> But now you have the deflation trap. jb55's customers were happy to subscribe last month for $5 equivalent but now it's $10 equivalent and they consider dropping. Isn't that premise true as well for any whiling-to-be bitcoin company out there? Midwit me would think about asking for lesser sats as to 'pegging' the service to $5...
Absolutely correct. No Bitcoin company is viable and never will be. As for pegging the Bitcoin price to a dollar value, you don't have a reliable income stream in Bitcoin then. A Bitcoin company is only a Bitcoin company if it earns in Bitcoin and holds it to pay suppliers in Bitcoin later. Pay and be paid, money goes in circles. However as a business you need to have a somewhat reliable, predictable income stream. If the electricity bill is due in 3 months will you have earned enough to pay it? Like that. You don't have to be a "business", every regular employed Joe has to plan like that. If you constantly adjust your Bitcoin price to whatever the dollar value demands you can't predict your Bitcoin income well enough. The only option you have then is to immediately convert it to dollars on reception and pay your suppliers in dollar. But then you're not a Bitcoin business anymore. You're just a dollar business that pretends to be a Bitcoin business as a marketing gimmick. You will hold dollars instead and then it's back to worrying about the stability of the dollar which you wanted to avoid in the first place. 99% of so-called Bitcoin businesses are that. It's make-believe to suck the money out of a few starry eyed and not so clever Bitcoin dreamers. That's why I keep asking questions like that and usually not getting an answer because the answer would be rather ugly: nostr:note1r0fgd862ykhzu8qtpvqsyxge8fwlegdnt6uwx45hyvwftj3s5s7spux5ad
Would there be any viable subscription model wherein the product or service offered could be purchased ahead of time using a payment method which has fluctuating value? Would the early adopters need to be offered a refund or an invoice for additional required payment based on the payment method’s value as time passes?
Possibly a credit system. At the end of the year you get credit back or credit for future usage.
The possibility of refunds or invoices creates financial risk on one side or the other which is what we wanted to avoid in the first place. The only way you can financially plan ahead is with a stable currency, the more stable the better. Bitcoin is fundamentally unable to achieve that, the best we have today is central bank fiat from civilized countries. If you want to design your own possibly "more digital" finance scheme you'd have to design it "stability first".
> Bitcoin is fundamentally unable to achieve that, the best we have today is central bank fiat from civilized countries Would you have a take about El Salvador disclosing and moving to a physical location within its territory the keys of its bitcoin? (https://mempool.space/address/32ixEdVJWo3kmvJGMTZq5jAQVZZeuwnqzo). Something alike, `El Salvador has X amount of bitcoin, and also has X amount of land, and people, so its value should be...'. What I'm meaning is, isn't valuation also a challenge fiat central banks has? although I do get central banks go from 0 to infinity to start measuring, whereas bitcoin starts from a point (21 million) and goes towards 0
Yes absolutely, central banks need to measure the size of the economy and adjust the amount of money in circulation accordingly. They do a so-so job, as we can see now they exceed their inflation targets, not good, I have some ideas there how to improve this and it only works for an economy of skilled people. But at least they have some mechanisms for adjusting the amount of money in circulation, mostly through adjusting the interest rate on money lent into existence. And, mind you, the economy constantly changes, it shrinks and grows, so the money has to be constantly adjusted. In the past the economy has mostly been growing so the question is just by how much, but sometimes there are recessions or at least the threat of a recession as during COVID. With Bitcoin there is no mechanism to adjust the amount in circulation. The amount will be constantly out of balance with the size of the Bitcoin economy, if there was ever to be one. Of course Bitcoin is so bad at stability that any attempt by even just one or a few businesses to trade in Bitcoin will immediately fail and the businesses will revert to fiat or die. It's kind of like the Ebola virus which kills its victims so hard and fast that they barely have any chance to spread it so any Ebola outbreak naturally comes to a quick end.
I'd put this issue, then, in the pre-judgement of economy: a bitcoin company is a company within a bitcoin economical system, a bitcoin company is not a bitcoin company within a fiat economical system. As in the only sense of having to displace between both systems are for the guarantee of achieving extra problems to solve. What may be interesting is the suggestion towards the establishment of bitcoin economical systems (circular economies as I get them). So far Will (and any other entrepreneur) might be using both systems (bitcoin and fiat) as a lack of a better way to accurately weight the costs of the product (s)he's trying to sell, in accordance with the style of living each one could have (food, place, swag, etc.). If living can be measured in bitcoin solely, then whatever company within this custom can be a true bitcoin company.
Not sure I can follow all of this including metaphors but you will never be able to use Bitcoin to measure ("weigh") costs of products or cost of living because Bitcoin's supply doesn't change in accordance with a changing Bitcoin economy.