First time hearing about Zero coupon bonds and Perpetual bonds... Nonetheless, wouldn't author's description of perpetual zero coupon bond apply to many (most? all?) fiat currencies as well, since these are not really backed by anything anymore?
In order to function properly as a currency, an asset needs to be the least volatile liquid asset available in the economy (or at least to be competitive along this axis). The expectation the asset will slowly depreciate is compatible with this requirement. The expectation that your currency is a highly deflationary lottery ticket to be traded on 100x margin (and the kicker is that your collateral is some other highly volatile cryptoasset) - not so much.
That's why the price of goods and services are almost never set in Bitcoin (rather, the price is set in dollars and floating in Bitcoin). It's too volatile to fulfill all of the roles of a currency, but if you're quick about it you can use it as a medium of exchange.
This is more or less a summary of Taleb's argument that the net present value of Bitcoin is zero.
I feel introducing quasi terminology helps confuse rather than help.
Index linked bonds, I think you're getting at the concept by talking about inflation, are linked to price changes. Check the actual price index (CPI, RPI, etc) of linkage for what price changes.
Most bonds are not index linked, not hedged against inflation, and have a fixed coupon. Whether or not that fixed coupon is or isn't above inflation depends on what inflation is. That's why bonds are classed as 'fixed income', or in alternate terminology 'financial assets' (not 'real' where 'real' has some link to inflation, or nominal incomes).
Further, bonds vary widely in terms of coupon, can be stripped of coupons, etc. So rather than coupon, yield to maturity might be more useful to look at vis inflation.
In fact, in the context of the fundamental theorem of asset pricing (every asset discounted by a suitable numeraire is a martingale under the probability measure induced by that numeraire), cash isn’t even an asset (instead, the interest bearing bank account is one).
People who expect money to store value directly must be insane. I mean think about Roman empire currency being valid today. That is impossible. Money is only valuable within an economy that accepts it. Money from the past is no longer in the economy that is used to be accepted in. Every time period could be considered its own economy. Storing value or carrying value into the future can only happen in the real world, not with money itself, which is just a managerial system.
In the real world, objects degrade, expire, require maintenance or constant energy inputs. Once humans are gone, nature will simply take over.
The disconnect between money and the real world must manifest itself as inflation.
In some way (low) inflation is a feature and not bug: having money just sit around unproductively Scrooge McDuck-style is a waste of resources. Having cash (slowly) lose its value incentivizes its investment into productive assets and help move the economy around.
Why does anyone expect / 'deserve' to earn returns on money that just sits around doing nothing?
Who is value set by, if not the market?
NPV, price, and value are each distinct [1]. Individuals judge value according to their own idiosyncratic needs and views, the market determines price, and a valuation model determines NPV - market forces will tend to align these, but there's no guarantee they will and no contradiction if they don't. (Note that NPV might be better termed "net present cash flow," it's more like a price than a value.) The S&P can go to zero on Monday and a million the next day - it's not likely (presumably the exchanges would halt trading long before that happened) but there's nothing to stop it. It's not like a physical system which is constrained by the universe to behave a certain way, it's closer to a series of independent dice rolls.
It seems to me like many people engage with this market for ideological reasons. I don't mean to say that's an illegitimate choice. But it can surely push the price past the NPV, if there's a contingent that's insensitive to the NPV. (This is why it's important to separate price from value. People investing for ideological reasons have a view about the value of Bitcoin, not the price.)
And then there's stuff like this.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=wIhTGB3wqV0
(Apologies that this is a meme, it was the first instance of the clip I found & I didn't feel like looking for a non meme version.)
Tl;Dw this is Saylor encouraging people to mortgage their house to buy Bitcoin. I think Saylor is some mixture of con artist and true believer, but I would call that close to unhinged. So yeah, some participants might be delusional (not a doctor). But I assume it's a minority.
[1] If you'd like me to define these terms, please see these previous comments of mine.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32857769
There's some debate in this thread about whether price and value are actually equivalent.
The value of cryptocurrencies, in spite of a collapse in value, is stopped from falling to their natural value, i.e. zero, by a combination of market manipulation, investor ignorance and a tsunami of lies on social media from those paid to promote these worthless frauds.
Which isn't how the US government backing the USD works at all.
Also note that I intend these as descriptive and not proscriptive statements. I'm not trying to say the government isn't wasteful (though 90-98% waste is an overstatement) or that it's the best way to do things, I'm just trying to illustrate why seemingly ponzi-like systems like national currencies can be economically productive and stable over long periods of time while truly ponzi-like systems rarely have longevity (Herbalife and Amway being exceptions to this rule, in my opinion) because they don't actually produce anything.
So yes, paper bill currency is just as speculative as cryptocurrency. The difference is that nowadays most money is created with a contractual obligation to get rid of it eventually, which means its value is stable(=opposite of volatile) over time.