I was just reflecting on Peter Todd's argument in [1] and thinking what are the realistic possible endstates for Bitcoin in these terms.
The first is along the lines of what Peter is implicitly advocating: adding a tail emission with, asymptotically, a fluctuating supply (because loss rates will fluctuate, for whatever reason). Note "fluctuating" does actually mean it will sometimes go down as well as sometimes go up (though that won't be measurable). Read the article carefully to get the point; if you're not comfortable with first order differential equations, no worries, he explains the point after writing the math. And if you still don't get it, ask me, I can explain.
The second possible endstate is "fuck that" and supply endlessly goes down, *but* we have a mechanism to hard/soft fork such that we divide sats into smaller and smaller units. I think this is what a lot of people hope will happen.
The third one is the funny one: all software changes end (ossification) but supply keeps going down. Sats are worth 10 squillion dollars, but at some point, nobody has any any more.
(of course in reality a fourth option, which we can't envisage, is what will actually happen, but where's the fun in that).
[1] https://petertodd.org/2022/surprisingly-tail-emission-is-not-inflationary
waxwing /
npub1va…knuu7
2025-06-08 15:25:01
Author Public Key
npub1vadcfln4ugt2h9ruwsuwu5vu5am4xaka7pw6m7axy79aqyhp6u5q9knuu7Published at
2025-06-08 15:25:01Event JSON
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"content": "I was just reflecting on Peter Todd's argument in [1] and thinking what are the realistic possible endstates for Bitcoin in these terms.\n\nThe first is along the lines of what Peter is implicitly advocating: adding a tail emission with, asymptotically, a fluctuating supply (because loss rates will fluctuate, for whatever reason). Note \"fluctuating\" does actually mean it will sometimes go down as well as sometimes go up (though that won't be measurable). Read the article carefully to get the point; if you're not comfortable with first order differential equations, no worries, he explains the point after writing the math. And if you still don't get it, ask me, I can explain.\n\nThe second possible endstate is \"fuck that\" and supply endlessly goes down, *but* we have a mechanism to hard/soft fork such that we divide sats into smaller and smaller units. I think this is what a lot of people hope will happen.\n\nThe third one is the funny one: all software changes end (ossification) but supply keeps going down. Sats are worth 10 squillion dollars, but at some point, nobody has any any more.\n\n(of course in reality a fourth option, which we can't envisage, is what will actually happen, but where's the fun in that).\n\n[1] https://petertodd.org/2022/surprisingly-tail-emission-is-not-inflationary\n",
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