[jamespitts]

The author of the article mis-represents a goal or rationale behind reducing the block reward:

> This new update reduces the mining reward from 3 ETH to 2 ETH which will reduce the yearly inflation of the coin. The goal of this is ultimately to drive the price higher, as we know that when there is less of something it becomes worth more.

This is a common point of view, but not universal and the effect on price has not been brought up in deliberations amongst the core devs AFAICT.

The rationale for lowering the block reward is described in EIP-1234 as:

> In order to maintain stability of the system, a block reward reduction that offsets the ice age delay would leave the system in the same general state as before. Reducing the reward also decreases the likelihood of a miner driven chain split as Ethereum approaches proof-of-stake.

https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/blob/master/EIPS/eip-1234.m...

[bigfartchili]

No surprise that someone in the crypto space is severely mis informed while also making it clear they only truly care about the price. The truth of it is that Ethereum functions better as a system at $10 than $1000. Of course crypto has been hijacked by brain dead speculators so it’s hard to see its true value.

[gammateam]

There seem to be two minds from Ethereum developers, Vitalik especially echoing them.

Ether is gas, fuel needed on the Ethereum highway. He wants and does things so that less fuel has to be used, leading to a massive supply glut. This means extremely cheap Ether.

At the same time he does things like reducing the block reward from 3 eth to 2 eth, in a seemingly desperate attempt to constrict the supply and stem the cheaper and cheaper prices of eth.

Who complains about cheap gas? Long-only speculators. Nobody within the economy complains about cheap gas.