[...]And pretending that this is making a mountain out of a mole hill is NOT, definitely, the proper perspective.
But you clearly are making a mountain out of a mole hill, it's just that your own ignorance is preventing you from seeing this.
Whatever this is, is something neither Patrick nor Doug quite understand, which in itself is very worrysome.
What is it that you think they don't understand?
To me if 10 million coins stake for a year, the maximum number of new coins produced would be 250k. Now if those same 10 million are indeed REALLY staking, but the phantom figure is 20 million instead, the resulting amount of coin s produced at the end of the year would be 500k instead, thus resulting in a 5% inflation instead of the 2.5%.
There is no phantom number. If 10 million coins are staking, the interest will be based off of 10 million. The Stake Weight is not factored into the interest rate calculations; it is used to determine WHEN a block of coins will stake. The higher the number, the more likely it is that the block will stake. The Stake Weight of a block starts out equal to the number of coins in the block and grows as the coins age/mature; when a block is done staking, the stake weight is effectively reset. I'd tell you how this happens, but you'll likely go into a panic over it and start a whole new series of text walls.