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Re:On anyone-can-spend Pay-to-Taproot outputs before activation by arcticbull on Friday July 23, 2021 @02:11PM (#27933861)
Hard money doesn't exhibit 15000% annualized inflation in a one-month period. That Weimar Republic behavior.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not mad about that - it's made me tons of money on the short side. I'm just saying, it's bad money.

Re:On anyone-can-spend Pay-to-Taproot outputs before activation by dcolkitt on Friday July 23, 2021 @02:27PM (#27934034)
I mean, you're being a little silly by comparing a short-term market gyration to "annualized inflation". The Yen is down 38 basis points against the dollar today. Nobody would describe that as "exhibiting 135% annualized inflation".
Re:On anyone-can-spend Pay-to-Taproot outputs before activation by arcticbull on Friday July 23, 2021 @02:28PM (#27934049)
True, but there's a big difference between dropping 38 basis points and losing 57% of its purchasing power.

[edit] more importantly, the yen may have dropped 38 basis points against the dollar, however that doesn't necessarily represent a drop in domestic purchasing power at all. Just foreign purchasing power. This change makes imports into Japan more expensive and exports of Japanese products denominated in dollars more affordable to foreign buyers. You're measuring apples vs oranges in that comparison.

Re:On anyone-can-spend Pay-to-Taproot outputs before activation by dcolkitt on Friday July 23, 2021 @02:56PM (#27934350)
Peak-to-trough, the Pound Sterling lost about 25% of its value against the Deutsche Mark during Black Wednesday. It lost about 30% over Brexit. The Aussie dollar fell about 35% against USD during the 2008 financial crisis. The Euro fell approximately 40% against the Swiss franc over the 2011 sovereign debt crisis.

So yes, "real currencies" can and do fluctuate significantly in terms of exchange rates. It simply makes no sense to contextualize exchange rate fluctuations as "annualized inflation".

Re:On anyone-can-spend Pay-to-Taproot outputs before activation by arcticbull on Friday July 23, 2021 @02:58PM (#27934364)
To be clear, inflation isn't exchange rates. That's a change in how much you can buy in a foreign country with your currency - and how much of your goods they can buy with a unit of their currency, not how much you can buy at home.

Bitcoin's purchasing power fell equivalently the world over and so inflation is a more useful benchmark to compare the loss in purchasing power than foreign exchange is.

Re:On anyone-can-spend Pay-to-Taproot outputs before activation by dcolkitt on Friday July 23, 2021 @03:17PM (#27934529)
In most of those cases, you'd see similar declines if you benchmarked against a trade-weighted basket of G10 currencies.
Re:On anyone-can-spend Pay-to-Taproot outputs before activation by HighlandSpring on Friday July 23, 2021 @02:42PM (#27934209)
Doesn't get more apples and oranges than comparing fiat currencies with hard money
Re:On anyone-can-spend Pay-to-Taproot outputs before activation by arcticbull on Friday July 23, 2021 @03:02PM (#27934392)
Well that just sounds like a religious argument, no? Is there some basis on which you are making this assertion?
Re:On anyone-can-spend Pay-to-Taproot outputs before activation by samatman on Friday July 23, 2021 @02:52PM (#27934307)
No one has ever tried to take a ledger from the unit of account representing no value to representing value on a global scale. Every historical money has come from a cultural context where the token was valuable, beautiful, or frequently both.

When people point out Bitcoin's volatility, I wonder how else this could be accomplished on a decentralized and voluntary basis.

Which isn't to say that BTC will achieve that, of course. But unless it does, how could it possibly have a stable value in between? It's either worth $0 or ~$1-10mm per Bitcoin, and the market is having a vigorous argument about which.

Re:On anyone-can-spend Pay-to-Taproot outputs before activation by arcticbull on Friday July 23, 2021 @02:54PM (#27934328)
Some market participants are. Certainly the wildcat banks and Paolo Ardoino are having an argument with reality.
Re:On anyone-can-spend Pay-to-Taproot outputs before activation by guiomie on Friday July 23, 2021 @02:25PM (#27934013)
I'm not sure to follow "15000% annualized inflation in a one-month period"... Could you expand?
Re:On anyone-can-spend Pay-to-Taproot outputs before activation by arcticbull on Friday July 23, 2021 @02:26PM (#27934025)
A ~50% drop in purchasing power over a one-month period (from 65K to 29K) is an annualized inflation rate of ~15000%.
Re:On anyone-can-spend Pay-to-Taproot outputs before activation by guiomie on Friday July 23, 2021 @06:00PM (#27936106)
Im still confused. Isnt this deceptive a little bit? Isnt a 50% drop in a month, only a 50% drop in a month. Which I agree has happened to BTC a few times. But what is the point to extrapolate to a year? Bitcoin has never dropped 50% consistently every month for a year.
Re:On anyone-can-spend Pay-to-Taproot outputs before activation by ulzeraj on Friday July 23, 2021 @02:34PM (#27934109)
That’s not inflation. Inflation as the name suggests is the expansion of monetary supply.
Re:On anyone-can-spend Pay-to-Taproot outputs before activation by arcticbull on Friday July 23, 2021 @02:36PM (#27934134)
That definition of inflation is old and discredited. Austrian economics is roughly speaking tinfoil hat economics. The modern definition is a change in purchasing power of a unit of currency, not solely of its supply.

