Bitcoin Forum

I don't know why Satoshi decided to limit total qty of bitcoins to 21'000'000 coins. I suspect he made it to tempt early adopters with possibility to become very rich ppl. Now Bitcoin doesn't need such a trick and WE could change the plan. Bitcoin network exists due to hard work of miners and I dislike the idea to halve their reward in the nearest future. Of coz a lot of ppl will be against keeping the reward unchanged. But if these ppl r NOT miners then miners don't need to pay much attention to them. Miners r those who rule Bitcoin.

I suggest other plan. We'll know how many ppl support the idea to keep 50 BTC forever. We'll change the algo in the bitcoin client. When the time for 25 BTC reward comes we'll see which part of the network becomes the winner.

It's time for 1st Bitcoin Revolution...

lol, good luck ;)

If you don't like Bitcoin's inflation algorithm you can always start using one of the other cryptocurrencies which have different policies.

I like it. But I don't think that we MUST follow the plan for 100%. I doubt that Satoshi was so genius.

BTC21 million isnt cool. You know whats cool? BTC21 billion

The block reward halving is irrelevant since its a state of perfect competition.

If the miners can't make $, they will stop mining, difficulty will decrease until whoever is left will make just enough $ to continue mining.  If we left the block reward at 50, the number of miners would increase until they make just enough $ to continue mining.

I don't think it was a necessary feature to make Bitcoin a successful currency.  I think a fixed and guaranteed rate of production will accomplish the goal. But for people who have not spent time studying economics and are just tired of having their currency constantly hyperinflated, it's an excellent selling point. Notice it is one of the first thing any news story mentions. People instinctively know why it is a valuable feature.

But regardless of your opinion it won't  be changing. Your best option is to support or create an alt chain without the hard cap.

And who do you suppose, other than some miners who are ignorant of the term "economic majority", would use this modified client?

Haven't seen this poll. Thx for the link.

Many people are holding on to Bitcoins BECAUSE they don't inflate.  If you introduce infinite inflation, expect people to drop them like hot potatoes, and the value of them to drop equally fast.

Miners would actually make much less per block in terms of dollars if the block reward was sustained at 50 BTC indefinitely, because the price of BTC would drop so much once people knew they would be inflated forever.

If miners modify the algo then the others have to do the same.

Every single day inflation rate will go down in this case, so it's like it is now but without capped grand total.

No they don't.

Say you did fork Bitcoin, and 95% of miners moved over to this new blockchain so they could be paid 50 BTC forever.

Now, 95% of non-miners stay with the real Bitcoin blockchain, and 5% of miners.

So 95% of miners are now mining this worthless fork that no one is actually using for transactions, because non-miners are still using the real Bitcoin blockchain instead.  The price drops on said worthless fork because no one is using it, and therefore no one wants it.  It starts to see values along the lines of Solidcoin when compared with real Bitcoins.

Meanwhile, the 5% of miners who stayed with the original Bitcoin blockchain are still happily mining along and keeping transactions moving along, the currency still has value, and people are still making transactions with it.

There's no requirement for everyone to follow suit if a new version of Bitcoin is released.

I understand that, but as far as a store of value, it would never compete with Bitcoin, which doesn't inflate at all.  And if people aren't using it as a store of value, they aren't holding it.  And if people aren't holding it, they don't use it.  And if people don't hold or use it, it becomes worthless.

It seems to me that u r right. So there is no way to change Bitcoin. Any changes will likely lead to a fork.

If the people who supply the value (merchants not miners) want different money they can get it whether they want EUR, Bitcoin, or modified Bitcoin. The people who mint the coins do it for us because we pay them to.

People who are afraid of the reward halving don't really technically know how all the system works and why it's necessary to decrease the reward.

This.  Good, bad, or ugly you will never get the kind of consensus necessary to make just a drastic change to the Bitcoin network.  To even have a shot at it you would need to convince the developers of all the major wallets, a super majority of miners, a super majority of merchants, essentially all major exchanges, and convince at least a significant fraction of normal users.

