With the end of the latest ETF drama and the strange fluxes of the Bitcoin price paired with the meteoric rise of coins such as Dash, there is an interesting conversation to be had about price stability and the measures taken with cryptocurrencies when it comes to price stability.
With Bitcoin, the supply is partially regulated with the difficulty curve changing based on the number of miners. This has a certain effect on pricing but Bitcoin's price is largely based on perception. With Ethereum, the price took a massive hit with the DAO and the various forks as the Ethereum VM matures. In this sense, the adoption of Ethereum
as a platform seems to be the main determiner of price.
Now with 2017 as the year of many ICO's I have stumbled on a coin that has a more strict governance measure for price stability. BOScoin. With this particular currency, users can Freeze coins for a reward. This alone pulls supply out of the system while rewarding issuance to users. Most interestingly, however, is the concept of timed unlocking. In order to unfreeze a coin,
a user must give 2 weeks notice before unfreezing. This, as the whitepaper suggests, is a mechanism that stabilizes BOScoin. The applicable snippet from the paper is below:
From the BOScoin Whitepaper (
https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@boscoin/the-boscoin-white-paper):
"Coin Freezing is a Proof of Stake concept where if a user locks-in their coins and in
return they will receive interest based on the number of coins frozen and the length of
time the coins are stored. This interest is called the Freezing Reward. Users can
freeze coins in units, which are sets of 10,000 BOS. Frozen coins are used as
collateral in case of attempted forgery of the blockchain. If a node attempts to forge
the blockchain, a portion of the frozen coins are confiscated and sent to the
Commons Budget. Additionally the system requires two weeks prior notice to
unfreeze coins, as a mechanism to promote price stability."
I think this is a really interesting way for BOScoin to maintain price and protect the system from rapid outflows while offering a reward/incentive to users. I could also see how this may turn off the more libertarian minded Crypto-enthusiasts. That said, some level of price governance seems to be an inevitable part of cryptos moving forward if their platform managers wish for the space to move out of being a 'commodity' and start being used by everyone for buying coffee.
So here are some questions for the economist/cryptocurrency specialists here. How can digital only currencies maintain price? How important is price stability anyway? And what do you think about more involved stability measures such those put forth by BOScoin?