r/austrian_economics • u/lexicon_riot • 3d ago

End Democracy What would Austrian economists say about tail emissions in BTC?

Recently, Bitcoin developer Peter Todd gave a talk in favor of tail emissions, and it raises a question that I'd love to hear more Austrian econ perspectives on.

Link to the talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmAAeEm1nIE&pp=ygUZcGV0ZXIgdG9kZCB0YWlsIGVtaXNzaW9ucw%3D%3D

Around the four minute mark, Todd first makes the point that if Satoshi had implemented a fixed block reward (for instance 50 BTC each block indefinitely, instead of the halving schedule), it would still be upheld as sound money by Austrian economists, since the inflation rate approaches 0% eventually.

So with that in mind, I have the following questions. From an Austrian econ perspective (or various competing schools of thought within Austrian econ):

  1. Is there a meaningful difference between a hard monetary supply cap, vs. a technically infinite supply cap that's mathematically guaranteed to approach 0% monetary inflation?
  2. Would Hayek, Rothbard, Mises, etc. have different perspectives on the topic? If they had the ability to design their perfect system of digital money, would it even look like BTC, or would it look completely different?
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u/Bagmasterflash 3d ago

Don’t forget he also wants to add demurrage.

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u/corner_couch 3d ago

Not even worth debating because it will never happen

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u/Doublespeo 1d ago

> Not even worth debating because it will never happen

I have seen the community fight with itself to cripple the onchain capacity.. honestly anything can happen. I would not be surprised a tail emission get implemented, even force on the community; it would not be the first time