Bitcoin continues to inflate until ~2140. The difference is that it inflates in a predictable curve and is not subject to the decisions of central bankers.
Inflationary policies also have a very tight link with speculation in the economy. You only need to look at the past 2 years.
Bitcoin supply does grow until 2140. It will inflate only if the backing economy and users does not grow until then. If this growth outpaces the supply of bitcoins, it deflates. And just every economist (and every piece of empirical data we have) will tell you deflation is about the worst thing that can happen to an economy, in terms of monetary events.
> it's going to be used as a speculation vehicle rather than money.
I see this claim time and time again, but it's hardly convincing. Deflationary assets don't exist in a vacuum, they compete with inflationary assets that create value over time (such as stocks), and it's not a binary decision as to which one is going to be the best investment/use of your money. Additionally, the value of pretty much anything (whether deflationary or inflationary) is hardly a factor of their availability in the future but rather their actual or perceived utility at a precise moment in time.
>Bitcoin is very effective environmental activism.
While using the per-design resource destroying, planet burning Proof-Of-Waste? Are you Kidding?
And no, deflation does not encourage more long term investments, it does simply encourage hoarding, not exactly a desirable thing, form any perspective. And of course it is the fatal (and likely never fixed) flaw in bitcoin-as-a-currency.
I find the GP's comment tenuous but I also find the environment-damaging rhetoric you and a sibling (and thousands of others) give on proof of work even more so. If you want to bite the bullet and say people shouldn't be able to pay for energy and do with it what they want, fine, but otherwise, price out the actual energy costs, and realize the purpose of such costs: security. Bank of America alone spends $1bn/yr on cybersecurity, bitcoin mining costs the world about ten times that. It's not that unreasonable. Another comparison is it's about 1/8th the US spending on cigarettes.
> Bitcoin being deflationary helps us move away from the mentality of a throw-away society.
No, it does not. How could it? It does nothing but encourage hoarding. Not only that, but also a economy where everything is more scare tomorrow than today, is a economy in perpetual decline.
>You can use the Lightning Network to use Bitcoin as a currency. It's almost instant and free.
That does not side step the proof-of-waste on the main chain. This is a completely unrelated debate.
No it doesn't. And you are moving goalposts. But still, it's a obvious and transparent lie. It wastes electricity that could have been put to good use, like power2(gas|ammonia|syngas|heat|cooling) or just normal, dispatchable consumption in a Wide area synchronous grid, a thing that exists pretty much everywhere where electricity generation is a thing.
And bitcoin does not use electricity, it just flat out wastes it. And that's not because bitcoin in itself is useless (it is), but due to the design of the Proof-of-Waste. Electricity use implies that electricity is converted into something. Every iPhone uses X Wh. If you dail up the usage, the output increases. It's not perfectly linear, but that's a reasonable approximation. Bitcoin is different: More electricity will never produce a better service, more bitcoins or whatever. Bitcoin will not ever get better by using more. And yet it is designed to waste a amount of electricity proportional to it's price. Oh, and it is only profitable to mine if you use a below-average electricity price. E.g. use the laxes regulations, the most polluting or the most illegal sources of electricity.
Unless this is sarcasm, do you wanna talk about the environmental ramifications of so much work being duplicated and dumped in the bitcoin network? Like, the sheer number of machines and waste heat that comes from nodes who weren't quite fast enough to get the payout, and just had to put all those calculations into /dev/null?
Bitcoin is very effective environmental activism. It makes renewables more profitable because it offers a base price for excess energy. Any place, 24/7.
