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tux1968

What is the mechanism that ensures bitcoin inflates proportionally to the dollar?

Perhaps inflation in the price of electricity, denominated in USD?

But when people say inflation in the context of cryptocurrency they usually mean "deflation".

(not an economist) If most bitcoins are bought with USD, all else remaining equal, wouldn't this automatically happen?

I'm not an economist either... but the buying power of your bitcoin goes down if people demand more of it for a given product. If USD prices rise, the bitcoin price will rise too, meaning your bitcoin wealth is affected by inflation, and you're not protected from the Fed printing money.

You assume there is a correlation between USD and BTC. Another way to see this is this:

If USD prices rise, the price of BTC will also rise, as BTC is another product you can buy with your USD. Meaning your bitcoin wealth is not affected by USD inflation.

But the price of bitcoin is unrelated, it seems, to any real world thing.

Pure speculation.

You could say that about the value of any currency though

No. In a currency with a lot of transactions there are plenty of real world hooks to hang their value on.

The volatility of Bitcoin, the fact it can hardly be used, the fact that almost no merchants accept it....

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