Even a merchant who thinks a Bitcoin-like system is a good idea may be reluctant to agree to participate in making a bunch of nerds with video cards very, very rich.
I don’t think the merchants really care about that. They care about make themselves rich. If making nerds with video cards also rich is a side effect, so be it. But if nerds with video cards can dilute the value of their currency, they may have a problem. If this dilution occurs on a known schedule and will slow down over time and eventually stop altogether, and competing currencies can be diluted at any time by central bankers, it may not be much of a problem.
A bit of a tangent, but the increase in supply of bitcoin is not the only thing that affects the value of bitcoin. A key determinant is how much people want to hold bitcoin. How much people want to hold a currency is not a very stable thing, meaning that the even with a fixed quantity of bitcoin in circulation, the future value of bitcoin will be highly uncertain. This will also tend to produce gluts and shortages of bitcoin, which have their own negative effects.
I don’t think the merchants really care about that. They care about make themselves rich. If making nerds with video cards also rich is a side effect, so be it. But if nerds with video cards can dilute the value of their currency, they may have a problem. If this dilution occurs on a known schedule and will slow down over time and eventually stop altogether, and competing currencies can be diluted at any time by central bankers, it may not be much of a problem.
A bit of a tangent, but the increase in supply of bitcoin is not the only thing that affects the value of bitcoin. A key determinant is how much people want to hold bitcoin. How much people want to hold a currency is not a very stable thing, meaning that the even with a fixed quantity of bitcoin in circulation, the future value of bitcoin will be highly uncertain. This will also tend to produce gluts and shortages of bitcoin, which have their own negative effects.