Bitcoin Forum

UPDATE

It is possible for Bitcoin limit to be increased but only if the entire network agrees to it else it would just create another fork which wouldn't affect Bitcoin. 21 million is more than sufficient for people to use Bitcoin as it has denominations down to 1 satoshis and can be increased in the future.

It's all about supply and demand.

But if Bitcoin does get into the future, many cryptocurrencies would be made.

This can be done but it is something that never will be done. The instant this gets any actual development bitcoin will fail. There is no reason at all to change this. It's perfect as it is and always will be. Bitcoin was created to counter the very reason of uncontrolled money print. 21m will always be its limit or else bitcoin will fail.
I believe we will have 3 hard forks eventually:
1) Change block size (this already is needed)
2) Change cryptography (in less than 100 years it may be outdated and easier to crack)
3) Change block speed (for faster confirmation)

Note that none of these involve the 21m cap. If you decrease block speed by half the reward would have to be dropped too for example.

I would agree with 1 and 2 but definitely not 3. 10 minute block is ideal for Bitcoin as there is lesser forks and stales for miners and more security for merchants. The security of 2x 5 minute confirmations would have the security of 1x 10 minute confirmation. Merchants would start requiring more confirmations if that happens. Right now, most brick and mortar shops do not even require a confirmation to accept a transaction.

There is absolutely no need for the 21M coin cap to be increased as you can split 1 BTC into many smaller pieces. A higher price will make owning 1BTC in the future only possible for people with good money. You can set most of the wallets to display anything from BTC to mBTC and uBTC.

Bitcoin is opensource, the devs, they can make these kind of changes, but I am sure they will never increase the amount of coins. I would directly sell all my coins and never look back at Bitcoin if this happens. If they do it once, they will also do it twice. The coin cap is something you don't mess with.

Faster confirmations would be a much appreciated change and will help Bitcoin become an even better alternative to other fiat currencies. Currently for online purchases it doesn't really bother me, but if I plan to buy a tv or something else that is quite costly in the future, I don't want to wait over 30 minutes to get a single confirmation, so I can walk out of the store with my purchase.

Blocksize is a another thing, currently they are getting fuller and fuller with the months. I don't mind seeing the blocksize being increased to 2MB, for now. Anything higher will make pools go nuts. The devs should come up with something very soon.

they will not happen, there will be no consensus ever for this, look at the block limit, there is still no consensu, and you want consensus on something that is not broken by a long shot

In my opinion, in future if prices increses a lot, we will use mBtc as a reference, we don't need to increase the bitcoin limit. We only have to change the basic unit to another smaller.

The 21M limit will NEVER be changed. It's not needed and it's a bit difficult to do as well.
Your clients have denominations like uBTC and mBTC, and even satoshis, so think about that.

It won't be good as the coins are getting values based on halving and the total amount of available coins, so if the limits increase, we will only see a decrease in the price and as said, no one will let their coins sold at lower rates just because of the "injustice" that might be done on the name of increasing limits...

I'd add burn fees to the list.

OT: 21mil will be the final amount of coins released. This will be final. No miner nor community will back a fork of bitcoin with more than 21million coins.

Don't worry. Technically and theoretical an increase would be possible yes.But in reality in 99,99999999% this will never ever happen.
And as many other have already mentioned, 1 bitcoin can be subdivided down to 1 satoshi which is a one hundred millionth of 1 bitcoin.
So now do the math and then you know their are more than enough units for the future.
Maybe in a few years we are speaking about bits, or satoshis in 3 decades. If you tell a person then that you own a whole Bitcoin he might kiss your shoes. :D

Without eliminating the burnt and lost coins, the total coins in supply will never be 21 million. Max limit is 20999999.9769BTC minus 50BTC if you want to eliminate the unspendable genesis block. :)

Everyone with some grey matter left knows that touching the total supply would effectively kill Bitcoin, therefore is a non issue, it's not gonna happen. One of the main points of Bitcoin is the limited, controlled, no-bullshit finite supply. 21 million is perfect as it is. And yes, 21 BTC will put you in a privileged position in one or two decades.

