For what it’s worth, once upon a time I pushed this agenda on Bitcointalk.  I’d say early 2011 or so.  The response I got was so strong and unanimous in favor of this point being absolutely non-negotiable that if the money supply were anything other than fixed, Bitcoin may as well be pretend e-dollars.  I was not just persuaded against it, I was put in my place.

I believe that if there ever becomes a consensus that Bitcoin’s inflation parameters were a show-stopper for the Bitcoin economy, that the power to correct it lies with merchants, who would vote for changing the rules.  I believe they would do this not by changing Bitcoin, but by accepting, in parallel, a brand new alt coin that reflects the consensus as to how the inflation should be.  I believe such an alt coin would have its genesis at around the time that consensus moved toward accepting inflation, rather than adopting the seignorage of some other alt coin out there today.

Mike/Casascius

From: Ryan Carboni [mailto:ryan.jc.pc@gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, December 09, 2013 3:24 PM
To: apoelstra@wpsoftware.net
Cc: bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Monetary Authority for Bitcoin

It is not a violation of the trust of those holding the currency. Many people bought Bitcoin in the hopes that it's value in the relation of other currencies will increase, not because there's a fixed money supply. The majority of people using Bitcoin as a currency in exchange for real goods are using the exchanges.

 My proposal will still allow for 4.9% semi-weekly variations in the price of Bitcoin, allowing for it to appreciate 11,800% per year.

On Mon, Dec 9, 2013 at 2:11 PM, Andrew Poelstra <asp11@sfu.ca> wrote:

On Mon, Dec 09, 2013 at 02:01:07PM -0800, Ryan Carboni wrote:
> This is no doubt probably a very controversial Bitcoin Improvement Proposal
> and is also a very rough draft of one.
>

Ryan, you can stop there already because any change to the inflation
formula (supposing such a thing is even possible, which it's not)
would be a violation of the trust of those holding the currency, who
obtained it while believing that its inflation algorithm would not
change.

--
Andrew Poelstra
Email: apoelstra at wpsoftware.net
Web:   http://www.wpsoftware.net/andrew

"If they had taught a class on how to be the kind of citizen Dick Cheney
 worries about, I would have finished high school."   --Edward Snowden