Satoshi's stash is a side effect. We have no idea if it will ever be a problem.
The problem is exactly the "we have no idea".
As for "initial distribution" I am talking about fact that bitcoin initially was worthless. And you basically could earn thousands of BTC in the early years.
But people noticed its value and potential and it become valuable - that is ideal initial distribution, when dirt become gold on its own.
Not really. I agree that it is better than a limited oligarchy reaping in all the seigniorage, but in fact, the "sound money" part of bitcoin is exactly also the problem of another type of seigniorage: the increase in value which makes early adopters extremely rich in return for no production. It is another form of seigniorage: the value upramping of a monetary asset.
Usually seigniorage has a more limited meaning, namely the gain you have when you create monetary tokens. Ideally, a monetary system is nothing else but tokens that STORE value ; that is, they are a tool to translate value in time. They should ideally allow you to obtain them against production/delivery of goods and services, and you can trade them against price-equivalent goods and services in the future. The sound money doctrine comes from the idea that if someone can CREATE new tokens, he obtains "value for nothing" and that value is obtained by an inflationary tax on all previous token holders. This is why the sound money doctrine says that the "amount of monetary tokens should be a constant".
Great. But this makes the implicit assumption that the tokens came from "minus infinity": that we are already in "steady state", that the tokens already HAVE their monetary value, and that this has been going on since so long that we don't have to worry about how this value came into existence. In fact, the sound money theory applies perfectly to GOLD, which has been valuable historically. Of course, the sound money doctrine accepts that the price of a money token changes: it changes for two reasons:
1) the economy changes (expands: a token can buy more ; decreases: a token can buy less)
2) the market of offer and demand for "store of value". At certain periods, people want to store more value (and tokens can buy more), at other periods, people want to use stored value (and tokens can buy less).
But on average, in the long run, the idea is that tokens can buy a given portion of the whole economic production.
This is in a nutshell, the "sound money doctrine". It tells you that one shouldn't allow for "token creation seigniorage", because that is fundamentally unfair.
However, when creating a new monetary system, you face 2 problems:
1) you have to create the tokens in any case
2) these tokens have to "ramp up" in value.
BOTH of these aspects are a form of seigniorage (although usually one only uses this term for the first). BOTH are seen as problematic, because you "get value for nothing". You will be able to obtain goods and services, without having produced goods and services.
Now, bitcoin has achieved the feat of having solved the seigniorage unfairness of coin creation by PoW: the miner essentially has to BURN the value of his coin creation providing "useless" PoW, which serves to secure the chain (a "public service"). So in fact, COIN CREATION in bitcoin is inflationary, but FAIR.
But what remains is value appreciation, which is fundamentally UNFAIR. There is no reason why simply holding a token for which you didn't have to deliver much or any value in the form of goods and services, would allow you to buy HUGE amounts of goods and services afterwards. The "risk taking" is not to be compared to genuine investment. With a genuine investment, you invest in the *production* of new goods and services. That production can work out or can fail. If it works out, you've CONTRIBUTED to economic growth, and your risk taking and the fact that it worked out is the reward for having contributed to *economic growth*. But "holding initially worthless tokens" doesn't contribute in any way to "economic growth". There is no risk taking in the sense of trying to improve economic growth (spending on capital, and losing it if no growth, and winning if growth).
So "having your initial bitcoin stash appreciate value" is another form of unfair seigniorage, which is in fact exacerbated by the "sound money doctrine". Ideally, given that the unfairness of coin creation seigniorage is solved with PoW, there should be MUCH MORE inflationary depreciation in order to avoid the coin price to rise much. It should of course rise somewhat, but ideally, the coin emission should compensate essentially for the market cap increase, so that the individual coin value remains more or less constant. THAT would result in *ideal distribution*. Nobody would get rich because of early adopter. Nobody would "keep coins" and hodl, because a stash of coins wouldn't appreciate much.
So ideally, the emission curve should follow the market cap. I know that technically that's impossible, but the way many coins are programmed, is THE OPPOSITE, which is exactly what makes all this speculation happen.
Coins should emit FEW coins in the beginning, and more and more when they 'catch on' and get used in the market (as CURRENCY), in such a way that the individual coin price should remain constant and relatively low.
Unfortunately now BTC is being used as money making tool for whales and speculators. And it is not something that can be stopped.
This is a consequence of a bad application of the sound money doctrine which cannot apply to a "new" monetary asset, and whose theory didn't take into account that one could destroy creation seigniorage. It exacerbates "value appreciation seigniorage" which turns the coin into a speculator's item, and not into a currency.
Sound money doctrine is good for a historical thing like gold. It is not applicable to new monetary systems. This is a fundamental error in bitcoin, and in most cryptocurrencies.
Tail emission softens but doesn't solve the problem. The main problem is that the largest emission happens BEFORE value appreciation, implying a huge potential for "value appreciation seigniorage", which is what drives most coin speculators, and makes that the coin will have difficulties becoming a currency. It implies for instance the huge (speculative) volatility which is a problem for currency adoption.