That’s the Bitcoin model. If you want to use Bitcoins as your money then it’s even more obvious. If I sell 10 bitcoins to somone they get 9.99999 of them and miners get that .00001 or whatever bitcoin. Wait 1000 years an they are still our that .00001 or whatever coin.
Miners also got coins from the original 2.1 Million but rather than pay people they payed overhead spending electricity and depreciation on hardware. That money is simply gone never to be recovered. Sure, they can sell coins to other people, but that money is new investments.
PS: Bitcoin as a useful service is fine, people lose money to Visa every day but trade that money for other forms of utility.
It’s talk of Bitcoin as an investment that is more troubling. You can make money buying gold or whatever at the right time, but it’s a hedge not an investment. Holding gold has real costs and their is no dividend just the next buyer.
I don’t think it has failed as a medium of exchange though. I used it yesterday as one. That said, it hasn’t filled as niches there, specifically the major ones.
Your last statement is interesting because you use the term "money" yet I'm not sure you have questioned the nature of the "money" you are making with your investments. If you imagine yourself in a glass bead economy, and you replace all of your notions of money with glass beads. You are making your investments with glass beads and making net positive glass bead investments from dividends. This is all fine in your glass bead economy. However, the day that the Venetians come with technology to make glass beads, they will subtly buy up all of your wealth because you chose a poor for of money - that you were making so much of with your investments.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_beads
Alternatively, Bitcoin could be the trade beads (despite the fact they are disinflationary), but the point is the same about the assumptions being confined to the context of a single economy and currency.