[root_axis]

> the consensus mechanism makes it prohibitively difficult to change

This is a cultural property of the community, not an intrinsic property of bitcoin. If Satoshi signed a PGP message with a compelling call to alter the scarcity it would likely happen; maybe you disagree, but the point is that it's very possible to change the scarcity because it's a distributed computer program.

[modeless]

The fact that it's a "cultural property of the community" doesn't make it easy to change.

Bitcoin is not just "a computer program", it is a program and a blockchain. The same program with a different blockchain is not Bitcoin (there are plenty of those out there). Adding more supply to the Bitcoin blockchain would require large numbers of people to work against their own interests, decimating the value of their own infrastructure investments and bitcoin holdings.

It would be much, much more difficult to change Bitcoin than e.g. the supply of dollars or euros which are considered scarce enough for most purposes by most of the world. And, I contend, even more difficult than changing the supply of gold via asteroid mining. I doubt that even the second coming of Satoshi would be enough to do it (and I also very much doubt that Satoshi is still alive, or that he would want to if he was, considering his known political/economic stances).

[root_axis]

The point is that the scarcity can be trivially changed if certain people decide that it should, which isn't true for things that exist in the real world like gold. Norms shift over time and your suggestion that it's unlikely to change is your opinion based on cultural analysis, not something that can be proven to be true even in principle.

> It would be much, much more difficult to change than e.g. the supply of dollars or euros which are considered scarce enough by most of the world

This thread is about gold not fiat money, obviously the scarcity of fiat money can change, that's the whole point of fiat money.

[nmlnn]

> can be trivially changed if certain people decide that it should

This is simply not the case - see 2017 bitcoin cash fork or Segwit2X push. At the end of the day money is a human invention, meant to facilitate value exchange between humans. So it requires consensus between the users of the money, if some fraction want to change the rules they are free to.

We went for something we found in nature with properties that were pretty good for that, but with some downsides (not absolutely scarce, difficult to transport, easy to steal) to something created specifically for the purpose.

[root_axis]

It can be trivially changed in the sense that it's a computer program that simulates money. No amount of consensus can increase the gold supply.

[nmlnn]

Technological advances can increase the gold supply. Asteroid mining, extracting it from sea water, mining lower quality deposits, etc.

There still has to be consensus on using gold as money, if there isn't it will lose its monetary premium to something that has better monetary properties.

[modeless]

> There still has to be consensus on using gold as money

This is a great point. The choice to value gold as currency over other rare metals is 'a cultural property of the community' and yet not 'trivial' to change, just as Bitcoin's consensus isn't.

[modeless]

You can't "prove" that Earth's gold supply won't increase with asteroid mining either. We can disagree on the relative difficulty of asteroid mining vs. changing Bitcoin's consensus rules, but you must at least concede that they are both possible.

[root_axis]

Right... No matter how many people wish it to be so, the amount of gold on the planet cannot be arbitrarily increased, instead, you'd have to go to extremes likes mining astroids in space, a feat of engineering that is only possible in theory.

[modeless]

Mining asteroids is quite possible in practice. In fact we've already taken material from asteroids and returned it to Earth. The only question is how long it will take for the technology to advance enough for profitability; there are no fundamental issues preventing it. It really seems inevitable assuming no civilization-ending disasters. And it can increase Earth's gold supply arbitrarily up to many times the current supply. And it only takes one company to do it. Anyway, if our only disagreement is on the relative feasibility of changing Bitcoin consensus vs. asteroid mining, I'm happy to continue to disagree with you on that.