knb comments on Bitcoins are not digital greenbacks - Less Wrong

6 Post author: lsparrish 19 April 2013 06:13PM

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Comment author: knb 20 April 2013 11:01:46PM 4 points [-]

For example, say the price of tomatoes is 10 BTC per barrel, and the price of oil is 20 BTC per barrel. What those numbers really mean is that you can exchange two barrels of tomatoes for one barrel of oil. Now say BTC "deflates" by 10x so that you need 100 BTC for a barrel of tomatoes and 200 BTC for a barrel of oil. This simply doesn't change anything, because you can still trade two barrels of tomatoes for one barrel of oil.

If you needed 10x as much money to buy the same thing, that would be inflation, not deflation.