Post
Topic
Board Development & Technical Discussion
Merits 16 from 7 users
Re: "Surprisingly, Tail Emission Is Not Inflationary" -- A post by Peter Todd
by
cr1776
on 10/07/2022, 10:24:34 UTC
⭐ Merited by o_e_l_e_o (4) ,Welsh (4) ,ETFbitcoin (3) ,NotATether (2) ,nc50lc (1) ,DdmrDdmr (1) ,JayJuanGee (1)
... At least the high initial inflation rates would keep the speculators at bay, and bitcoin could focus on its *intended* purpose: use as a *currency*.
...

Regarding Peter Todd's post there is plenty handwaving about the assumptions for lost coins.  This isn't so much a proof as a hypothesis based on the assumptions because there is no way to use math to prove that coins are lost at a certain rate.  Are Satoshi's coins lost?  They haven't been moved.  I have coins not moved since late 2010, but they aren't lost.  Garbage in, garbage out.

Likewise, continuing the block reward via tail emissions would seem to empower censorship and weaken censorship resistance: instead of the larger percentage penalty for censoring transactions and their fees, a tail emission mitigates that loss to miners.

Finally as far as the quotation above stating that the "intended purpose" is use as a currency things like "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks" indicate that the intended purpose might not have been solely as a currency, but to cut out the state and banks from being able to destroy the value of a currency by profligate spending via bailouts and others.  Among other things.

If tail emission is desirable or a different block subsidy is desirable, the answer is to fork the code and blockchain with these new rules and convince a sufficient number of people that the resulting coin is desirable.