What is SUPPOSED to happen according to economic theory is that as quantity of money creation decreases (halvings), velocity of money (transactions) is supposed to go up to compensate, maintaining the balance of MV=PQ. This clearly cannot happen if scaling is slower than halvings.
Sidechains, lighting network, etc are no substitute because they effectively trade Bitcon IOUs and not actual bitcoin. You get the same problem that the fiat world has: a fractional reserve money multiplier than can either run positive or negative and screw up the balance.
Somebody please tell me the error of my thinking, or a slow liquidation becomes a serious consideration.
Apart from some other concerns you raise, which I think have merit, I would like to respond to 2 things where I believe you to be wrong:
1) I don't know where you get the assumption that the halvings are supposed to have an effect on velocity of money.
2) I think bitcoins paid through LN are economically the same as on-chain transactions. Yes you could describe it as some kind of IOU, but it is mathematically/informatically based on the same bitcoins, these bitcoins are "anchored", so you should treat these like regular bitcoins. It's not the same thing as a paper IOU (or a digital one) where the only "link" is the trust you have in the issuer of the IOU.
EDIT: actually, maybe LN might have some effect on money velocity in the future, by allowing (especially by machines) much more and faster transactions.
1) They don't effect the velocity (v). They effect the quantity (M). So because MV=PQ, a decrease in M MUST be compensated by a proportional increase in V in order for the equation to balance out. If it doesn't, then either price or quantity (or both) on the other side must adjust.
2) yes, you could have some sort of "proof of burn" to prevent LN from operating as a fractional reserve and then you'd be right. Centralized third party actors could also have cryptographically proven 100% reserves (or less reserves, provided they honestly disclosed this).
Adam is right. This is FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and doubt), but it is genuine fear, uncertainty and doubt.
Thanks, that does address at least one of my concerns.
1) I still don't understand why you want prices to stay the same in this equation (and of course as lambie pointed out, the amount of money doesn't decrease, the rate of new money created slows down).
2)why would you need to burn the btc? I think you need to read about LN some more (actually so do I about the technical details, but I think I have most of the big picture down). You are trading "spending rights" for actual bitcoins that are locked in a special transaction. If you start of with 10 btc, after the payment channel closes, there will still be 10 btc. During the use of the channel, there is only ever 10 btc worth being exchanged. How on earth does this resemble fractional reserve banking?
1) I want the price of goods (P) to go down relative to Bitcoin so Bitcoin's purchasing power goes up. I want the Quantity of goods and services available to purchase (q) to go up, so taken together, I want the left side of the equation to equal the right side, which of course it logically has to.
If the rate of quantity increase goes down, then the rate of velocity increase needs to go up. Get that? we are beyond algebra and into calculus, but scaling can't be diminishing or even constant, but needs to be
accelerating for the equation to balance out and for price to continually go down while quantity goes up.
2) you need 100% proof of reserves, so if you are exchanging tokens on one network for tokens on another network, you can't still have the original tokens or you have more than you started with (x+1>x) so you have a money multiplier.
and Yes, I don't know enough about the LN to discuss technical details. I'm only talking what it NEEDS to be in order to prevent effectively fractional reserve banking. Like I said, I could be making a mistake somewhere, so I am not arguing that LN is a bad idea. I just have questions.
I think I also need to clarify two things, in order to be absolutely innocent of trolling accusations.
A) I am in favor of the round table agreement- not because I like the terms. I absolutely do not like the terms as I believe the scaling is too slow for the reason I explained above. I am in favor of the agreement because I think it will either result in a change in leadership or rules within Core (which I think is sorely needed), or it will result in loss of support for Core by the miners and therefor a change in leadership of code development from Core to something else, probably Classic.
B) Here's my position on the miners: More hashpower is not only good, but absolutely necessary in order for Bitcoin to maintain it's first mover advantage over competing coins or potentially competing coins. There is a huge danger in mining being concentrated in China as it creates a POSSIBLE central point of failure if there is (another) Chinese crackdown. So if we can't get rid of the miners and miners are concentrated in China, what is there to do to reacquire censorship resistance? Only one thing: Increase hashpower outside of China massively, and at a rate substantially faster than hashpower within China is growing. I have no idea how we are going to do that given China's cheaper electricity and labor.