I think the current supply is about 16.5M I wouldn't be surprised if ~2M are lost and not able to be spent. Effectively making the total cap 19M. But with 8 decimals there can be effectively 2,100,000,000,000,000 units of btc to be spent less the lost coins.

So, people will use it more, or not? You're contradicting yourself by saying people will use it more, but then everyone will hoard it.

You can't ever prove that deflation is a bad thing for consumers, because it just isn't. Inflation is what eats away at your returns, kills your purchasing power, and forces you into debt. Look at USD inflation. 40 years ago a single bread winner could support an entire family with no credit card, auto, student loan debt, and a meager mortgage payment. Now those are all trillion dollar debt bubbles waiting to burst, even with an extra bread winner. Wonder why.

About two million bitcoins are lost, almost all of them from the first few years. People don't lose them now that they have value.

For the individual, there is utility in being able to store value without it depreciating in value because of inflation. Inflation incentivizes people to buy things that they would not buy if their money didn't disappear if they held on to it. Consumption has negative externalities for finite resources and the environment. Incentivizing unwanted consumption seems like a bad idea.

We are saying the exact same thing. I am suggesting the technology you reference includes blockchain technology. The time savings I'm referring to are the same ones you mention, not transaction velocity.

The only difference between my opinion and yours with regard to economic growth is whether or not crypto will play a pivotal roll. I am much less sure of my opinion than you are of yours. But to insist that smart contracts, digital crypto remittance, distributed data storage and computing, and world wide distributed ledger keeping will matter very little seems myopic to me.

So what you're saying is that there are only 21000000 bitcoins in existence, but because its divisible by 1000000000 that there are actually 21000000000000000 bitcoin in existence? Wow I have never heard of this before. I'm totally a believer now.

I swear to god bitcoin turns people into idiots.

You can't actually believe this. Seriously? Mtgox lost 850000 bitcoin alone in 2014 when they were trading at $827 apiece.

Again, you're talking out of your ass. It's very rare that I see bitcoin supporters with fundamental understandings of economics, and it's no surprise that you can say **** like this and in the same breath talk about how awesome bitcoin is. Bitcoin wastes an exponentially increasing amount of energy just to operate. That's ok though right? Because it is your hope and salvation.

No that's not what I'm saying. There are 21m bitcoin

I mean holy ****, the quality of your discourse is evaporating rapidly. Bitcoin support and understanding of economic fundamentals are two separate groups with very little overlap it seems.

http://www.investopedia.com/articles...ad-economy.asp

U hold significant short positions dfgg? (Makes ur opinion more valuable for me)

Whats your argument against store-of-value usecase for btc?
I want to keep some money in cryptos as a hedge in case the financial system breaks down, and backup for things like if im travelling and all my stuff gets stolen. Also I use applications,(drugs markets, predictions markets, escrwo, easy transfers between gambling sites,and upcoming smart contract products) and would rather just hold a fraction of my money in crypto rather then transfer between fiat every time I want to use one of these things, I think this holds true for a lot of people.

If deflation is such a problem, why not design bitcoin with a fixed % inflation rate?

And the world is very complex, is there any reason to trust economic theory unless it comes from trial and error,empirics, which can also change over time.

quoted for irony

Oh look, a gold bug.

Yes, most bitcoiners are libertarian socialists or anarcho-capitalists, meaning they voted for Ron Paul. Bitcoin is their new Ron Paul, because they lost all faith in the system when their candidate didn't win any primaries in the 2008/12 elections. Now they'll show everyone. This new currency will take over the world for sure, just like Ron Paul was gonna in '08/'12.

That said, bitcoin started out as a decentralized power structure, and ended up exactly how political scientists predicted decentralized anarchy starting points would end up. Consolidated control in the hands of a few source code managers and a few groups of major mining pools --- an oligarchy.

Most poker theory is completely useless ye
U can use some reasoning ofc but most of the correct strats come from trial-and-error, gl coming up with optimal 3bet ranges based on theory

Read the strategy forums, everything people say is incorrect or incomplete
Even the best players in the world use conflicting/incomplete frameworks, and alot of what they say is wrong

Real-world is way more complex so i try to be very skeptical when people have strong convictions about what works best in complex systems when there is little empirical evidence

But in reality, deflation doesn't actually stop people from spending. Maybe you can follow along:

One day you realize you need a TV to watch the Super Bowl. So you buy a brand new TV with all the latest features for $3000 and enjoy the game with a bunch of friends. You continue using the TV for watching other stuff, too.

(Fast forward 5 years)

"Ha ha you idiot, now you can get the same TV you have for $500, or a TV with way better resolution/better features for $2500. What a dumb purchase!"

Literally real world economics in action, not some stupid Keynesian textbook theories about why "everyone will stop spending."

