Vitalik , Hayden, and Justin Drake were walking one day when they noticed a $100 bill on the sidewalk. Vitalik picked it up and said, “we should use this to build public goods and core infrastructure.” Hayden nodded his head, “agreed, we can put this money to good use.”
Justin Drake smiled and asked Vitalik for the bill. Vitalik obliged. “See that homeless man down there,” he gestured roughly 50 yards down the sidewalk to a homeless man with a sign and a little hat with a few dollar bills and some change in it, “watch this.”
They walked over and Justin appeared as though he was going to give the man the money but instead pulled out a lighter and lit the $100 bill on fire. The homeless man looked confused, as did Hayden and Vitalik. Justin pointed at the hat with the small bills, “that money right there is now more scarce, because I took $100 out of the total circulating supply.” The homeless man still looked perplexed. “Why couldn’t I just have the money, if you were going to burn it?”
“Well,” Justin paused, “it was never yours to begin with.” The homeless man smiled and responded, “that actually makes a lot of sense, thank you for making the money I do have more valuable.”
Vitalik clapped but in a weird way, he put his elbows together and sort of slapped his hands back and forth.
Anyways the homeless man later died of starvation.