Quote from: bcearl on December 29, 2014, 08:02:16 AM

BTW., I don't want to say that Bitcoin isn't well designed. I like how it is designed. All I am saying is that you should be more careful with real-world comparisons.

It is totally fine to say: Bitcoin is scarce just like gold, that makes it a secure asset. But that is basically all you can say, you can not go any further. The way and reasons how and why Bitcoin is scarce is totally different from the way and reasons how and why gold is scarce.

Yes thats true. The hypothetical what-if/question is - is the positive (stabalising) feedback loop between price and gold production useful to mimic also. I argue that dual difficulty retargetting may go towards achieving that (see the other thread)

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=907157.msg9973992#msg9973992

Quote from: adam3us on December 29, 2014, 01:03:22 PM

Bitcoin already includes some damping measures: eg difficulty retarget is capped at 4x up or 4x down.

This is another hypothetical damping measure, depending on the parameters. You could eg split the retargetting 50:50 (geometrically) between reward and difficulty.

As such that doesnt affect miners as the net-effect is the same: lets say difficulty was about to go up by the maximum 4x, then geometric mean is 2x difficulty and 1/2 supply. To a miner its net neutral if they get 6.25 coins at difficult 1 trillion vs vs 12.5 coins at difficulty 2 trillion. However it adjusts the supply reactive to rapid difficulty adjustments which damps price swings (volatility). And that is good for miners if miners like predictability.

As it is bitcoin mining is a kind of derivative on bitcoin price: its sort of slim-to-mildly profitable for the various efficiency operators, so there is a sort of keep the mine operating maintenance mode, and then if bitcoin price spikes by 2x and sustains, then it takes a three months for new equipment to be produced. Old equipment could be turned back on if the price change makes it break-even again, and longer term that could be a good thing for stability, but currently moore's law catchup is too fast so that old equipment becomes quite obsolete within a year perhaps.

Adam