It simply will never happen.  Every couple week/months/years someone will say "what if we x?" you never will be able to.  The current protocol has momentum and any miners of an alt-fork runs the very real risk they end up with lots of completely worthless coins while miners who stay on the current fork will see their difficulty fall and their revenue rise.

An alt-chain is possible.  I would also point out that an alt-chain doesn't need to start at a genesis block of 0.  You could for example take the current Bitcoin balances at block 210,000 and make your alt-coin start with that.  However changing something are core as the minting rate simply isn't going to happen so those who want it to  should start an alt-coin.

The only scenarios I see a permanent hard fork being plausible would be:
a) to replace ECDSA based addresses because they are cryptographically flawed.
b) to extend the number of digits because 1 satoshi is worth more than $0.10 USD in buying power (or equivalent).
c) to change the hashing algorithm because SHA-256 is cryptographically flawed.
d) to incorporate post-quantum cryptography because QC presents a credible risk.
e) ??? some other catastrophic flaw in the protocol which simply must be changed to avoid the entire system failing

No one has to do anything in Bitcoin. If miners start using another algo that wouldn't be Bitcoin anymore and they'd simply make a hard fork. Who ever is left would continue using Bitcoin as if nothing happened.

Precisely.

Well Bitcoin is what a majority (preferrably a near consensus super majority) say it is.  There already has been one hard fork to the protocol.  The fork which is known as Bitcoin is what people say it is.  It is just for something as controversial as changing the minting rate it is unlikely you will ever get enough of a consensus to pull it off.

The worst case scenario would be two incompatible forks both supported by a sizable fraction of the bitcoin "community" (merchants, exchanges, developers, miners, users).   The confusion and chaos would likely undermine both chains.

Well, besides the fact that transactions will take 20 times longer to confirm for 2016 blocks (10 months).  :-*

This is a weakness of Bitcoin btw. USA government has an option to mine bitcoin with a lot of power to raise difficulty. And repeat it after difficulty drops to previous level.

Personally, I think that the reward as a fraction of the current amount of coins should remain constant. A slow (~0.1%) inflation per year would be healthy to compensate for permanently lost coins. Of course if a procedure for recycling coins that haven't been used in a long time was implemented that would not be needed.

That may be true today, but once ASIC's are out and difficulty increases 10-fold, the supercomputers go from making a difference in difficulty to making a scratch.  Supercomputers just aren't well suited for Bitcoin mining compared to a dedicated ASIC processor.

Recycling unused coins is dangerous. No matter how it's implemented, people won't feel safe knowing that their savings could vanish because they haven't moved them around. Not to mention, there is no reason to do it - because there is no need to compensate for lost coins. We can simply divide existing bitcoins further, indefinitely.

There is the never-ending block chain bloat to consider.

Ahhhh, it'll be fine.  ;)

EXACTLY:

The one thing that caught my attention (and held ever since) back in june 2011 is the statement:  "There will never be more then 21M bitcoins.....ever".  I suggest if you get a bunch to put them offline and revisit them in a couple years!!

There has not been a hard fork to the protocol. (Unless you're talking about the blockchain irrelevant checksumming of the p2p messages). I run several very old nodes in isolation in order to detect attacks that only work against old nodes.

On the subject of the thread: The bitcoin distribution system is brilliant. And even if it was moronic, it can't be changed. Changing it would rightfully undermine every ounce of trust in the system, it would rightfully destroy the value of bitcoin completely. If you want money that can be inflated on a whim, there are plenty of robust government issued currencies.

... and this thread should be deleted because the OP didn't have the curtsey to offer a "No, and the OP is nuts" option. OP, do you still beat your wife?

Chill.. It's just the traditional loaded question example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_question

And we're all waiting to hear. Come on OP, avoiding the question?

what about the 184 billion bitcoins?

I got a weak point of my poll - it's too early for it. Most part of respondents hold their coins waiting for 1000$ price, they won't support anything but Satoshi's plan. But in few years a lot of ppl will come into Bitcoin world. They won't have motives to follow the plan and could change things completely...

I do still beat my wife. U know, we like to play different sex games...  ;D

Oh, ok. You guys want to get together with my wife and I?

