You do realize that, because the total number of bitcoins is limited, it will get harder and harder to get bitcoins? So every generations will have to work/fight harder to get their currency, which is extremely unfair? Why would a newborn have more trouble to get his hands on money compared to the ones (like myself) who had it easy to buy cryptos while it was cheap? And what about increase/decrease in population: central bans may implement bad policies but at least they did not tied their hands in principles (e.g hardcoded limited number of coins) and can adjust things as they are needed.
I understand your argument as "humans do bad things today, let's hardcode things with technics" without consideration as to why the hardcoded things will remain beneficial to all/most in the long term. Humans are fallible and inconstant but they are human after all. We can't do without trust so why try to replace it with mathematics anyway? Only because we _currently_ lack trust? If so, shouldn't we focus on that instead?
while I don't really agree with the bitcoin maxi mindset of the comment you are replying to, do you know that you can buy as little as 1 satoshi? (0.00000001 BTC). Yes, eventually all BTC will be mined (in about 2140) but considering 1 sat is currently worth 0.0006 USD, there is still quite a bit of room for very small amounts of bitcoin being widely accessible (fees being a different issue that will improve with time).
At some point, the real yield on a government treasury will exceed the real yield on Bitcoin, indicating that a better savings rate in fiat is available. This will shift value back out to fiat, similarly to the way gold inflows/outflows in expansion and recession.
> Only because we _currently_ lack trust? If so, shouldn't we focus on that instead?
my friend, if you can solve the problems of trust in human social systems, you will have solved a lot more than decentralized digital cash
I can trust that the local coffee shop will give me a coffee for my money. I can trust my employer will pay me, failing that I can trust the local courts will sort it out.
I can't really trust that a bitcoin wallet host, some ephemeral digital entity I have very little insight into, will hold onto my wallet. I can't trust that a cloud provider in the states will hold onto my files without scanning them. I can't trust that an eCommerce store will definitely ship me goods internationally.
The human element disappears online and we have starting trying to fill that void with digital trust artifacts, like digital contracts. The blockchain itself was a technology entirely about trust.
Maybe we're trying to stretch our ability to trust networks, social or otherwise, too far.
Right now the game is being framed as honest crypto vs corrupt government legacy weakness, but I think an economy that must devote huge resources to maintaining the security and operational infrastructure of their currency will be at a comparative disadvantage.
The defi stuff appeals to me as enabling composable bottom up tools for interaction but trustlessness I think is a very niche attribute which adds a lot of expense and in many cases doesn't mitigate any risks.
So is your beef against capitalism? Or the medium of exchange?
At current mining rewards, 329,000 BTC are mined each year, producing 37 megatons of CO2, or about 110 tons of CO2 / one-bitcoin-worth-of-bitcoin.
It is really useful to hoard! Not to ge rich, but to avoid getting poorer in countries with rampant inflation.
Also it facilitate money transfers a lot.
Yes, a transaction in bitcoin is expensive, but a international wire transfer on my country for example is EVEN MORE expensive, so transferring money using Bitcoin, even after eating all the fees, is cheaper (and easier too).
So people that has the same opinion as you, I consider this opinion invalid until they come up with a solution better than bitcoin for the problems I mentined.
To be clear the problems are:
1. How to save money when government is hostile to saving money.
2. How to transfer money when it is ludicrously expensive and/or government or companies are hostile to money transferrence.
EDIT: people downvote me, but none of the answers below so far address the 2 problems I mentioned.
The closest is someone talking about solving problems with trust, but that is the whole issue, if you can't trust the central authorities and companies, who you trust?