[tromp]

The capped supply and heavy bias of coin emission toward initial years create a strong incentive for hoarding and pure speculative use.

I would expect much wealth concentration if the emission had been purely linear with a fixed block reward, taking MUCH longer to get down to a small yearly supply inflation (100 years to get to 1%). Such a SLOW emission would focus on the use as a currency rather than "store of value".

It likely would have made Bitcoin's environmental impact much smaller as well, without speculators pushing up the price.

[spiorf]

But that wouldn't exist in isolation. A less inflationary cryptocurrency would be more desiderable to traders, miners would flee too and the system wouldn't be secure against attacks.

You would end up with the same situation as now, just with some name swapped.