That would be the reason for the caveat... If everyone is saving, no one is being productive with that miney. ie deflationary effects minimized.
But people do more than just save. They always will. In times of economic certainty, they can invest a lot more. It's harder than ever to invest now but that hasn't stopped the world from progressing anyways. Progress is just human nature. And that IS magic, endowed in us by our Creator.
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I think there's another issue, tho.
The value of Bitcoin, like the value of anything, is subjective. If you put your savings into Bitcoin, but other people don't want to use it (because of the toxic combination of low velocity and shrinking supply; i.e. there isn't much of it, they aren't really making any more of it, and what exists hardly moves), then it loses purchasing power because other people value it lower.
We can already see Bitcoin losing out to gold, for instance.


Gold didn't move at all for decades... And you don't need more units. "Not much of it" makes no sense when something is infinitly divisible.
People will always value a currency that enshrines their property rights. It just takes time to get to that conclusion.
The narrative used to be that Bitcoin was superior to gold, in large part because it is digital and highly divisible and therefore better for commerce. And then there was no commerce. None. Zero. Zip. We can barely get 1 SAT zaps going. I am one of the biggest zappers on here, and I am an unemployed shrimp with no car.
I haven't given up. I still spend Bitcoin. But I am aware that I am in a tiny and shrinking demographic. And I know every time I buy some, I am just pumping some millionaire's or billionaire's bags. Hardly any normal people own any.
You can imagine how motivated I am to keep stacking. These were not the droids I was looking for.
It's not outside the realm of possibility that it becomes something only rich people have or care about, like Bugattis or Picassos. Digital pet rocks. Engrave a monkey JPEG on it, and call it a day.
Way too bearish. Do you expect adoption to happen overnight? Adoption and spending is growing every year. I've bought my lunch a few times a month now with several different local food joints in my small American town. These things take time. The merchants song want it now, because they didn't see anywhere they could actually spend it. But as more people start accepting it (even if they convert to USD) the more merchants may think to actually keep some themselves. When the guy that makes my Philly cheese steak now can buy his bread from the baker in BTC, he may start saving a little from his sales to buy his bread with. It takes a long time because we have a chicken and egg problem. So I spend my Bitcoin at any place that accepts it. That list is growing.
Basically the way it happens is some tooling has to beade to link merchants that want to accept Bitcoin as payment to link them to a market of buyers so they can exchange to the currency they actually want as a merchant. They accept BTC but really sell at POS to fiat. At first seems counter intuitive but that's how it's going to happen. Once enough merchants are in the pool of people accepting it, even if they sell it, merchants can start to think about trade between themselves. Then slowly, they'll just forgo the headache of selling and keep enough from their sales to buy their inputs for the next month. Or vice versa if they actually understand Bitcoin. Then one day every one will be taking and think... Huh... Why am I letting visa and MasterCard take 3% of all my goods and they don't even pay me until the end of the month and they have to that says they can just charge me back from sales they find are fraudulent. Theyll start to understand Bitcoin in a very different way. Then eventually merchants will stop taking fiat all together. Or think about a merchant accepting USD and converting to BTC at POS. That's the end.