Oddbean new post about login | logout 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.