> How do you apply this logic to USD? You either want to hold it or want to use it?
Of course it applies. Holding lots of dollars (e.g. as hard cash or in a checking account) is stupid. That is the purpose and benefit of (mild) inflation: to incentivise consuming or investing them.
Also people don't expect the dollar to become more valuable anytime soon, so spending it doesn't effect seller's remorse a day later, which happens to everyone spending ETH or BTC these days.
And, since USD is inflationary, we expect it to become less valuable (real value) over time which encourages investment and spending today. Since we don't have crazy levels of inflation this doesn't fully discourage savings (with a 10% or higher inflation rate you have very little incentive to save, with 1 or 2% your savings lose value over time, but slow enough that it's still worth saving). Economies are improved and sustained by moving money, not by stagnant money.
2% inflation over 30 years destroys over half the purchasing power of the saved money. So no, moderate inflation doesn't encourage saving. It encourages the unbridled consumerism that has created environmental catastrophe.
Bitcoin, as a deflationary asset, encourages lower time preference, which encourages saving and real investing (generating real world value rather than paper gains), resulting in less consumerism and better stewarding of resources.
I said it doesn't fully discourage it. I did not say that it encourages saving. Read my post.
BTC does not encourage real investing, only hoarding. The hoarded BTC is not used in any productive investment or way because no one will loan it when it gains much more value than most businesses can produce merely by existing. When it can increase in apparent value by 100% in just a few weeks, there is no reason to invest your BTC because no business (or very few, and none sustainably) will have similar returns.
> Economies are improved and sustained by moving money, not by stagnant money.
A common misconception. The health of an economy lies in the goods that are exchanged; money is merely a placeholder. They are improved by producing more goods than are consumed, which creates room for investment in capital goods (tools for enhancing the productivity of goods and labor) and the research and development of improved technology (learning to make better tools).
"Stagnant" money just means that more goods were produced than were consumed, and the surplus was not actively invested. The surplus still exists, and continues to fuel investment (by others) so long as the money remains unspent. The "stagnant" money is off the market, not competing for goods and services, and as such contributes to a reduction in prices similar to what would occur if that money were simply destroyed (albeit temporarily), shrinking the money supply. In effect this leaves the decision about how the surplus of goods should be invested up to other market participants.
If the owner of the "stagnant" money knows of ways to invest which would provide an ROI better than the average rate of return on the market (i.e. the rate of deflation) then they should do so, earning themselves a profit and raising the average rate of return. However, below-average investments—malinvestments—would lower the average rate of return and reduce overall economic growth, and ought to be discouraged. It's better for everyone for the owner to simply sit back, "hoard" the money, and receive a passive reward for producing more than they consumed than it would be for them to actively invest in ventures with below-average realized returns and thus divert resources from better-performing ventures, but that is exactly what an actively inflationary monetary policy encourages by driving people who lack the competency to choose good investments to invest in the market anyway merely to avoid losses due to money supply inflation.
It would've been better if I'd been more deliberate with that sentence, you're right. "money" was my shorthand for "things moving in the economy, including financial measures like cash and the exchange of goods and services". Just measuring the movement of money means that two people could create an apparently vibrant economy by exchanging $1,000 between them every minute of every day, but such an economy would be absolutely bereft of any real value or health.
"Stagnant" was my way of referring to hoarded money that's not actually invested in anything. Yes, it's equivalent to removing it from the economy and it reduces the nominal price of goods and services, which also means it reduces the nominal wages (over time). Which means old money is given a much stronger benefit in the economy when they finally spend it, and new money (including new entrants like an 18 year old getting their first full time job) are severely penalized not due to any actual lack of skill or ability, but due to their entering the economy 100 years too late.
But inflation isn’t a problem, it’s a benefit. We want people to spend or invest (in production) their money; economy works best when money is actively circulated, not hoarded. The problem with a totally fixed money supply is that as productivity grows new investments are disincentivizes, as a fixed currently holder get the benefits of aggregate productivity increases (through deflation) without risking his money in investing in companies.
Of course it applies. Holding lots of dollars (e.g. as hard cash or in a checking account) is stupid. That is the purpose and benefit of (mild) inflation: to incentivise consuming or investing them.