Topic: Reward Payout vs World Population (Read 6034 times)

As far as I can see, your example is less of a benefit to early adopters, compared to the current supply growth.

Why? Why should supply grow at its highest rate at some random mid-point?

With Satoshi's model of supply, we have one factor decided on from an educated guess: the halving rate (~4 years). With your model we have two such factors: 1. the mid-point (of highest monetary inflation) and 2. the growth rate before and after this point. Why not choose three factors that determine the supply, or maybe 18 factors? I think the point is that supply isn't that important, and - not the least - that each supply curve will have its advantages and disadvantages, and trying to predict these is futile. In any case I think we can spend our time improving the protocol in much more important aspects than wrt. to the supply curve.

It would be an improved if the distribution was optimised to benefit the early adopters of Bitcoin.

The image below would help it scale BIG.

It's my opinion that this will cause slightly less hording of bitcoins knowing there is no longer a hard limit to reach on the bitcoin network causing exchange price spikes and also prevent theoretical eventual loss of all bitcoins.

Your thoughts?

Let's say that you got thousands of votes here, 100% in favor of this change.  And then let's say even the group of core developers somehow lost their sanity and agreed to make this change.  It would not make any difference.

Here's why.  Come December when block 210,000 arrives, there will be a blockchain fork between those using clients that follow the original protocol (which drops the reward to 25 BTC per block) and those that have clients that follow these new rules.  Any coins starting from block 210,000 and on that are still at the reward of 50 per block (i.e., follows the new rules) are worth less because they won't be accepted in many places (i.e., only at the places that use a client that follows the new rules).

I personally won't be using any client that includes this change and as a result my client will reject any blocks mined using the new rules.  It won't even relay them.
...

In October 2011 World population was estimated to have surpassed the 7 billionth person. Since then world population has increased by a net growth of around 45million people (August 11 2012, about 10 months later)

The current Bitcoin block reward payout of 50 coins is scheduled to decrease to 25Btc at the 210,000 block around early to mid December. The Bitcoin network is designed to mine around 144 blocks or currently 7,200Btc a day which equals ~2,628,000Btc a year

At the current rates the world population is increasing 17x faster than the yearly payout of mined Bitcoins.

Already we have diminishing returns of mined bitcoins when measured against population growth. The way the system is designed with a hard limit of 21 million bitcoins theoretically means that eventually they will all be lost due to forgotten passwords, deleted wallets, crashed computers without backups....etc.

I propose we should change the bitcoin protocol to leave block mined rewards at 50Btc indefinitely that way there will always be a steady predetermined supply of coins, that will grow at a much slower rate than the global population

It's my opinion that this will cause slightly less hording of bitcoins knowing there is no longer a hard limit to reach on the bitcoin network causing exchange price spikes and also prevent theoretical eventual loss of all bitcoins.

Your thoughts?

What's fascinating about this process is that it might actually be used for a protocol change that has some possibility of success (IDK maybe more secure in some way), where BTC forks BTCultra and the original protocol slowly loses value against the new one.
 

One of the best arguments was that the planet surface would literally boil in 100-200 years if our economic/energy expansion continued.

Define "world". As a proponent of space exploration, I see things a bit differently.

Although making Bitcoin work over a one hour latency is a rather interesting task...

Everybody who owned coins before the split would now own both BTC and BTClinear.  Prices between BTC and BTClinear would diverge, since BTClinear's supply increases it is likely its price goes down vs. BTC.  So everyone would go back to BTC as BTClinear becomes worthless, or both are used and BTClinear becomes an altcoin like litecoin.

What's fascinating about this process is that it might actually be used for a protocol change that has some possibility of success (IDK maybe more secure in some way), where BTC forks BTCultra and the original protocol slowly loses value against the new one.

1) The fact that coins are occasionally lost is not a problem to anyone except the person who lost the coins. Increasing the rate at which coins are mined, or mining them forever at a constant rate, doesn't help the person who loses his coins. It's a non-solution to a non-issue.

2) If ever the Bitcoin community generally agreed to remove the 21m bitcoin cap and extend mining at a constant rate indefinitely, the whole experiment would collapse and fail.

3) There is absolutely no net benefit to removing the cap. Do no equate money with wealth... the fact that more money is printed doesn't mean the world is better off. Market's adjust to the supply of money - if you tinker with the supply of money, you screw up the market.

4) The growth rate of world population is entirely irrelevant when determining what the proper amount of money is. Few people understand this, but it's true.

Besides, a constantly increasing world population is NOT sustainable, so let's not base our systems on the idea that it is. Sound good?

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/world

Most definitions of "world" contain "earth" and that is how I used it.

I think it would be easiest to have new block chains on any planets / stations we inhabit in the future, and exchange between the two (several).

Bitcoin is rapidly inflationary now, with decreasing inflation caused by the fact that the creation of Bitcoins is never proportional to the circulating supply and the halvings of the subsidy/reward. Keeping the block subsidy/reward steady at 50 btc just slows down the rate of inflation decline -- but both models end up in the same place -- only a trivial fraction of the circulating coins are created each year for many many years.

No.  the very reason, IMO, that ppl invest in Bitcoin is b/c of the projected fixed supply.

Was there any reason that the number 210,000 was chosen as the block reward reduction?

Though the answer to this question seems obvious to a bitcoin holder, miners may have a different opinion - and it's their vote that counts.
There is a tension between people who hold bitcoins and want deflation, and miners who want to earn more bitcoins.
The allure of more bitcoins per block is a delusion, but if enough miners agreed, then there is the slight possibility of a fork that could develop momentum - especially if bitcoin was floundering somewhat.
I suspect miners faced with a fork like this would simply choose to drop out and wait for low difficulty rather than pursuing an inflationary model - or maybe they'd mine both and wait for the winner.