Hahaha. Post here ur nu-style photo and we'll think.

Either amount of coin get more and value keeps constant, or amount of coin keeps constant and value of BTC constantly rise, obviously current BTC holder like later alternative, and most current BTC holder are those who are supporting/promoting BTC

As far as I know, lost coins don't increase blockchain size in any way. Only new transactions increase blockchain size.

They don't increase the size, but they do nothing productive and are a waste of everyone's resources. As the value of coins rise, and people die or lose coins or whatever, smaller and smaller outputs will be left stuck in the chain never to be redeemed, never to be forgotten.

Still, if you "redeem" lost coins, blockchain won't get smaller because of that. Most probably it wil get even bigger.

The pruned blockchain gets smaller. Which is relevant.

Also, looking at the poll question again..., the distribution schedule isn't even discussed in the whitepaper.

Yes, pruned would be smaller. But correct me if im wrong, pruned chain should be several megabytes of size, so lost coins "bloatness" is negligible anyway.

Not if you combine multiple inputs to one or two outputs which is pretty standard practice. Plus you pay transaction fees for the continued health of the network.


Pruning removes spent inputs, it doesn't do anything to unspent outputs.

Yes, but even if you combine all lost unspent outputs and make only one transaction, block would be bigger by this one transaction, compared to stituation if we would do nothing at all.


I already agreed that pruned would be smaller.

Not with pruning.


It won't be several megabytes though, it will still be huge. Spent inputs are what gets pruned, that's it.

Ah ok, i think i read somewhere about several megabytes, but it was probably some other block shrinking method.

Still, I dont think that lost coins take meaningful space to worry about. :P

Now suppose that those 95% of miners decide that, because this isn't good enough, they should each dedicate 10% of their hashrate to preventing any transactions from being confirmed in the other chain by mining empty blocks and refusing to build on any block that isn't empty. (On the surface this would seem to run into the usual problems associated with collective action, but there are clever ways they could enforce this rule.) Suddenly you can't make any transactions with the original Bitcoin blockchain anymore.

Then the 95% of non-miners would buy up mining equipment and become miners to compete.

Interesting to think about though...

Not really interesting. USA will just press [shutdown Bitcoin] button and both forks become useless bunch of numbers.

Bitcoin is based on the infrastructure that belongs to governments. If Bitcoin becomes a worldwide currency before we manage to create our own internet, then it will be wiped out.

Solidcoin what ever happened to that manass muncher realsolid? Just his name was enough to warrant an F off to SC.
Fun times laughing at his stupid rants about his bogus BTC wannabe garbage

If we continue to give 50 BTC per block, you are effectively taking a fee from every user even if they didn't need to pay for block verification. When the block rate goes to 0, then there is the voluntary transaction fee that will pay miners. Then the fee goes to something useful (faster processing). We're weening off of a communal fee for block verification (where everyone pays equally) to a pay-for-the-quality-you-need system. The Austrian school economists that are attracted to bitcoin think the 21m cap is brilliant and necessary. Without a hard cap, the every bitcoin holder continues to pay verification fees in perpetuity whether they make transactions or not.

We should expect worse-case scenario. Just in case.

 ::)

To remove the 21m cap on Bitcoin would destroy the entire project. I wonder how happy the miners would be, if they can earn 50btc on every block forever, but the coins are worth zero.

To not undersatnd this concept is to be so ignorant of the economics behind Bitcoin that one should just slap oneself in the face. Mining Bitcoins is only valuable to the extent those coins are useful and scarce. Make them less scarce and they will be worth less in direct propotion. There is ZERO benefit to miners of removing the cap, or releasing more coins somehow. It does not create more wealth, it merely creates more money units that will reprice themselves in the market given the new number of units.

Direct proportion for the TOTAL amount of bitcoins. If early adopters own major part of all coins then they'll incur major part of loss.

