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A $100k Prize for a Decentralized Inflation Dashboard

1729.com

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Re: A $100k Prize for a Decentralized Inflation Dashboard

#41

Post by anythingdude321 »

wrs wrote: post #2

OK, blockchain fans, I’m genuinely confused as usual… Can someone explain what the point is of collecting price data and then putting it on the chain with a smart contract to do calculations on it? If “censorship” is a problem, why not just broadcast/mirror the signed data? If the calculation is untrusted, why not just publish the source code and let people run it on the published data? What is the blockchain accompl…

Including the computation and data on-chain enables other parties to use it trustlessly and verifiably. If you, for example, wanted to make an algorithmic central bank that reacted to inflation numbers you would need on-chain CPI in order to do that. Similarly you may want to index your interest rate to the CPI in some way (like LIBOR). It becomes a lot more useful when on-chain than in a central database

Re: A $100k Prize for a Decentralized Inflation Dashboard

#42

Post by lend000 »

bko wrote: post #40
gruez wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably so it can tie in with some smart contract that's based off the CPI (eg. Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities). As for why that's useful, I'm not sure. At the end you'll still need a trusted oracle for the scraped prices.

It would be very useful for on-chain financial derivatives based off a more accurate inflation gauge. I don't trust the official CPI numbers and don't see them as accurately reflecting my cost of living increases over the years. Couple in the fact that there are literally trillions in pension benefits tied to CPI, so the incentive to manipulate these numbers is huge. It's already very opaque. If you look at the const…

The CPI basically measures the median American's budget. So if wealth inequality is unchanging, then it's a decent measure of economy-wide inflation. Otherwise, it measures inflation x delta wealth inequality.

Re: A $100k Prize for a Decentralized Inflation Dashboard

#43

Post by MaysonL »

wrs wrote: post #2

OK, blockchain fans, I’m genuinely confused as usual… Can someone explain what the point is of collecting price data and then putting it on the chain with a smart contract to do calculations on it? If “censorship” is a problem, why not just broadcast/mirror the signed data? If the calculation is untrusted, why not just publish the source code and let people run it on the published data? What is the blockchain accompl…

Mining fees?

Re: A $100k Prize for a Decentralized Inflation Dashboard

#44

Post by wmf »

throwawaygh wrote: post #35

> Inflation is a monetary phenomenon, a function of money printing Is it, though? Are hotels and used cars more expensive this year because of money printing?

"Inflation is a monetary phenomenon" is a quote from economist Milton Friedman but most economists disagree.

Re: A $100k Prize for a Decentralized Inflation Dashboard

#47

Post by anythingdude321 »

throwawaygh wrote: post #35

> Inflation is a monetary phenomenon, a function of money printing Is it, though? Are hotels and used cars more expensive this year because of money printing?

this is a reference to a famous Milton Friedman quote "inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon" — of course this is a tautology, but he didn't mean the trivial version when he said it, but rather he was making an empirical claim.

in this piece it looks like the author is making the tautological version of the claim, by following up and describing it as "a function of money printing" — which is obviously true it is a function of money printing and several other things

Re: A $100k Prize for a Decentralized Inflation Dashboard

#48

Post by almost_usual »

throwawaygh wrote: post #35

> Inflation is a monetary phenomenon, a function of money printing Is it, though? Are hotels and used cars more expensive this year because of money printing?

It only is when the money printed is mailed directly to the public.

A decade ago the money printed was to restore bank cash reserves. The inflation had already happened (housing bubble) due to poor lending practices which caused the global financial crisis.

Re: A $100k Prize for a Decentralized Inflation Dashboard

#49

Post by geoah »

killion wrote: post #45

I distrust any website who prevents me from using the back button to leave their site. Browsers should prevent pushing to history if I haven’t clicked.

I think it's a bug with the way they've embedded the google form, it seems do something weird with the window controls here (firefox, macos)

Re: A $100k Prize for a Decentralized Inflation Dashboard

#50

Post by gruez »

bko wrote: post #40
gruez wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably so it can tie in with some smart contract that's based off the CPI (eg. Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities). As for why that's useful, I'm not sure. At the end you'll still need a trusted oracle for the scraped prices.

It would be very useful for on-chain financial derivatives based off a more accurate inflation gauge. I don't trust the official CPI numbers and don't see them as accurately reflecting my cost of living increases over the years. Couple in the fact that there are literally trillions in pension benefits tied to CPI, so the incentive to manipulate these numbers is huge. It's already very opaque. If you look at the const…

>I don't trust the official CPI numbers and don't see them as accurately reflecting my cost of living increases over the years.

What makes you think a NGO would do a better job? On one hand they might not have the same incentive to manipulate the numbers in the same way that the government would, but that would be replaced with an incentive to come up with whatever numbers that their donor base would like to see (see also: media companies adjusting their coverage to retain subscribers).

>If you look at the constituents [0], housing, education and health care make up around 60%, so it makes no sense that inflation has been flat for the last ten years.

Are you missing a part of your argument here? You just say that a few categories make up 60% of the CPI, then immediately conclude that "it makes no sense that inflation has been flat".

>The prices would ideally come from a large number of sources and some averaging would take place.

The problem is that you need to do various subjective adjustments (eg. the controversial "hedonistic adjustments") for the numbers to make sense.

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