I read that a major problem in the Great Depression was deflation. Bank runs caused banks to go under, wiping out savings. Consequently, money was scarse and prices were low.
"the biggest problem in general was lack of actual money - nobody had any, for anything. Over and over Roth laments having no cash to buy stock or real estate bargains in '32 and '33."
"The runs on banks REALLY made the lack of cash situation worse. A lot of it was driven by irrational fear. Banks that would have survived if their clients had remained calm went under, wiping the banks and the clients out."
"Inflation, of course, is one way of going broke. You have a lot of money that is increasingly worthless. The other way of going broke is deflation, where you have no money. In the aggregate of a deflation, nobody will have any money, so at least you’ll have company in the misery of being broke. My guess is that a grievous deflation is where the current situation is headed. Deflations are provoked when people and companies can’t meet their debt obligations — can’t “service” their loans (pay interest), or pay back contracted sums of borrowed money, or simply can’t pay their bills. Every loan that goes bad causes some money to disappear — poof! — and when a whole lot of that happens there is no money."
"Folks, the creator of Bitcoin won't even take credit for it…can you trust that with significant savings?"
The trustworthiness of Bitcoin is a separate question from the identity of its creator. The creator of Bitcoin is largely irrelevant now, as the project is out of his hands.
Continuing the analogy from my previous comment, we don't know for sure who invented chess, but does that matter? The game has outlived its creator by thousands of years, and will likely continue to be played for many centuries to come. The nature of the game is not changed by whether we know the name of the person who made its rules.
Likewise, Satoshi created the rules for Bitcoin, but he does not direct or control it. That is done by the "players" who continue his "game" by running computing nodes which follow the rules which Satoshi created. Those rules are written in the form of computer code. Like the rules of chess, this code is not secret, but open to everyone to review.
Those who do not like Satoshi's rules are free to create their own set of rules and to convince others to join them. Many have, but their "games" have not attracted as many "players" as Bitcoin has.
As a side note, Satoshi likely owns over 500,000 Bitcoin. These coins were mined in the very early days of Bitcoin when one coin was worth less than $1. Today, this hoard is worth over $32 billion. The Bitcoin ledger (which records all transactions) shows that these coins have never moved since their creation and have remained untouched for years. It is commonly speculated that Satoshi is no longer alive, and has been dead for some time now.
"only 21 million will ever exist, supposedly…Who controls that?"
The answer to your question is: the miners who run the Bitcoin nodes.
Bitcoin exists as a distributed network of computing nodes. If you want to change the code running on all these nodes, you must convince all of the people running the nodes to change.
Over the years, some small changes have been adopted through consensus, but Bitcoin miners have proven very resistant to major changes in the structure of Bitcoin.
For example, in 2017 there was a disagreement over how many megabytes of transactions should be added to the Bitcoin ledger every 10 minutes (a seemingly minor technical detail). Most miners resisted this proposed change. Those who adopted it began running modified code. Because this code was incompatible with the original Bitcoin protocol, those miners splintered and became a new cryptocurrency called Bitcoin Cash. At that point, every Bitcoin address got duplicated into two parallel addresses: one on the Bitcoin network and one on the new Bitcoin Cash network.
Since that time, the two ledgers of transactions have diverged, like an alternate-history novel with a single point-of-divergence from our own timeline. The two currencies are both still separately used and traded, but Bitcoin has remained dominant over Bitcoin Cash. Bitcoin has a market capitalization of over $1 trillion today, while Bitcoin Cash has a market capitalization of less than $8 billion.
Suppose you were to propose increasing the maximum number of Bitcoins to some number greater than 21 million. That's a much more impactful change than the minor technical detail which caused the splintering described above. Will you be able to convince all the miners to follow your suggestion? You will likely have as much luck inventing new rules for Chess and convincing everyone on earth to adopt your new version of the game.
"Imagine someone wanting to change the rules of chess so pawns could move backward. Of course, anyone could do so anytime, but that doesn’t mean people will follow the new rule. Of course, nothing is impossible, but it would be so improbable that such a move would gain traction that it’s irrelevant.
In my view, getting the consensus of the full nodes to change the Bitcoin protocol with a hard fork—to say, alter the fixed supply of 21 million—is even less probable than successfully changing the rules of chess."
So if you tried to increase the number of bitcoins above 21 million, you may convince a few Bitcoin miners to follow you, but most would not. The result would be like Bitcoin Cash: a small group of miners would splinter off from the herd and form their own new and largely irrelevant currency.
I for sure don't understand why fellow modern moron [monetary] slaves embrace the delusion of cryptos!
As for the rest it's certain that those that Own will want to have greater Power to Control... hence CBDC!
https://voza0db.substack.com/p/morons-just-dont-get-it-7d4
And, in the Future, the large herds of MMS will embrace those just like today the small herds of MMS embrace cryptos.