The reason is simple: if you have the treasury mint a $1T coin and give it to me, then I throw it in a vault, and do not spend it then prices do not change. As such, the Austrian model is obviously incomplete as it does not take into account what happens to that supply.

You can see this play out in the macro. Since 1980 the M2 supply has increased 12X but prices are about 3X higher.

Re:On anyone-can-spend Pay-to-Taproot outputs before activation by rogueSkib on Friday July 23, 2021 @02:40PM (#27934191)
Your thought experiment is assuming that $1T is permanently locked "in a vault", therefore it is not actually part of the monetary supply, since it can't be spent without violating your assumption.
Re:On anyone-can-spend Pay-to-Taproot outputs before activation by arcticbull on Friday July 23, 2021 @02:51PM (#27934303)
Not quite, it's not permanently locked, I have just decided not to spend it. Ditto money people squirrel away in mattresses or vaults. It is an analogy for a change in behavior of market participants over time which must by necessity be included in any complete model of an economic and monetary system. Broadly speaking, "velocity."

This system remains at equilibrium because supply went up, and velocity went down leading to neutral price action.

It analogizes this graph: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT

Re:On anyone-can-spend Pay-to-Taproot outputs before activation by rogueSkib on Friday July 23, 2021 @03:08PM (#27934448)
I think what you're ignoring here is that as any individual gains access to more liquid wealth, they become increasingly more likely to spend some of it.

As your access to supply increases, your demand for more monetary units decreases. As your demand for monetary units falls below your demand for other goods and services you want in life, you spend some of it.

This is how markets function, right? This is why bubbles pop for example, eventually holders of an asset reach a price where they want to take some off the table.

"Everyone has a price."

Re:On anyone-can-spend Pay-to-Taproot outputs before activation by throwaway2048 on Friday July 23, 2021 @02:51PM (#27934302)
That's the point though, inflation depends a great deal on the velocity of money, as much or even more so than the total amount printed.

Money in a vault has zero velocity, money being spent dozens of times a day has a very high velocity, most situations lie between, we need a meaningful way of discussing this that "monetary supply" does not capture.

Re:On anyone-can-spend Pay-to-Taproot outputs before activation by rogueSkib on Friday July 23, 2021 @03:00PM (#27934382)
I think Lyn Alden does a good job separating velocity from inflation in this article: https://www.lynalden.com/inflation/

  There is a common idea that high monetary velocity (GDP divided by broad money supply) is needed for inflation. However, the data show that this is not the case.
Re:On anyone-can-spend Pay-to-Taproot outputs before activation by gruez on Friday July 23, 2021 @02:36PM (#27934131)
>Hard money doesn't exhibit 15000% annualized inflation in a one-month period

I'm curious, what's your definition of "hard money"? It's clear that your idea of "hard money" is very different than the parent's.

Re:On anyone-can-spend Pay-to-Taproot outputs before activation by jtms on Friday July 23, 2021 @03:03PM (#27934406)
Bitcoin is deflationary by definition, not inflationary. Once the last coin is mined that's it - that's all there will ever be. I think you might have inflation and deflation backwards. Inflation can result from a large supply of currency being injected into a monetary system (ie: "bailouts"). This injection dilutes the value of all existing units of currency. This can cause prices to rise (though not always). In other words: the value of the good or service is relatively static, but the value of the money decreases due to the supply being larger. What happened in the Weimar Republic (hyperinflation) has nothing to do with Bitcoin price swings... they turned the money printers on max and diluted themselves into oblivion trying to prop up the economic machinery. This is quite the opposite of what is happening in BTC land. BTC price swings are just speculation (aka gambling with extra steps).
Re:On anyone-can-spend Pay-to-Taproot outputs before activation by arcticbull on Friday July 23, 2021 @03:04PM (#27934411)
You're describing money supply, not inflation. Inflation is a change in purchasing power of a unit of currency, not the supply of the currency. The supply may influence its purchasing power but there's a lot more to it, obviously.
Re:On anyone-can-spend Pay-to-Taproot outputs before activation by jtms on Friday July 23, 2021 @05:24PM (#27935813)
Re:On anyone-can-spend Pay-to-Taproot outputs before activation by hanniabu on Friday July 23, 2021 @03:14PM (#27934494)
Words have different meaning in different contexts. In blockchain, inflation refers to the emission of newly minted coin.
Re:On anyone-can-spend Pay-to-Taproot outputs before activation by arcticbull on Friday July 23, 2021 @03:19PM (#27934549)
In economics inflation is a change in purchasing power of a currency. Words have meaning. This is what inflation means to everyone without laser eyes ;) and the word appears to have been redefined to spur unsubstantiated fear to pump bitcoin. So I suggest we all begin using the right word for the job and correcting folks who are using it wrong.
Re:On anyone-can-spend Pay-to-Taproot outputs before activation by hanniabu on Friday July 23, 2021 @03:23PM (#27934590)
"The term is used differently in this context"

"No the context I'm used to is the only possible answer"

This combined with your mention of fear and pumping, it seems you have a heavy bias against cryptocurrencies so it's not worthwhile to continue this discussion with you.

