[gnarcoregrizz]

Individual cryptocurrencies are inflationary or deflationary depending on their algorithm. Monero, for example, has a 2% tail inflation built in to account for lost money and an expanding economy. Inflation can also be tweaked or changed based on an agreement of the miners, or whatever else is built into the protocol - it could be a consensus mechanism beyond mining, or a central administration (which wouldn't be different than fiat really). My main gripe is that the popular logarithmic inflation curves are WAY out of whack and reward the early adopters way too much, making it more of a ponzi scheme than something useful, and ultimately making themselves poorer because if someone feels ripped off, they can invest in a new coin where they are the early adopter, essentially inflating the total money supply.

That said, inflation isn't always a good thing for some people. Neither is a centrally controlled money supply which also has its own winners and losers

[Barrin92]

Sure you can conceive of a crypto currency that is centrally controlled, targets inflation and focusses on price stability, but then you have simply invented 'crypto-fiat'.

The key point is that Ponzi schemes you are talking about are not an accidental byproduct, they're the entire point. There's no reason to reinvent electronic banking, we already have electronic fiat money that works very reliably.

Cryptocurrencies are digital gold and basing an economy on them would be like bringing the gold standard back. The problem being that every economist will tell you, for good reasons, that this is a terrible idea. Cryptocurrencies are not a technological innovation, they're a technological regression. They make things that we already can do more complicated and energy expensive which is the opposite of what technology is supposed to do.