Vijay Boyapati (Software Developer, Austrian Economist), podcast, Dec 2018:
“Why Credit #Deflation Is More Likely Than Mass #Inflation”
Find out where economics commentators were getting it wrong immediately post the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, and ways to think about Bitcoin in the coming years.
The following quote from the transcript supports my view and understanding of what #inflation and the current financial system means: ongoing #redistribution of wealth (mainly from bottom to top).
And it makes obvious why there needs to be a way for regular people to bypass the official money - maybe by using #bitcoin. Because with the current system, the banks and investors continuously milk every penny they can get their hands on from every transaction that's being made.
Vijay Boyapati:
Yeah, so the problem with an inflationary policy is that during the #inflation, it seems like everything and everyone is profitable as is prices start rising because of the #inflation, even though it’s only a privileged few who are actually benefiting from the inflation. Inflation’s kind of insidious because they transfer, the transfer of wealth happens is hidden and it’s not really obvious to the public. When the bust happens and you get into the inevitable deflationary people, people who are running marginal businesses or who took loans that only made sense during the #inflation are bankrupted and their property is taken back in bankruptcy in the deflationary bust phase, the #redistribution of wealth is not hidden anymore. It’s very obvious and public. Property is you know, visibly taken back by collection services for example. And that causes a lot of social unrest because the #redistribution of wealth is, you know, in your face and it’s obvious to everyone. Whereas during the inflationary phase, people, like the bankers in people in the banking system are getting rich, but it seems kind of like everyone’s getting rich cause prices going up. But in a deflationary period, it’s really obvious that the wealth is being transferred because it’s actually physically being taken back.
Another important quote:
You still have like, you know, a fairly small number of technically savvy computer scientists and cryptographers who own a fairly large fraction of all of #Bitcoin. So Bitcoin’s movement is determined a lot by what a fairly small number of people are going to do.
For me this is the crucial part. If there are still just a few hundred people holding a big percentage of coins (like more than 50 %), then in the longterm these people will from time to time release some of their coins (which will represent a significant amount of value) to buy something with them. And whenever this happens the price for #bitcoin will drop.
And this might go on an on for years ... until maybe the distribution will have become flat enough, so that it could maybe reach a fairly stable quasi-statical state.
But until the coins will (maybe) be spread amoung a big enough number of regular people going about their lives and sometimes using #bitcoin to transfer value ... until then, the price won't be stable.
Any currency that starts out with very few people owning the total amount has to go through a phase where the total amount gets spread amoung a growing number of participants ... until either it reaches wide adoption ... or it remains a niche and some time vanishes.
I can hardly imagine this phase happening without there being kind of like a sawtooth shaped development of the price.
Why would the price ever become more stable when more people own bitcoins?
Because regular people who'd own some coins would make everyday life choices that are governed not only by speculation and thought, but also by circumstances. They wouldn't use their coins for high frequency trading, but would sometimes forget about the coins. They'd keep some for their children or maybe for their retirement.
All these circumstances would lead to a decreased exchange and to a bigger portion of coins being held instead of being used in a volatile way. Like a dampening system.
Bank runs on #bitcoin could of course happen, which would make the price plunge. But with enough dampening in the system, the magnitude and probability should become small enough for #bitcoin to appear as a more stable system than the official currencies ... I think.
mp3:
https://stephanlivera.com/download-episode/907/40.mp3
episode & transcript:
https://stephanlivera.com/episode/40/
The article that's being discussed:
http://libertarianpapers.org/articles/2010/lp-2-43.pdf
Another article by Vijay Boyapati:
https://medium.com/@vijayboyapati/the-bullish-case-for-bitcoin-6ecc8bdecc1
#austrianEconomics #bitcoin #deflation #inflation #redistribution #redistributionOfWealth #StephanLivera #VijayBoyapati
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