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Bitcoin Mining Reward About To Halve
First time accepted submitter ASDFnz writes "The reward for successfully completing a block (also called mining) is about to halve from 50 bitcoins to 25. From the article: 'Bitcoin is built so that this reward is halved every 210,000 blocks solved. The idea is as bitcoin grows the transaction fees become the main part of the reward and the introduction of new bitcoins slows down to a trickle. This also means that there will only ever be 21,000,000 bitcoins in circulation.' You can watch the countdown here."
Yep. That's a feature of any currency without inflation, and why inflation is actually a good thing. It discourages hoarding. Neutral or deflationary currencies are only good for the people who already have a lot of them.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
I think it will tell us that even in the most optimistic scenerio where Bitcoin achieves 100% market penetration, some people will go to their graves insisting that it won't work, isn't really money, and is all just a ponzi scheme.
Conversely, if Bitcoin is around for 100 years and nobody but a handful of extreme-right libertarians thinks it's worth so much as a wooden nickel, we will have learned empirically that some people will always go to their graves still wishing for a pony.
Breakfast served all day!
What problem does it solve for normal people?
It provides a censorship free way to transfer small amounts of money pseudonymously over the Internet, something regular payment providers still fail at (Paypal censors, proper bank transfers are far to expensive).
During a gold rush the only person who actually gets rich is the man selling shovels.