bitcoin as a global medium of exchange (was Re: Interesting take on Sanjuro's Assassination Market)

[Javier Liendo]

isn't the real problem with bitcoin becoming a global currency an issue of
how to best manage the potential exponential growth in size of the
blockchain?

i know this is cypherpunks but please explain like i'm five...

regards,

javier


On Mon, Nov 25, 2013 at 6:32 PM, Andy Isaacson <adi at hexapodia.org> wrote:

> On Mon, Nov 25, 2013 at 07:04:51PM -0500, David Vorick wrote:
> > Your problem is if bitcoin becomes a world economy. That means bitcoins
> > usage grows by something like 2 orders of magnitude. Except that bitcoins
> > are already halfway mined, which means that the circulation will not keep
> > up. That is what drives the price up.
> >
> > If you want a currency that will scale with it's global usage (IE when
> the
> > market cap hits $21 trillion, there are 21 trillion in circulation), you
> > need some mechanism that knows how to equate 1 bitcoin to 1 dollar, that
> > way more bitcoins can be printed as the market cap goes up.
>
> Fractional bitcoins work just fine (down to 1/100,000,000, per
> https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Satoshi ).  If BTC goes to 100,000 USD we'll
> just start pricing things in "thous" or "mils" or something similar.
>
> In other words, there are already 12 quadrillion Satoshis in
> circulation, plenty to absorb any further deflation.
>
> -andy
>
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