Topic: Inflation and Deflation of Price and Money Supply - page 58. (Read 1425043 times)

Was 91.5, is 150. TTF.

Bitcoin is 135 at gox.WTF

Whom are you asking really and what exactly?

Obviously, it can come from new real wealth being created through the economy expansion (bitcoin or dollar is not actually relevant here). Without bitcoin, this would necessitate the fiat money supply growth; with bitcoin, this is no longer necessary (otherwise, it would cause devaluation of the fiat currency). If we don't expect the economic growth to fill bitcoin with real wealth, then, no, you won't be able to buy anything with it in however significant amounts, despite its apparent market cap or exchange rate...

Yeah thats right, appreciation in fiat would happen. Maybe there is no difference whatever currency we're looking at. If you buy a house of $500.000 now, and bitcoin adoption *happens* (lets say 15 year), you can sell the house for either 5BTC or $2.000.000. Wealth is preserved then.
However I still can't get my head around the 'new' to be notorious bitcoin ultra-rich just being added to the pool of rich people just out of thin air, it must come from somewhere. If I have the 5BTC now and hold them, I would be able to buy your house in 15 years, while currently it's almost worth nothing (lolz...well getting close).

Investments are different, so it all depends. If we take shares (for instance), the possible fiat currency depreciation due to bitcoin rise (which I agree with) would lead to shares appreciation in that fiat currency. And the notorious ultra-rich men still preserve the value of their wealth, hah. They are not fools, those ultra-rich, right?

when more time than 0.10 btc, 0.01 btc, 0.001 btc, 0.0001 btc, etc.

For real estate value is more constant (thats why mortgages exist), however I indeed think the ultra-rich are sitting on heaps of money....well not literally but think of investments, shares, etc. I also think that the market cap that bitcoin represents is partly (mostly?) taken from the market cap of fiat. So yes, in a way, their wealth is expropriated from them because of devaluation.

What will the creation of other coins do to Bitcoin, Litecoin, etc? My theory is that if we can make our money whenever we want is an action that has no value.

As we speak there are several Alt coins out there.

I mean this is too easy and creates enough deflation that will get to a no value point.

To buy something worthy you need someone who would sell you something worthy. Why should they in the first place?

At first you admit that wealth is not money, then you again turn to fiat-rich as if they were not wealthy in real terms but were just sitting on heaps of cash. If their real wealth is not confiscated or expropriated during the process of crytpo-currency adoption, they shouldn't care. Say, you have a house, and its price can be denominated both in dollars and bitcoins (or any other currency for that matter). Does this playing with figures change its real value?

Ok, you're right, it's not wealth, it's just money.


Are you saying that the fiat or bitcoin rich have or will have no means to effectively use their (financial) power? I agree that buying a country might not be plausible, however there must be quite some ways to obtain wealth.
When we're assuming we're moving from a full-fiat economy to a mixed economy including bitcoin (or other crypto for that matter), would you say that the fiat-rich will have no means to influence crytpo-currency adoption and can only maintain the same level of richness by shifting part of their financial portfolio to crypto?

Actually, they could provide a house, food and clean water for everyone on Earth. They could build houses and they could grow food instead of just buying them (or pay somebody who would do), but this wouldn't be effective employment of available resources (in plain words: no profits gained). So, why should they in the first place?

This is also the reason why even the richest people on Earth (or some Megacorporation) cannot simply "buy a house, food and clean water for everyone on Earth". Either price of houses, food and water will increase tremendously or we will run out of houses soon or we will damage economy in the long run by such malinvestment.

Even if you had a trillion dollars in cache cash piled in some warehouse, you still wouldn't be able to buy a country since nobody would sell you power. Real power can only be taken, often by force. Money can only help you here in an indirect way (bribery, mercenaries, etc)...

This is simply not possible for very simple and rather obvious reasons. The main of which is that wealth doesn't mean money (though it can be described or calculated in money terms, since it's one of money functions). Wealth is what you can (or cannot, for that matter, lol) buy with the help of money, not the money itself (bitcoin or not bitcoin)...

So distribution should be fair at the beginning

I'm not sure how you are supporting this claim. What evidence suggests this?


So you say, but this is not a so dissimilar scenario to the hard gold standard employed by the US leading up to 1913, and then JP Morgan met with some senators to draft the federal reserve act and laid the groundwork for the modern banking dynasties.


These are very difficult questions to answer. Those who can/could do those things with bitcoin, or have with fiat money in the past, are not exactly forthcoming about it.

I agree with you LX. The one difference here though is that the ultra rich cannot hoard by taking advantage of special federal reserve-type handouts. They start with an immense amount of wealth that, through deflation, grows in value over time. This implies that anything they spend will ultimately be more useful to the worker over time than to them. Unless they can manipulate the price of bitcoin en-masse to buy it back at a lower price, the worker will be getting paid with something that guarantees greater value over time.

Deflation pushes the ultra-rich utility curve to flatten out and, as a result, they should spend more. What will the spend more on? Obtaining power is a very good guess. The big difference is that this will most likely be political power as opposed to financial power since there won't be any currency to manipulate.

I guess the main point I'm trying to hone in on is the following:
A) How much power is effectively a result of the manipulation of a currency's value?
B) How much can bitcoin be actively manipulated by the bitcoin ultra rich in a hypothetical bitcoin economy?

Corruption does not spontaneously generate. You have put the cart before the horse; it is the ultra rich that have created that power with their wealth.


This is wishing for the "magic spell" that I mentioned, that giving (relatively random) people immense amounts of power will somehow change the landscape of society for the better. It might, but if history is any indication, it probably won't. And in all likelihood, Wall Street will probably reward those with a golden parachute in return for also having a significant amount of control over bitcoin. In which case it's mostly the same people again.


While this is a valid point in its own right, it is an externality irrelevant to the landscape within bitcoin. It is an argument that applies to any cryptocurrency.

Ultra rich in fiat have enormous power because of incentives and power structure set by politicians. In a system where government have the power to invade liberty, regulate, set values and redistribute money to such extend as today there is great potential for corruption.
Ultra rich in bitcoin will have great power too. They will set very strong incentives. For example they can desire space travel or building private islands with self-sufficient communities realizing their social utopias. They can have most exotic whims, even perverse ones and they will offer so good price that people will compete almost to death to fulfill those whims. But in Bitcoin world it would be enormously more difficult to ultimately force people to trade with ultra-rich. The freedom is in the choice to refuse offer 500 Milions USD for your old house, to refuse even 5 Bilions and to refuse to sell it at all. On the other hand you can not refuse to participate in bailouting TBTF bank if the government decides it is right (and compulsory) thing to do.
So the ultra rich will probably spend on luxury, encouraging its development and consequently bringing the new luxury to the masses. Cars, traveling to foreign countries, personal cinema (television), using plane, mobile phones ... all of that started as a luxury for the very rich. Without them there would be insufficient incentive to develop these areas and insufficient rewards for the smart ones doing so. You can say that ultra-rich will provide new and enormous opportunities for the exceptional ones (individuals, corporations) best able to fulfill their wishes and ideas. Of course, one of very deep needs buried in people is "I want others to hold the same values as me! I want to influence them and "make them see"!" We shall see how big this quest for power will become.