In a deflationary system, rich people just hold money, and earn more in interest from holding the money, than everyone else earns combined. They use that interest to buy things from the poor while not producing or investing themselves. Poor people realize if they switch currencies they can have more things because they don't have to give a percentage of everything to the rich. This makes the system unstable.

Bitcoin might be approaching it.

Spending shouldn't be the goal, but exchange of goods and services should be. Representation of real value should be a goal. If you can receive real goods and services as a consequence of holding numbers on a spreadsheet, instead of a consequence of providing real goods and services yourself, the economy has a problem. Maybe a system with zero inflation or very slight deflation can be stable, but the extreme deflation seen in Bitcoin is destabilising.

This still does not work.

“Holding money and earning interest from holding it” is a category error. Holding Bitcoin pays zero yield. No coupon, no dividend, no debtor, no tax stream, and no mechanism by which poor people pay holders a percentage. If someone earns interest, they are not merely holding money; they are lending it, which means they are taking risk and providing capital.

The “numbers on a spreadsheet” objection is also just an objection to money itself. Money exists so someone can produce value today, save the claim, and exchange it later for real goods and services. That is not a bug. That is saving.

A non-inflationary currency is actually a better representation of real value, because the unit is not constantly being diluted. Inflationary money lets nominal wealth rise even when no real value was created. Hard money makes the test harsher: did you actually create value, or did the measuring stick just get worse?

And no, people would not “just sit on Bitcoin.” People still eat, rent, travel, build, compete, seek status, start companies, buy homes, and take risks to outperform others. The only thing that changes is the hurdle rate: an investment has to be better than simply holding money. That is not economic failure. That is discipline.

The fair criticism of Bitcoin is volatility and unequal distribution, not this imaginary mechanism where holders magically receive interest from the poor by owning spreadsheet entries. That mechanism does not exist.

EDIT: The rich/poor angle is almost backwards. In an inflationary system, holding money is a guaranteed loss, so ordinary people are forced to become amateur investors just to avoid being debased. Rich people are already positioned for that: they own assets, businesses, real estate, equities, and can borrow cheaply against them.

In a non-inflationary or hard-money system, simply holding money is not a guaranteed losing strategy. You keep your share unless you voluntarily take risk to increase it. That is a very different game. The rich can still get richer, but they have to outperform by allocating capital well, not merely by being closest to the asset-inflation machine.

Same with wages. Under inflation, your employer can cut your real salary without saying anything: they just give you a raise below inflation, or no raise at all. You have to fight constantly just to stay even.

Under hard money, that hidden pay cut is much harder. If prices are falling or money is appreciating, keeping the same nominal salary can mean your real wage rises. To reduce your real compensation, the employer has to make the cut explicit or offset it with benefits. That is a completely different power dynamic.

So no, inflation is not obviously pro-poor. Very often it is a quiet tax on people least able to escape cash and wages.