When, not if … but when it happens, it won’t be traded for anything anymore and something else will supplant it. Hyperinflation is the definition of the destruction of a currency.
People confuse hyperinflation with high inflation, but these aren’t the same thing. Hyperinflation happens when people give up on using a currency and switch to something else and hence the price of that fiat drops to a level that is less than useless in most cases. Recent examples being Zimbabwe, Venezuela, & Lebanon.
The fair price is when node operators and clients are both willing to keep using the network. This is fully in FIAT and depends on other options available on the market. Four years ago @TylerAbeoJordan came to the conclusion that it would be:
I realize it may be lower now, but as a ballpark figure that’s good enough. So for 1 MB that would be 14c / 1000 =0.014c.
If that would be an average fair price, it would be interesting to know how upload activity behaves around that point- to draw a curve based on observed upload behaviour. There’s of course nothing to observe, but I guess we have some folks here that could have theoretical insight about how customers behave when price change.
Anyway my guess is that the price of upload in FIAT is pretty stable, maybe slightly increasing over time when the network proves stable and useful. And I mean increasing compared to other options, not necessarily as an absolute number, as the cost of storage media should drop.
The network token price has it’s effect too. I think uploaders are thinking more of just the current price, as they have the need to get their data stored somewhere. Node operators may me willing to operate at some degree of loss in hopes of the token getting more valuable over time.
In my opinion the next exercise is to get the pricing curve set so, that the “fair price” would be around some decent fullness point. If it would be around 5% full, then the amount of empty space would be wasteful. If it would be around 95%, the network would not tolerate sudden upsurge of upload. Though I guess the curve can actually prevent that happening by going to infinity just before the network getting stuffed. So I think the pricing curve can be designed so that the “fair price” keeps nodes quite full.
An unfathomable question, but one which could keep the price low and encourage use, is how many, for one reason or another will not be sensitive to earnings.
I imagine there could be a lot of people who regard running a node as fun, a good thing to do, or just like buying a lottery ticket each week. Because the cost of being a part of this game is so low, many will get their reward just from playing.
We should encourage that, because it could be the baseload of the storage system at the same time as keeping storage costs competitive.
It may seem like it, but the math is the math. There are 5 copies stored on the network, so it must be multiplied. This is for permanent data, not temporary local or cloud storage, but forever. Even if storing locally forever, you’d need to buy a new drive at some point due to wear and transfer it over (rinse wash and repeat forever).
The difference is an incremental cost versus a one-off payment. There are advantages to each. One of the advantages for is deduplication, which should lower the cost on the network relative to local storage by a considerable amount into the future, but hard to guess specifically how much of a difference that will make - only that it will make a large difference over time.
I was looking at some hdd’s a little while ago and found out that the new Toshiba drives reported mean time between failure were set to1 000 000 hours, above 100 years.
I think there may be wide range of fair price. Even if price per TB might seem too high, the exact same price might seem OK when syncing few hundred MB of photos from your phone for example.
Sometimes we choose in a very calculated way, and sometimes on a whim.
It’s tricky to calculate even guesses. If some offer low price-point - below real market prices, the data get’s stored, but then those who want market prices are forced to accept … so they leave the network, causing a shortage of storage … the network then offers more tokens to bring more storage online.
So despite what price some will offer, the network in combination with the market will drive the price to what the market demands.
One practical example: On my phone I have several videos of me squatting heavy weights in the gym. I have shot them to check my form, and I don’t have much use for them afterwards. If I would need to make a backup of my phone manually, I would exclude at least most of them. But when I have automatic back ups set, I don’t really mind them taking up the space they do.
In a similar manner I think most individuals have a lot of information (and data), that they don’t handle so rationally. Decision are affected strongly by various reasons and doesn’t matter so much either way - even though on a closer inspection they might.
Companies, on the other hand, might handle their information and data in a more conscious way.