I read that a major problem in the Great Depression was deflation. Bank runs caused banks to go under, wiping out savings. Consequently, money was scarse and prices were low.
"the biggest problem in general was lack of actual money - nobody had any, for anything. Over and over Roth laments having no cash to buy stock or real estate bargains in '32 and '33."
"The runs on banks REALLY made the lack of cash situation worse. A lot of it was driven by irrational fear. Banks that would have survived if their clients had remained calm went under, wiping the banks and the clients out."
https://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2023/07/lessons-from-great-depression.html
"Inflation, of course, is one way of going broke. You have a lot of money that is increasingly worthless. The other way of going broke is deflation, where you have no money. In the aggregate of a deflation, nobody will have any money, so at least you’ll have company in the misery of being broke. My guess is that a grievous deflation is where the current situation is headed. Deflations are provoked when people and companies can’t meet their debt obligations — can’t “service” their loans (pay interest), or pay back contracted sums of borrowed money, or simply can’t pay their bills. Every loan that goes bad causes some money to disappear — poof! — and when a whole lot of that happens there is no money."
https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/money-for-nothing-and-nothing-for-money/
"Folks, the creator of Bitcoin won't even take credit for it…can you trust that with significant savings?"
The trustworthiness of Bitcoin is a separate question from the identity of its creator. The creator of Bitcoin is largely irrelevant now, as the project is out of his hands.
Continuing the analogy from my previous comment, we don't know for sure who invented chess, but does that matter? The game has outlived its creator by thousands of years, and will likely continue to be played for many centuries to come. The nature of the game is not changed by whether we know the name of the person who made its rules.
Likewise, Satoshi created the rules for Bitcoin, but he does not direct or control it. That is done by the "players" who continue his "game" by running computing nodes which follow the rules which Satoshi created. Those rules are written in the form of computer code. Like the rules of chess, this code is not secret, but open to everyone to review.
Those who do not like Satoshi's rules are free to create their own set of rules and to convince others to join them. Many have, but their "games" have not attracted as many "players" as Bitcoin has.
As a side note, Satoshi likely owns over 500,000 Bitcoin. These coins were mined in the very early days of Bitcoin when one coin was worth less than $1. Today, this hoard is worth over $32 billion. The Bitcoin ledger (which records all transactions) shows that these coins have never moved since their creation and have remained untouched for years. It is commonly speculated that Satoshi is no longer alive, and has been dead for some time now.
https://coincodex.com/article/28459/satoshi-nakamoto-wallet-address/
"only 21 million will ever exist, supposedly…Who controls that?"
The answer to your question is: the miners who run the Bitcoin nodes.
Bitcoin exists as a distributed network of computing nodes. If you want to change the code running on all these nodes, you must convince all of the people running the nodes to change.
Over the years, some small changes have been adopted through consensus, but Bitcoin miners have proven very resistant to major changes in the structure of Bitcoin.
For example, in 2017 there was a disagreement over how many megabytes of transactions should be added to the Bitcoin ledger every 10 minutes (a seemingly minor technical detail). Most miners resisted this proposed change. Those who adopted it began running modified code. Because this code was incompatible with the original Bitcoin protocol, those miners splintered and became a new cryptocurrency called Bitcoin Cash. At that point, every Bitcoin address got duplicated into two parallel addresses: one on the Bitcoin network and one on the new Bitcoin Cash network.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin_Cash
Since that time, the two ledgers of transactions have diverged, like an alternate-history novel with a single point-of-divergence from our own timeline. The two currencies are both still separately used and traded, but Bitcoin has remained dominant over Bitcoin Cash. Bitcoin has a market capitalization of over $1 trillion today, while Bitcoin Cash has a market capitalization of less than $8 billion.
Suppose you were to propose increasing the maximum number of Bitcoins to some number greater than 21 million. That's a much more impactful change than the minor technical detail which caused the splintering described above. Will you be able to convince all the miners to follow your suggestion? You will likely have as much luck inventing new rules for Chess and convincing everyone on earth to adopt your new version of the game.
"Imagine someone wanting to change the rules of chess so pawns could move backward. Of course, anyone could do so anytime, but that doesn’t mean people will follow the new rule. Of course, nothing is impossible, but it would be so improbable that such a move would gain traction that it’s irrelevant.
In my view, getting the consensus of the full nodes to change the Bitcoin protocol with a hard fork—to say, alter the fixed supply of 21 million—is even less probable than successfully changing the rules of chess."
https://internationalman.com/articles/the-case-against-altcoins-3-reasons-to-stick-to-bitcoin-only/
So if you tried to increase the number of bitcoins above 21 million, you may convince a few Bitcoin miners to follow you, but most would not. The result would be like Bitcoin Cash: a small group of miners would splinter off from the herd and form their own new and largely irrelevant currency.