Re:On anyone-can-spend Pay-to-Taproot outputs before activation by arcticbull on Friday July 23, 2021 @03:30PM (#27934670)
Oh I understand the crypto communities use, I’m saying they intentionally or unintentionally chose a meaning aligned with their interests and not with reality. I will continue to call out their bad faith actions because if cryptocurrencies are to form any meaningful role in a future economic order it has to be from a position of, well, reality.

I've followed the space very closely for 6ish years now, and I've made a lot of money on crypto both long and short, and I engage with a lot of folks both online and in real life who are both pro- and anti- crypto.

However, fundamentally, I'm with Jackson Palmer.

https://twitter.com/ummjackson/status/1415353991106420741

Re:On anyone-can-spend Pay-to-Taproot outputs before activation by hanniabu on Friday July 23, 2021 @03:13PM (#27934481)
Decreasing emission is not deflation, it's still inflation but just less of it
Re:On anyone-can-spend Pay-to-Taproot outputs before activation by mrow84 on Friday July 23, 2021 @04:04PM (#27934982)
It is deflationary, in terms of your chosen unit of exchange/account, when combined with an increase in demand, hypothetical or otherwise, that is above the rate of emission.
Re:On anyone-can-spend Pay-to-Taproot outputs before activation by vmception on Friday July 23, 2021 @02:15PM (#27933923)
I'm looking forward to third party assets being tradable on the Bitcoin network again.

My contribution to the gradient of behaviors on that network was one where the Bitcoin asset was only used to cover transaction fees for the actual money being traded.

The whole "merchant adoption" thing was always a squirrel to me. When merchants will accept stable value assets more readily, or use those stable value assets for settlement, just like the US regulator greenlighted a few months ago.

Re:On anyone-can-spend Pay-to-Taproot outputs before activation by arcticbull on Friday July 23, 2021 @02:17PM (#27933939)
Genuine curiosity: why would you trade third-party assets on the Bitcoin network when you could do it infinitely more efficiently on any of the competing chains? It's by far the least efficient blockchain ergo the least efficient way to trade third-party assets.

[edit] Direct fees are lower than they used to be, and the energy cost is about now up to about $100-120 per transaction. While that's being socialized across block reward for now, when that ends, it will have to be born directly by customers or see the network become less secure.

Re:On anyone-can-spend Pay-to-Taproot outputs before activation by thebean11 on Friday July 23, 2021 @02:29PM (#27934059)
> While that's being socialized across block reward for now, when that ends, it will have to be born directly by customers

That's true, total transaction revenue will need to go up. That doesn't mean per-transaction revenue needs to go up though.

Put another way, transaction volume needs to scale before inflation gets too low.

Re:On anyone-can-spend Pay-to-Taproot outputs before activation by wmf on Friday July 23, 2021 @02:38PM (#27934164)
transaction volume needs to scale before inflation gets too low

Good thing they decided to never scale transaction volume.

Re:On anyone-can-spend Pay-to-Taproot outputs before activation by thebean11 on Sunday July 25, 2021 @05:05PM (#27952912)
That's simply not true. They are ultra conservative with block size. That doesn't mean transaction volume won't scale. It doesn't even mean block size won't go up.
Re:On anyone-can-spend Pay-to-Taproot outputs before activation by vmception on Friday July 23, 2021 @05:47PM (#27935996)
I'd like the option as thats where they were traded before the transaction space was limited. Counterparty, OMNI... doing that stuff over Lightning Network. Other Layer 2s. The growth of this stuff is limited by bitcoin's current state. It just makes interoperability with the broader Defi space more practical.

Regarding energy, if thats your battle then work on that aspect, there are some influencers aiming to convince miners to create a more energy efficient version of transaction propagation, settled on the Bitcoin network.

Re:On anyone-can-spend Pay-to-Taproot outputs before activation by gruez on Friday July 23, 2021 @02:37PM (#27934147)
> I'm looking forward to third party assets being tradable on the Bitcoin network again.

Again? Did some sort of protocol fork break colored coins or the omni network?

Re:On anyone-can-spend Pay-to-Taproot outputs before activation by vmception on Friday July 23, 2021 @05:52PM (#27936039)
How do you want me to answer that? Older things are still compatible on bitcoin network in the older address format. But that mostly means choosing between meta-assets or multisig, or choosing a meta asset or segwit. They also are not transmittable over lightning network reliably yet, this is mostly a factor of no protocol and gui being finished but two people can make their own protocol.

I’m looking forward to this all being standardized and wallets surfacing it after they agree on the protocols.