RE: The attributes that _I_ would like to see in a cryptocurrency
I know that more and more bitcoin is being mined every day, but the amount reduces over time. I consider that deflationary. Hell, even if it didn't reduce over time, I would still consider it deflationary because it's not a geometric progression.
Yes, inflation does hurt savers. And logically, you can probably guess that it will benefit debtors.
But it also punishes stagnation, and that's the argument I'm trying to make. Money sitting in a mattress will decay over time. It should. Money invested, however, will not. So the impetus is on people to actively invest their money in the economy, instead of just sitting on it.
With bitcoin, the long-term trend so far is that the best thing is to just sit on it, it'll probably gain value. That sounds more like buying an expensive bottle of wine to leave in your cellar, or an expensive painting to hold on to - it doesn't sound like currency.
And, of course, I'm not arguing for crazy high inflation rates, I'm talking closer to 5%, maybe less.
The FED's target is, what, 3%? Maybe that works because of population growth, but it still feels wrong to me. I get that money should have velocity for it to be useful as money, but to me that's partly a matter of market cap here. Cryptocurrency is still pretty small compared to the global finance market. Once (if) it gets to the target price many envision, the velocity should go up as the price stabilizes and no longer providers huge incentive to HODL. I don't think we need to inflate the value away prematurely in order to get there. In some ways, that might even delay the process.
I'm coming at this from an economics perspective that is concerned with boom and bust cycles. IMO, encouraging investment via money manipulation beyond what the market itself demands causes these problems.
I think Bitcoin (any many other cryptocurrencies) will have problems as currency if they continue to charge a fee for usage. That's what I like so much about STEEM and SBD. No fees involved, just bandwidth based on stake.