Let's look at numbers:

U r an early adopter with 10'500'000 coins. I'm a miner. Total value of all bitcoins is 21'000'000 USD (1 BTC = 1 USD).
After I mine the rest of the coins (10'500'000) each of us has 10'500'000 BTC which is equal to 10'500'000 USD.
If mining reward algo was adjusted to allow to mine 42'000'000 coins, then I would have 31'500'000 BTC.
42'000'000 bitcoins would set price of 1 BTC to 0.5 USD, so u would have 5'250'000 USD and I would have 15'750'000 USD.

Now we can see, that miners would profit if the algo was changed. Higher mining reward is a way to "steal" wealth from early adopters. And this is the main cause why they r against any changes.

Hey! But bitcoin price will go up anyway. No so fast but still up, not down.

And in 20 years everyone today is an early adopter.  So maybe they say "there are 100x as many people" seems unfair we only get 50 BTC per block.  Maybe the block reward should be increased to 500 BTC per block.  Same exact logic used now.  The current miners benefit from a theft of the current existing coin holders.

That example should illustrate how any change in the minting rate however slight will cause a loss of confidence in Bitcoin.  If it can be changed once, it will be changed over and over.  The end state is a a "fed" like board will set itself up and attempt via a cartel of miners to optimally balance the economy via manipulation of the minting (or deminting rate).  Sound familiar? 

Now that "may" (I seriously doubt it) happen anyways even if the minting rate isn't changed in the near future but for me any change in the "rules" violates the social contract under which I chose to participate.  I am dumping my coins @ market and looking to see if some alt-coin can be devised which makes such changes impossible (or at least more difficult).  I doubt I would be the only one.

A claim that "this one change is the only one" is going to lack credibility.

Hell, u r right! Now I'm not so confident that we need to change anything in the plan...

You most certainly wouldn't be alone. The rules of Bitcoin are the main reason I am here and am using it.

I have my software set so that I'll automatically keep using bitcoin even if someone else starts using a different system.

DeathAndTaxes nailed it! Well said.  And come-from-beyond, I'm glad you're reasonable enough to understand it now :)

Inflation is simply a way to distribute bitcoin. Once all the coins are distributed inflation has no more purpose in the system and is eliminated. Keeping it around only increases the number of bitcoin, which we know is completely arbitrary.

I use inflation in the proper sense, to refer to the growth of the money supply (number of bitcoin). I'm not referring to price or change in prices.

But even though deflation is universally used to mean price levels in bitcoin, that is ok?

This is such a silly distinction made by one person, a monetarist, that leads to "an aggravating spew of stupid arguments about one man's eccentric definition of a word on this message board phenomenon."

Personally, I think it universally makes more sense that inflation and deflation refer to prices unless you say "monetary inflation/deflation."

Considering that Friedman did not even mean that inflating the money supply equals price inflation, it is about as faux-pedantic as you can get.

No it's not, it's the same mistake as calling rising prices inflation. Deflation is the decrease in money supply for instance when debt is liquidated a lot of supply that was on the books somewhere gets wiped out and consequently the rest of the remaining units of currency become worth more which has the effect of falling prices.

Bitcoin is currently experiencing high double digit inflation and is not designed to ever experience deflation although there is and will be some small amount of deflation due to lost coins.

Except that rising prices is called inflation.


Except that falling prices is called deflation.

This message board is the only place in the world that has a different definition because of one misinterpreted quote by Milton Friedman.

It really is not very becoming.

This.  Simply use those 4 terms.  Definitions only make sense if people know what you mean when you say it. Using price or monetary although verbose means the intent exactly clear.  There is no need for the confusion and then the 20-30 posts in a debate over who's definition is the right one.

I used a term that people would interpret differently so I defined it. Calm down people.

I hereby propose that anyone starting future threads advocating perpetual devaluation of Bitcoin units, be punished via traditional old-style methods reserved for such ideas:

Sec. 19. And be it further enacted, That if any of the gold or silver coins which shall be struck or coined at the said mint shall be debased or made worse as to the proportion of fine gold or fine silver therein contained, or shall be of less weight or value than the same ought to be pursuant to the directions of this act...every such officer or person who shall commit any or either of the said offences, shall be deemed guilty of felony, and shall suffer death.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coinage_Act_of_1792