The Chinese have experienced essentially every kind of monetary standard that can exist: barter with no money at all, barter despite coin existing, gold standard, silver standard, copper standard, bimetallism, grain as a unit of account, paper issued on top of metal backing, and straight up paper fiat standard. In most instances when money became too dear (too valuable and/or not circulating enough), deflation reared its head. Not the good kind of deflation that occurs through innovation, but the destructive kind due to curtailed spending. Occasionally these issues cropped up because the money was not sufficiently divisible, like in the case of silver bullion, which was too valuable per unit to suffice for petty commerce. Divisibility is not a problem for Bitcoin. However in many other cases, the problem of overvalued money arose from hoarding by the wealthy which made money units harder for the working classes to acquire. Once underway, the deflationary hoarding dynamic proves difficult to break free from barring a confiscation of savings or a shock of new money emission. Quite commonly in these deflationary episodes, despite prices falling and real buying power temporarily increasing, the eventual net result was business failures, high unemployment, and social unrest. Then followed the emission of new money substitutes by counterfeiters looking to fill a market need. In zero examples did the market gladly accept lower prices without first an innovative boost to output capacity causing it. The reason being that no economic actor is willing to suffer forced deflation. In the absence of sufficiently circulating money, businesses cannot project revenue, investment falls, and the whole of productive society lurches to a standstill. History is rife with examples of counterfeit monies circulating despite the people KNOWING they were counterfeit, much to the chagrin of the state, and even times where the state was forced to allow their usage because the people demanded a cheaper and more elastic money than the incumbent. Many of these lessons would apply today in a world with a fixed money standard.