[diskcat]

At the start of bitcoin there was a lot of 'technical enthusiasm'. But it was very quickly overtaken by the 'get rich quick' people.

Fortunately the free market of ideas has spawned innumerable competitors and many of them (etherium etc.) look to be very promising.

Although I don't think it was intended to be a 'genius ponzi scheme'. It just turned out that way.

>Inflation is incredibly healthy for an economy because it creates an incentive to invest money

in a system when you generate currency from nothing, this is true. But if you use currency as an actual IOUs, you would need to generate value to generate currency, and thus, if you were to hoard currency, you are providing value to the economy for nothing in return, which is a good thing.

[gohrt]

If you hoard currency that is managed by a central authority, then other people can't obtain currency for their productivity, and thus can't consume market goods. (This is essentially what caused the Great Depression: wealthy people hoovering and hoarding currency, poor people getting no income and spending)

If you allow anyone to create currency by creating IOUs to buy stuff (which sellers can choose to accept), and you mean that the sellers create and accept that currency, then yes, hoarding is not much problem for overall society, until and unless the day when past hoarders rush to market at the same time (when they run out of durable goods or other income) causing sudden inflation.

[diskcat]

>If you hoard currency that is managed by a central authority, then other people can't obtain currency for their productivity, and thus can't consume market goods.

This is fixed by removing the central authority monopoly over the printing of money and/or make them actually print the money.

>until and unless the day when past hoarders rush to market at the same time

This is no different than the status quo. Bill Gates could try to 'cash in' all his 50 billions into rice. Would that be 'causing sudden inflation'?

[KannO]

  This is fixed by removing the central authority monopoly 
  over the printing of money and/or make them actually 
  print the money.

During the BTC gold rush hype, people were buying GPUs and ASIC rigs along with plain ol "investing" in bitcoins as if it were a some "rare" collectable artifact destined to increase in value.

Why would I want to buy a loaf of bread from you today for 200 BTC when I assume next year I should be able to buy that loaf of bread for 0.01 BTC?

[KannO]

  in a system when you generate currency from nothing, this 
  is true. But if you use currency as an actual IOUs, you 
  would need to generate value to generate currency, and 
  thus, if you were to hoard currency, you are providing 
  value to the economy for nothing in return, which is a 
  good thing.

If it were possible to credit processing power dedicated to systems like folding@home or BOINC than I imagine that would be an ideal cryptocoin contender.

[jazzyb]

Such a thing exists: https://www.curecoin.net/

Edit: Also: http://www.gridcoin.us/