Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Retric 972 days ago
> is faith based

Back when people used precious metals for currency many different economies would all be tied to the same shifts in value. I don’t know all the details but there’s real world support for significant deflation being detrimental not just theory.

That said trivial levels of deflation aren’t harmful, but bitcoin had very extreme deflation.

1 comments

Bitcoin has inflation at the moment.

> I don’t know all the details but there’s real world support for significant deflation being detrimental not just theory.

The problem is that the "real world support" is usually taken from fiat money economies that are entirely built on inflation, and for historical examples there usually was an economic crisis at the same time that was accompanied by deflation. It's hardly conclusive.

High levels of inflation are also harmful. +/- ~0.3% per month is fine, outside of that range and you’re hurting adoption.

> an economic crisis at the time

In non fiat currencies you also get deflation from economic growth. Where you can study the effect is when the growth occurs outside of a given economy. Again, outside of my expertise it’s just something I have read.