen with them in the future, but they at least can slightly alleviate its uncertainty by keeping cash in their balances. What is important here is that they don't need bitcoin itself, they need goods and services they can buy with it in the future.  What will happen when most of the coins are in the hands of those companies? Right, the price of bitcoin, or more strictly, its purchasing power will skyrocket, so the companies will have a huge incentive to spend it.

Rothbard wrote:


People will almost always say, if asked, that they want as much money as they can get! But what they really want is not more units of money—more gold ounces or “dollars”—but more effective units, i.e., greater command of goods and services bought by money. We have seen that society cannot satisfy its demand for more money by increasing its supply—for an increased supply will simply dilute the effectiveness of each ounce, and the money will be no more really plentiful than before. People's standard of living (except in the nonmonetary uses of gold) cannot increase by mining more gold. If people want more effective gold ounces in their cash balances, they can get them only through a fall in prices and a rise in the effectiveness of each ounce.



Companies' demand for bitcoin will likely result in an increase in the effectiveness of each bitcoin, which will allow the average Joe to satisfy his needs more productively.