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Bitcoin is Deflationary, and That's OK

36 点作者 bdr大约 12 年前

13 条评论

yyqux大约 12 年前
I found this remarkably unconvincing: none of the arguments really seem to address the actual concerns with deflationary currencies, but seem to be directed at some (vaguely implied) strawman. I mean, why is the fact that there is a liquid market for bitcoins relevant at all? I don't think that has any bearing on whether a deflationary currency is bad or not. One failure mode for a currency is that it's completely illiquid, but that's not the most likely problem. E.g. there was always a liquid market for gold but it's probably the main example of a deflationary currency in practice.
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jstalin大约 12 年前
Expect lots and lots of arguments against bitcoin because of its deflationary nature. Nearly the entire universe of modern academic economics rests on the Keynesian and/or Monetarist foundation that increasing money supply (thus inflation) is a good thing.<p>Most people don't connect the fact that their money is worth less year after year with the fact that it is the government itself devaluing their money. Heck, most people don't even realize their money is losing value. Only savers, especially in our current zero interest rate policy environment, come close to understanding what is going on.<p>Nothing illustrates better what has happened to our money than the current market value of US coins made before 1965. For instance, a 1964 dime (nominally worth 10 cents) is actually worth $1.64 in silver content. That's somewhere around a 95% devaluation in just the last 50 years!
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RockyMcNuts大约 12 年前
Falling prices and strong growth tend to be mutually exclusive in the real economy. Suppose you’re an investor and an entrepreneur comes to you with a proposal to build a factory, and the business plan shows next year the factory will cost 5% less to build, and the products will sell 5% cheaper. Why build a factory today if you can get 5% a year increase in purchasing power just by hoarding currency? You need much bigger margins than are currently typical outside tech and zero marginal cost products. Incur debt, and even at the zero interest rate bound, you need 5% more real income next year to pay it back. In a modern economy, especially where there's a lot of debt finance, price deflation is death.<p>Anyway, since Bitcoin isn't a currency in the sense of a transaction medium, a stable store of value, and a unit of account, but more akin to a digital pet rock or Beanie Baby, deflation doesn't really matter very much.
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Steko大约 12 年前
None of these arguments is at all persuasive.<p>"First of all, the present value of a perpetually appreciating asset is not infinity"<p>Straw man. No one is claiming the present value of anything has to be infinity. And I don't see anyone saying real estate is a good medium of exchange.<p>"Second, there is a liquid market for Bitcoins."<p>Another straw man. No one is saying there will not be any trade in deflationary currencies. The amount of Bitcoins that are not being circulated speaks to exactly what people don't like about deflationary currencies though.<p>"Third, the marginal utility of money is diminishing."<p>A true fact that has no impact on the criticism of Bitcoin because it's deflationary. Red herring.
YokoZar大约 12 年前
The article hits on an entire class of silly arguments I've seen against bitcoin from the start: people claim that bitcoins will be worthless because they will be too valuable to trade.<p>The language used for "too valuable" may vary (scarcity! illiquid! deflation!) But, as the author notes, that's not at all what matters -- all that's necessary is that they're tradeable and people have different values for a bitcoin at a particular time.
hristov大约 12 年前
I think it is not ok, and I think that the deflationary nature of Bitcoin is a wonderful practical example of the problem with deflation.<p>To the best of my knowledge bitcoin does not seem to be used as currency that much. It's explosion in popularity is not matched in explosion in currency usage. And why would it? If you, for example, buy a toaster online with bitcoin and it keeps appreciating, this toaster may end up costing you a $1000 in a year.<p>If bitcoin were to fullfil its promise, a large portion of online transactions should take place with bitcoins. AFAIK, thus far this is only happening for illegal drug transactions, for which there is no other alternative.<p>Thus far bitcoin is something people buy and hold hoping it appreciates. If they are tired of holding it, they sell it back. It is not a currency, it is an object of investment/speculation.
dnautics大约 12 年前
It shines a light on the problem with inflationary currencies - one, costs of real goods tend to go down as technology advances, this is the "rising tide that lifts all boats", and is supposed to bring the lower economic classes to enjoy luxuries only available to the riches in eras long ago. Why are we trying to raise the prices on these goods?<p>Secondly, why are we urging the economy to have exponentially increasing production to maintain nominal value, when we have limited resources on this planet?
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Xcelerate大约 12 年前
A lot of these arguments against the future of Bitcoin rest on the ill-founded assumption that the Bitcoin protocol is static and unchanging. This isn't necessarily true; there's already reactionary plans should SHA-2 or secp256k1 become comprised.<p>It seems fair to reason that a community consensus would alter the protocol should deflation ever really become a problem.
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johnrob大约 12 年前
I would think a large majority of bitcoins would end up in the hands of people living somewhere with low interest rates - instead of parking their money in banks, they'll park it in bitcoins. The demand for investing - which applies across all currencies - could easily be greater than the demand to spend bitcoins.<p>Investment demand has caused deflationary problems in other areas too, specifically food prices when a lot of investment was made in certain agricultural futures.
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tlrobinson大约 12 年前
Deflation may prevent Bitcoin from replacing all government fiat currencies, but I don't think it has much impact on Bitcoin becoming a popular form of payments / transfer / store of wealth.<p>Some Bitcoin proponents would be disappointed by that prospect, but I think it would still be a big win.<p>It likely means several orders of magnitude difference in price, but in either case the price would go up significantly.
bdr大约 12 年前
Hm, HN traffic has grown. The server will be back up in a couple minutes. Edit: All good, I think.<p>This post has been in the draft folder for a while, but I decided to just run it. A better title would be "Common Flaws in the 'Bitcoin is Deflationary' Argument". There might actually be a convincing "Bitcoin is Deflationary" argument to be made, it's just that no one has made it yet.
jiggy2011大约 12 年前
The comparison to housing seems a little off to me. For example with the property boom, people didn't want to sell their houses because they were going up in value. Therefor they go up in value some more. Therefor people can't afford to buy them, so we fix that with sub prime mortgages..
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gnoway大约 12 年前
What stops you from doing business in fractional bitcoins? I'm pretty sure shift is a basic instruction in every architecture.
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