We're saying the same thing. Satoshi is a defacto central bank. The main difference is the money is already printed but that fact is essentially irrelevant.
I don't see how that fact is irrelevant. In one case, an upper limit of how much currency can enter the marketplace is known. In the other, it can keep being printed indefinitely. That doesn't seem like a trivial difference. This is basic inflation/deflation we're talking about, and while deflation isn't popular among modern economists it certainly isn't seen as irrelevant. Satoshi has no magical powers, only a stash of coins that could have easily been mined by other early adopters.
I simply mean a large amount approaches infinity. In Satoshi's case he owns 5% of all bitcoin that will ever be and almost certainly much more in terms of what is in circulation. This amount of power is akin to that of a central bank for the purposes of this discussion.
USD inflated 2.44% last year. Satoshi can dump his alleged 5% of the total supply once, and then he can't do it again. The fed can keep inflating at whatever rate they want year after year. That's the difference, and it's huge. The fed's power approaches infinity, but Satoshi's does not. Gold doesn't become inflationary just because the pope owns a lot of it.
There were 5-Million BTC in 2011, and there are now over 15-million BTC today. BTC has inflated 300% in the past 7ish years.
There will be 657,000 BTC added to the system in the next year, or roughly 4.5%. Which means BTC is "inflating" more than USD right now (with your definition of 'inflation', which isn't very good IMO). The next halfening won't happen until 2020 or so.
That's not my definition you're using! I wouldn't count a hypothetical Satoshi dump as inflation, nor do I count new coins mined as inflation. Again, think of Bitcoin as analogous to gold (and ignore the fact that we can technically make prohibitively expense gold now, as economists of the past were not considering modern alchemy when defining inflation). We don't claim that gold has inflated when more is mined, because it is understood that the gold mined already existed. The fact that there was hard-to-get gold underground has already been accounted for in the market valuation of gold. The fixed total number of bitcoins is what makes Bitcoin deflationary, even though more bitcoins are becoming available in the short term; the market knows this, and has theoretically accounted for it. This is more true of Bitcoin than the classic example of gold, as our gold estimates are just that and our Bitcoin estimates are perfect (barring breakdown of the network). Yes, the market is irrational and hasn't _really_ accounted for it, but don't tell the economists that! This is covered in intro macroeconomics, a currency/commodity isn't considered inflationary just because more becomes _available_, it's about whether or not there is a known finite supply. I'm not pulling this out of nowhere. Ask any economist if Bitcoin is deflationary.
> We don't claim that gold has inflated when more is mined, because it is understood that the gold mined already existed.
Historically, I disagree. There was a big gold / silver crash that could only be described as inflation when the Conquistadors returned from the "New World" in the middle-ages.
We're talking about a change in Gold / Silver prices which lasted for two CENTURIES. Yes, Gold / Silver is effectively finite on Earth. But it is wrong from an economics perspective to ignore the "short term" impact that can last centuries.
I'd argue that most people are probably concerned about time-scales roughly relating to one's life.
For all intents and purposes it's the same central authority powers. You can split hairs over hypothetical scenarios where Satoshi doesn't have as large a share in some future, but the fact is that now they have the same control as a central bank does over putting currency into circulation.
Again, no. Satoshi can dump once, the fed inflates USD year after year at whatever rate they like. This is not the same power. Look at Venezuela; Satoshi can't do that. He can dump ~6% of current supply once (assuming high estimates of his holdings are correct), the IMF is estimating Venezuela's inflation at above 1,000,000% in 2018. That's totally different. This is the craziest modern example, of course, but USD could do the same at the whim of the fed (and they did increase supply by 2.44% last year, non-hypothetically). Satoshi holds no such power by any stretch of the imagination. There are legitimate criticisms of Bitcoin for you to make, but this isn't one of them. The supply is fixed. There is no "for all intents and purposes" disclaimer that can make your statement correct. This is basic economics, if you don't believe me find an economist to pick the brain of. They probably won't like Bitcoin, but they certainly won't argue that Satoshi is analogous to the fed.