Deflation scaremongers ignore the basic fact that humans love to spend money. Look around you, go to any major sporting event. How many people there are deep in debt to the tune of 5 or even 6 figures? They owe money on student loans, mortgages, car payments, credit cards. And yet, instead of paying down debt, they're out spending more. It's almost like people value experiences and having fun and social life and not just digits on a screen. So your argument is that people would spend LESS if they had MORE purchasing power? Lol

These idiots also totally ignore a crucial factor known as TIME. If someone is single and 22 years old, they are way more apt to "hoard" Bitcoins if they expect them to rise in value. But let's say an 85 year old has 5 Bitcoins. What does it matter to him if the value will likely 5x in a few years? He can use some or all of the coins now to take one last family vacation, or to totally pay off his granddaughter's mortgage or college tuition.

People value these things/these things exist, and deflation scaremongers ignore them totally or just don't understand them at all:

Social experiences/keeping up with the Joneses
Peace of mind (being debt free, etc)
Existing debt
Credit scores
Interest rates

Guess what, idiots? We don't have unlimited time. If I can go to one concert right now for 0.5 of a Bitcoin, or 1.5 theoretical concerts in a year with the same amount, guess what I'm likely to do?

There's also NEVER 100% certainty about the future. So we don't know if the USD will even be used in 10 years, let alone its value. Same for Bitcoin. If I can wipe out 50k in high interest debt, repair my credit score, and also get a brand new car/house by trading in a few Bitcoins, I'm likely to do it, regardless of the expected future value. News flash: I can also "hoard" some Bitcoin, and spend some. It's not all or none. Derp

Yeah, it sucks that libertarian tards were so wrong about Bitcoin taking over the world, and they're stuck with "only" 10,000x or so gains if they got in early.

Cryptos are a lot bigger than just Bitcoin, too. Btc was 95%+ of the total market cap not long ago, down now to around 40% and falling. So even if some small group "controls" Bitcoin (what does that even mean?), there are many other cryptos that are worthy of investment.

Inflation eats away at your purchasing power over time. It's just 100% fact. Keeping money under the mattress is a long term losing proposition in terms of what you can purchase with it over time. The longer the time you hold it, the less you can buy. Whether or not that's a long term "good" or "bad" for "THE ECONOMY" is a totally different debate. Most people think more spending=better economy, regardless of ability to actually afford the spending or repay the debt. Meh.

Unless deflation is greater than any investment gains you could make. Then it's a winner!

We have a long history of the dollar being worth less and less over many, many decades, pretty much since the day it was introduced. If you look ahead 10+ years starting at nearly any point in history, your dollar would buy you less in the future than if you just spend it today. Most long term prices in USD terms are higher over time. Cars, real estate, stocks, food, energy, health care, college education, etc etc.

Constant inflation is catching up to the masses. Open your eyes. Record levels of government, private, and corporate debt. Credit cards, student loans, cars, mortgages are all at record high levels. A very large chunk of people have less than $500 in an emergency fund or a checking account. People are forced to spend ever higher % of their income (if they even have income) on the staples: food, rent/house payment, car, energy, other utilities, education. Ain't inflation great?

Reread your post, figure out where you contradict yourself, and then post back.

No theory of anything purports to have full explanatory power over the real world. But to think such things are without merit and that 'trial and error' is a better way to go about things is a hilariously stupid thing to say.

No I am not contradicting myself. Currently everyone is hoarding it and nobody is using it.

But IF more and more people were to use it, the non speculative value would go up.

And again I explained, it does not matter that you lose purchasing power. Here:
https://dqydj.com/sp-500-return-calculator/

Despite massive inflation in the 70's and 80's, your real return would still have been 6.5%.

And inflation of a currency has nothing to do with living standards going down for some people. It has everything to do with globalization and automation. You need to pick up an economics text book sometime.

I used it on the first silk road actually. Not short, but if I could buy cheap puts with little counter party risk, I would. I was actually holding bitcoin as an investment under $100. But sold it at like $300 or so.

I do think that if there is a crypto that will be used more widely it will have to solve the massive deflation issue. If you have 10% deflation per year by increased usage, it attracts too many speculators and makes it too volatile for a lot of legit use.

On economic theory, read this guys paper":
http://www.economicprinciples.org/wp...everagings.pdf

He has made 15% returns in the last 20 years or so, and predicted the financial crisis. He wipes the floor with a lot of ivory tower academics imo.

He is up 1.15^20 = 16.3665373929x
Ethereum is up 1000x in 1.5years.

So if we use returns as a metric for credibility, people ITT who got in at the ICO must be huge experts.

Beating others repeatedly in the same game is a world apart from winning a Roulette spin.

come back in 10 years and let's see if that is still standing.

No, just no.

Ask any sportsbook how many Bitcoin deposits and payouts they process per day. Can I bet over 0.5?

Literally a billion dollars of Bitcoin trades take place every day just on exchanges. How is that hoarding?