‹ BackHN Continuity

Thread

Neovim have a ~$800k Bitcoin donation sitting untouched since 2023

320 points · 277 comments · jakemanger

  1. seymon · · focus · HN ↗
    I hope they still have the private key.
    1. osigurdson · · focus · HN ↗
      It is an interesting fact about Bitcoin in general. There are 21M tokens in total AND some percentage are lost every year. Run this simulation long enough and there will be very few active Bitcoins remaining.
      1. Roark66 · · focus · HN ↗
        Seems pretty silly to build in deflation into a currency. It incentivises putting your money in a mattress for 100 years.
        1. benenrjdnz · · focus · HN ↗
          Deflation is a good thing, it rewards delayed gratification. Those evil Keynesians have convinced the world a little bit of inflation is good. It isn’t. Losing purchasing power on your money is a bug.

          Nothing wrong with putting money under a mattress for 100y if the value of money is not evaporating.

          For most of human history the money was stable. It’s the disasters of 20th century wars that eroded the value, and 21st century lack of monetary discipline that keeps driving it down now.

          1. SR2Z · · focus · HN ↗
            > Deflation is a good thing, it rewards delayed gratification.

            "Delayed gratification" is also provided by investments producing returns. An economy with lots of investors will outperform one where people stuff their cash into their mattress, and deflation makes it very hard for potential investments to beat that strategy.

            > For most of human history the money was stable.

            [citation needed]

            The Spanish empire was driven to collapse by hyperinflation. Even in the US, there were financial collapses in the 19th and 18th century. Bank runs have been a thing for as long as banks have: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Bank_run" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Bank_run

            Your premise is based on faulty assumptions. The existence of credit itself is what causes monetary instability, and without credit the world would look very different.

            1. fizzbuzzbarbazz · · focus · HN ↗
              credit does provide a kind of flexibility that is sometimes needed, though. However, predatory lending, and the endless stacking of recursive loans, and government money printers are a massive stability issue that we&#x27;re running into globally, and have (as you say) run into multiple times, historically.

              My thought on this would be a dynamicaly stable currency. estimate debt and transaction activity, and the more debt and more liquid activity there is, the more deflationary currency should be. the less debt there is, and the less of a percentage of the money is actually in-use, the more inflationary the currency should be. this, though, is fairly off-the-cuff.

Open on Hacker News to reply ↗

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.