<p>There's no technical problem with making an inflationary crypto-currency. For Bitcoin, just changing the block reward schedule would do it. And there do exist crypto-currencies that have perpetual block rewards.</p>

<p>The thing is, the set of people who believe that inflationary currencies are good doesn't significantly overlap the set of people who think that currencies don't need to be managed by central banks. So there's not much of a market for such currencies. It's kind of like a veggie burger with bacon.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-12-21T23:49:56.643Z
"It's kind of like a veggie burger with bacon." Very good way to put it!
Scrybe
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-12-22T13:50:14.753Z
Can we really say that "ever increasing supply of coins" is equivalent to "inflationary"? If the amount of wealth produced in the world grows (which seems the case), the amount of money can increase without inflation.
bortzmeyer
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-12-23T20:28:33.870Z
The term inflation [originally](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation#Related_definitions) meant an increase in the amount of money in circulation. This is now usually called "[monetary inflation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_inflation)" and that's what we mean when we talk about inflationary currencies. Wealth is still being taken from people who hold the currency, it's just partially offset by newly-produced wealth.
David Schwartz
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-12-21T23:40:11.427Z
2013-12-21T23:40:11.427Z
David Schwartz
<p>It is indeed technically possible. In fact, there have been some alt-coins that do have permanent inflation.</p>

<p>PPCoin achieves it by creating 2 kinds of blocks: one the normal kind, where you have to demonstrate you made some work to get the block reward, and another one where you demonstrate you've been hoarding some coins for some time (proof-of-stake). First kind of reward has a cap (as in most other alt-coins) but the second doesn't.</p>

<p>Some minor alt-coins don't halve the reward after a certain number of blocks - they may have or not a final coin cap, some indeed dispense with the coin limit. Unfortunately none of them seem to have really taken off or at least I can't remember a notable one right now.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-12-22T05:03:50.297Z
2013-12-22T05:03:50.297Z
Joe Pineda
<p>&quot;would it be technically possible for a crypto currency to have a fixed target inflation rate?&quot;</p>
<p>Nope it wouldnt, when the state economists talks about wanting 2% inflation they are talking about price inflation (so the coin being worth less) and not monetary inflation. They print more coins to archieve that (cause monetary inflation) but what they want is that coin devaluation not just compared with at its value would be if monetary inflation didnt existed but actual coin devaluation.</p>
<p>To a cryptocurrency have 2% value drop each year, the coin would need to be centralized, because you would need to actually somehow calculate the coin value and do enought monterary inflation (creating more coins) to make sure the coin devaluate 2%. Lets imagine you have 100 coins and print more coins enought to make 1 coin not be 1% of the total coins but 0.98% of it, if the market cap of the coin got so high that 0.98% of its price is more than 1% of the previous market cap value, the value of the coin will increase (a thing state economists dont want to happen), despise the 2% monetary inflation. You could try to use hash rate or amount of coins being staked as a method to try to gauge coin price without centralization, but that methods wouldnt be good enought.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-12-08T19:53:43.383Z
2020-12-08T19:53:43.383Z
carino
<p>There is a lot of criticsm and debate over whether bitcoins will ultomately fail because of its deflationary nature.</p>

<p>I don't want to debate if that's the case or not and I also understand that the goal of bitcoin was to have a fixed amount of coins so that there is no risk of (hyper)inflation.</p>

<p>What I'm wondering is, would it be technically possible for a crypto currency to have a fixed target inflation rate? For example the european central bank has a target inflation rate of 2% (I think) which is supposed to stimulate growth while at the same time avoiding over-inflation.</p>

<p>So I guess my question boils down to: Why are all popular crypto currencies deflationary? Is it a technical problem that cannot be solved or is there another reason it was designed like this?</p>

<currencies><deflation>
Why are all popular crypto currencies deflationary?
aKzenT
# Why are all popular crypto currencies deflationary?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2013-12-21)

There is a lot of criticsm and debate over whether bitcoins will ultomately fail because of its deflationary nature.

I don't want to debate if that's the case or not and I also understand that the goal of bitcoin was to have a fixed amount of coins so that there is no risk of (hyper)inflation.

What I'm wondering is, would it be technically possible for a crypto currency to have a fixed target inflation rate? For example the european central bank has a target inflation rate of 2% (I think) which is supposed to stimulate growth while at the same time avoiding over-inflation.

So I guess my question boils down to: Why are all popular crypto currencies deflationary? Is it a technical problem that cannot be solved or is there another reason it was designed like this?

**Tags:** currencies, deflation


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## 3 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2013-12-21. Score: 7

There's no technical problem with making an inflationary crypto-currency. For Bitcoin, just changing the block reward schedule would do it. And there do exist crypto-currencies that have perpetual block rewards.

The thing is, the set of people who believe that inflationary currencies are good doesn't significantly overlap the set of people who think that currencies don't need to be managed by central banks. So there's not much of a market for such currencies. It's kind of like a veggie burger with bacon.

> **Comments:**
> **username_2**: "It's kind of like a veggie burger with bacon." Very good way to put it!  
> **username_3**: Can we really say that "ever increasing supply of coins" is equivalent to "inflationary"? If the amount of wealth produced in the world grows (which seems the case), the amount of money can increase without inflation.  
> **username_1**: The term inflation [originally](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation#Related_definitions) meant an increase in the amount of money in circulation. This is now usually called "[monetary inflation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_inflation)" and that's what we mean when we talk about inflationary currencies. Wealth is still being taken from people who hold the currency, it's just partially offset by newly-produced wealth.  

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### Answer by username_4 on 2013-12-22. Score: 0

It is indeed technically possible. In fact, there have been some alt-coins that do have permanent inflation.

PPCoin achieves it by creating 2 kinds of blocks: one the normal kind, where you have to demonstrate you made some work to get the block reward, and another one where you demonstrate you've been hoarding some coins for some time (proof-of-stake). First kind of reward has a cap (as in most other alt-coins) but the second doesn't.

Some minor alt-coins don't halve the reward after a certain number of blocks - they may have or not a final coin cap, some indeed dispense with the coin limit. Unfortunately none of them seem to have really taken off or at least I can't remember a notable one right now.


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### Answer by username_5 on 2020-12-08. Score: 0

"would it be technically possible for a crypto currency to have a fixed target inflation rate?"

Nope it wouldnt, when the state economists talks about wanting 2% inflation they are talking about price inflation (so the coin being worth less) and not monetary inflation. They print more coins to archieve that (cause monetary inflation) but what they want is that coin devaluation not just compared with at its value would be if monetary inflation didnt existed but actual coin devaluation.

To a cryptocurrency have 2% value drop each year, the coin would need to be centralized, because you would need to actually somehow calculate the coin value and do enought monterary inflation (creating more coins) to make sure the coin devaluate 2%. Lets imagine you have 100 coins and print more coins enought to make 1 coin not be 1% of the total coins but 0.98% of it, if the market cap of the coin got so high that 0.98% of its price is more than 1% of the previous market cap value, the value of the coin will increase (a thing state economists dont want to happen), despise the 2% monetary inflation. You could try to use hash rate or amount of coins being staked as a method to try to gauge coin price without centralization, but that methods wouldnt be good enought.


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