I know it's just an example, but no-one should ever lend at 5% if there's a 50% chance of losing the total sum, regardless of the currency involved and whether it's deflationary or inflationary. The EV of such a loan is -$47.50 for a one-year term.
>So someone comes along and wants a loan, but they can't pay back 3% interest rate, only 2%. Why would you give that person your 100 units if you'll only get 102 units (in today's money) back in a year? Much better to hold on to it.
Because if you don't lend, you keep your $100. If you lend, you get back $103. $103 will always be worth more than $100, regardless of whether your currency is inflationary or deflationary.
Today, with dollars, you can get a risk-free return by investing in T-bills. Riskier investments pay a higher return in exchange for higher risk. The risk-free return from holding a deflationary currency plays essentially the same role as the risk-free return in T-bills.
This is not true. There is no guaranteed rate of deflation.
The rate at which you can 'mine' bitcoin is limited and there is a hard limit to the total amount of bitcoin that can be mined.
So someone comes along and wants a loan, but they can't pay back 3% interest rate, only 2%. Why would you give that person your 100 units if you'll only get 102 units (in today's money) back in a year? Much better to hold on to it.
So someone comes along and can pay you 5% interest rate. Sounds better, right? However it's for a business. So you don't know if their business will survive, it might go backrupt. Let's pretend it's an early start up, so there's a 50/50 chance they go bust and your 100 units are a write off and gone. So that's only a 2.5% interest rate. Again, why loan it out if you can get a guaranteed 3% by doing nothing?
etc.