Like precious metals? Deflationary currencies have been used successfully for over 1000 years.

The only people it is bad for are governments. Throughout history there is a patter of promising, spending, and becoming insolvent.

The idea that an individual wouldn't choose a deflationary currency is ludicrous. Inflationary currencies are what you want everyone else to use.

And by the way, the cat is out of the bag. Cryptocurrencies are here, bitcoin or not. When people can choose to use any currency they want, will they choose one that inflates? I doubt it.

It's not so bad an idea as long as you get to choose which currencies you use.

So let's see... We have an inflationary currency which is behind an increasing divide between the rich and the poor[0], and keeps people hooked on unsustainable growth to just survive, leading to intensifying environmental destruction and wanton consumption of limited resources... It's not like an inflationary currency is necessarily a good idea, either.

[0] before you say that inflation hurts the rich, among other reasons the if inflation didn't hurt the poor, we would never feel the political pressure to increase the minimum wage.

ELI5 por favor

Gold seemed to work for a long time.

Bitcoin inflation was around 10% recently

Hashrate!= inflation btw

If no more coins are mined (or the mining rate drops to almost negligible levels), is there still any incentive for people to keep the blockchain alive by computing power? Aside from keeping the whole system alive, I mean.

There's some very big ifs in that. We really have no idea what sort of breakthroughs might happen the next 125 years