Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Dogecoin decides to allow annual inflation of 5 billion coins each year, forever

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 216 posts

Re: Dogecoin decides to allow annual inflation of 5 billion coins each year, forever

#121

Post by kybernetyk »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #16
kybernetyk wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding was that Dogecoin doesn't want to become a "serious" currency and the sentiment in the community against the BTC-community is that they take themselves far too serious. This decision makes sense if Doge intends to stay the "great comment, I give you 10000 doge for that" fun-currency and drive out everybody whose primary intention is financial gain.

If the coin has no value, you might well just say "great comment, I give you 10000 doge for that" without the hassle of actually giving doge. Why have a whole system that accomplishes no more than merely typing the words did? Stick with the words. Easier, faster, just as much fun.

> Easier, faster, just as much fun

Easier? Yes. Faster? Yes. Just as much fun? I don't know. Psychologically a Doge has still more perceived worth than than karma. At least to me.

Re: Dogecoin decides to allow annual inflation of 5 billion coins each year, forever

#122

Post by kordless »

zwtaylor wrote: post #84
master_shake wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes my friend, you are misunderstanding the exchange rate. There are currently ~40 million "dogecoins" floating around the internet. All the dogecoins combined are presently worth $55 million USD. Therefore each dogecoin is worth $.0014 USD. Before this announcement, there were only ever going to be 100 billion dogecoin in existence. Now they just decided that they want a 5 billion doge inflation rate per annum, Ther…

> There are currently ~40 million "dogecoins" floating around the internet. I'm assuming you meant to say 40 billion.

You'll never get to the moon on millions of things.

Re: Dogecoin decides to allow annual inflation of 5 billion coins each year, forever

#123

Post by natrius »

shock-value wrote: post #116
natrius wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Low, steady inflation is better for an economy than the alternatives humanity has experienced thus far. However, if people had the choice between holding a currency they expected to slowly decrease in value like today's central bank currencies and a currency they expected to slowly increase in value like Bitcoin in a post-adoption world, why would anyone pick the former? Central banks have only had the ability to ste…

You stuck a "however" in between your first two sentences, but doesn't the second one just explain the first? If people are only going to hold Bitcoin and not trade it for goods and services, then it's a poor currency and will not drive economic development.

I don't understand why you think people won't trade Bitcoin for goods and services. I use Bitcoin at every vendor that accepts it, especially if there's a discount involved. It costs me 1% to replace the Bitcoin since my paychecks are in dollars (for now), but it's a much more reasonable policy than holding and never spending.

Normal folks won't use Bitcoin until merchants pass some of the savings they get to their customers as discounts, or until inflation gets out of control.

Re: Dogecoin decides to allow annual inflation of 5 billion coins each year, forever

#124

Post by mrjaeger »

So why doesn't Bitcoin do this as well? Just their core philosophy that deflation is not an inherently bad thing? This seems like a great move and will attract a lot of people who believe in traditional economics. Now if only I could buy Doges from my Coinbase account...

Re: Dogecoin decides to allow annual inflation of 5 billion coins each year, forever

#125

Post by mkr-hn »

kordless wrote: post #122
zwtaylor wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are currently ~40 million "dogecoins" floating around the internet. I'm assuming you meant to say 40 billion.

You'll never get to the moon on millions of things.

Not with that attitude.

Re: Dogecoin decides to allow annual inflation of 5 billion coins each year, forever

#126

Post by yxhuvud »

Eliezer wrote: post #59

The really amusing part is that their trolling represents better economic policy than Bitcoin.

Better, but still not good.

5 billion a year will be noticable in the short run, but in the long run, the inflation per anno will approach 0.

Re: Dogecoin decides to allow annual inflation of 5 billion coins each year, forever

#127

Post by smileysteve »

yxhuvud wrote: post #126
Eliezer wrote: post #59

The really amusing part is that their trolling represents better economic policy than Bitcoin.

Better, but still not good. 5 billion a year will be noticable in the short run, but in the long run, the inflation per anno will approach 0.

Agreed. They should consider making it 5% (which is initially $5b)

Re: Dogecoin decides to allow annual inflation of 5 billion coins each year, forever

#128

Post by wmf »

sirclueless wrote: post #113
mtrimpe wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would need a ~50% consensus (measured in compute power) to push through these manipulations though. Never thought I'd find myself calling a distributed cryptocurrency surprisingly democractic...

Does anyone have a good explanation as to why this is supposed to be hard to achieve? What incentive do miners in the distant future have against inflating a cryptocurrency? For example, take Bitcoin after the cap has been reached and mining bitcoins only gives fees. If 50% of miners cooperate to make blocks worth real bitcoins again, they will suddenly start raking in more profit. They will be devaluing everyone's s…

Exchanges and other prominent users would probably also have to agree to the change. Things might get bad if there was a split between miners and everyone else because the miners could perform 51% attacks on the other fork, though.

Re: Dogecoin decides to allow annual inflation of 5 billion coins each year, forever

#129

Post by dgacmu »

This entire debate is a great example of how people don't understand math or the idea of inflation. A constant rate of new coins trickling into the currency creates a rate of inflation that decreases over time until it reaches equilibrium with the coins exiting the system. The devs have, intentionally or unintentionally, created a coin whose quantity will become roughly fixed (at a number they can't predict exactly), instead of one that where the supply will diminish over time due to loss (as in Bitcoin).

Perhaps I should know better than to expect reason when it comes to greed, however.

Re: Dogecoin decides to allow annual inflation of 5 billion coins each year, forever

#130

Post by wmf »

fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #62
master_shake wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes my friend, you are misunderstanding the exchange rate. There are currently ~40 million "dogecoins" floating around the internet. All the dogecoins combined are presently worth $55 million USD. Therefore each dogecoin is worth $.0014 USD. Before this announcement, there were only ever going to be 100 billion dogecoin in existence. Now they just decided that they want a 5 billion doge inflation rate per annum, Ther…

It's not so bad in theory, at least it counters the deflationary-currencies-are-evil-and-stupid argument. The real worry is that now some entity has been entrusted with the ability to manipulate the value of the currency, and that the entity may violate that trust by later deciding to further inflate the currency.

now some entity has been entrusted with the ability to manipulate the value of the currency

Not really; inflation is built into the code and getting everyone to "upgrade" would be difficult.

Post reply on HN