[jebeng]

Supply is increasing though through mining. Stolen coins are still coins. And there's no way that lost coins are out pasing newly mined coins. True loss/data destruction/inaccessibility is fairly rare.

Even in the Bitcoin community it's a huge misconception that Bitcoin is somehow inherently deflationary. The supply increases predictably through mining. It can be price deflationary when demand exceeds supply. But there is nothing inherent or guaranteed about that at all.

Bitcoin is inflationary, with a predictable inflation schedule.

[jnordwick]

Btc has a fixed supply that will be hit. About 17 of the 21 million have already been mined. That's a hard cap unless bitcoin radically changes. We will hit a time of zero miner reward, and even before that when the reward in miniscule in relation to float.

We don't know the extent of lost coins. We can make an estimate based on inactive accounts. And stolen coins that have been blacklisted are essentially lost too.

> Bitcoin is inflationary

Crypto people are deluding themselves.

[mort96]

Just a small note: we won't ever hit a point where a miner will get zero money from mining a block, because people sending transactions pay a fee to the miner to have their transaction prioritied over people who pay a smaller fee, and the number of transactions per time unit is limited (and pretty small), and can't be easily changed radically (as in by orders of magnitude).

I think you're technically right, as the "miner reward" (as in the coins the miner cand give itself as a reward for finding a block) goes to 0, and you probably know that already, but I wanted to clarify for people who didn't yet know that.

Otherwise, I agree.