I forgot 4) Pow to something more efficient.
This won't happen anytime soon but I believe these 4 points will be done eventually. PoS is much better than PoW but don't expect miners to agree into turning their equipment to $0 in a instant.

21m btc change will never be done. Or shouldn't if we want bitcoin to be trading above $0.0001

Not possible. Their are too many against this idea and if the bitcore developers want continued support from the community then they will listen to them. Bitcoin isn't about making more of it, it is about working with what you have and increasing it's value.

Limited Supply is one of CORE elements of Bitcoin, and I mean it. Changing it in any way, even reducing it is unacceptable as it is against the basic principle of Bitcoin.
If that limits of 21 millions of coins would be changed that mean Bitcoin is dead. And noting will stop people from changing it to say: 100 millions. Effectively making it useless.

not a good idea to raise the original 21 million coin cap. one of the reasons for people to invest in bitcoin is that there never will be more than 21 million bitcoins ever. that makes bitcoin somewhat rare and special.

I think that one thing that will never be changed is the total supply of 21 million coins. If we would do that, we would become just another dollar.

Then again why would we do that. If we will have such a demand let 1 Satoshi be worth $1. With 1 btc being divided to 8 decimal places, everybody will have enough.

There is one huge problem with POS itself. Huge exchanges would be holding monopoly with the coins and the earnings would be concentrated on those who owns lots of coins or a popular service. Other than that, yeah, ASICs are created specifically for this. If you were to change POW to POS, every mining operation would be unprofitable. The price would also plummet.

Not a single entity officially currently holds over 2% of bitcoins.
I don't believe anyone holds over 5% and ever will.

F2Pool alone holds over 23% of PoW power. Ghash got to 51%+ before.

Given the trade volume per day, exchanges does perhaps hold a large volume of Bitcoins. I believe satoshi does own close to one million BTC. Exchanges do not hold the coins centralised in one wallet so it's hard to determine how much they actually control. By shifting to POS, it is also easier for governments to control large amount of the entire network. That aside, shifting from POW to POS isn't easy.

Do not expect too big on bitcoin, you'll got hurt at the end.
Are you new on bitcoin?
Did you not realize BTC price for nowadays is decreasing from $1200?

Holding 21 BTC surely is great decision. Hold it until you think that is the right time to trade it.
Personally i will keep buy bitcoin from my investment money until approx 50-70BTC, then i will back to reinvesting in another paper currencies.

Well said, mate.
We are here to make it the best and most widely adapted crypto "currency" of the world, and by doing what OP said, it will not be possible.

2% is very low, it's only 420k of the total supply not even the available supply, which would be only 300k

plenty are holding that amount actually, the 660k missed coin from mtgox, satoshy, finney is holding a large % also etc...

If bitcoin gets big enough that the whole community accepts the change, then I guess it will attract worldwide attention. This would lead to countries getting interested and investing into making a bigger and better altcoin that will "rekt" bitcoin. Bitcoin has its flaws which could be solved by people with big wallets, aka countries.

I hope the limit doesnt change, I'm hodling 4 lief <3

Why do we need an altcoin, why not make changes to Bitcoin itself??? (not talking about the 21M BTC limit)...
Let's just develop it, love it, spend it, show it and guide about it to everyone, that way we won't need any big mass media as we already have a wide range of users, and with that, very big range of audience is there too who are just watching our world but not taking the advantage of BTC currently...

If people ever would want to change limit of bitcoin than will mean that community goes retard mode and I don't have anything to do with it anymore.
We don't want to increase or decrease limit of bitcoin ever. There is no need to, bitcoins can be diversified to a very small units.

Thats impossible, because you can change the rules at mid game!

You'll always have more than 1/1.000.000 wont you if the supply runs out in 2140? and you have 21, you'd need less than 21 to be in the 1/1.000.000 club unless you are a vampire and live for hundreds of years.