> The only point of the halvings is to be able to claim "finite supply"
The irony is that no matter what you do there will only ever be a finite supply of any currency, fiat or otherwise. It's a finite universe, so "finite supply" is inherently imposed by the laws of physics.
> practically all cryptocurrencies subscribe to the notion that early miners must receive greater rewards
That's the real objective. Like all startups, cryptocurrencies want to encourage early adoption by, among other things, FOMO. If there is no benefit to being an early adopter, no one will adopt early, and if no one adopts early, you will never get to critical mass.
Why can't I just declare that I issue "TREE(3)" of my own fiat currency? There's finite supply only in some astronomical sense that computers would have difficulty storing bank balances represented in BCD or something.
Because TREE(3) units are not well divisible. You can't give someone one and have the leftover amount representable with any reasonable amount of memory.
>The irony is that no matter what you do there will only ever be a finite supply of any currency, fiat or otherwise. It's a finite universe, so "finite supply" is inherently imposed by the laws of physics.
I'm not so certain that holds true. You could, in theory, either in a game or in real life, create a currency item that represents infinite currency. There would a finite number of physical representation of such items (if done is real life), and people would only place a finite value on it, but it would still representing an infinite number of whatever currency. You could even digitally create an infinite number of such infinite currencies.
Depending upon exactly how they behave, it would quickly make the currency worthless about as fast as people conceptualized what infinite means, but at the core there would be an infinite amount of money.
The irony is that no matter what you do there will only ever be a finite supply of any currency, fiat or otherwise. It's a finite universe, so "finite supply" is inherently imposed by the laws of physics.
> practically all cryptocurrencies subscribe to the notion that early miners must receive greater rewards
That's the real objective. Like all startups, cryptocurrencies want to encourage early adoption by, among other things, FOMO. If there is no benefit to being an early adopter, no one will adopt early, and if no one adopts early, you will never get to critical mass.