Bitcoin Forum

I am newbie.

It just keep me wondering if there is enough of bitcoins for everyone in the world?

We have 7 billions people.

With 21 millions BTC only...

And coins lost never get replaced...so over time it will only get less and less, once it reach below a certain limit, it just can't function as a currency anymore. If it does not function as a currency, what purpose does it serves?

So how it is logical for anyone to use it as a currency if BTC only decrease in number over time?

Please someone kindly explain to me...will appreciate.

They are highly divisible up to 1/100,000 I believe.

The relationship could be like gold vs silver. Gold is for saving and silver for spending. Maybe another competing crypto currency steps in for everyday spending while Bitcoin is used more for larger transactions.

There will eventually be 21,000,000 Bitcoins.

Each Bitcoin can (currently) be divided into 100,000,000 pieces, most often called "Satoshis"

So there are 2,100,000,000,000,000 possible "Satoshis" - enough to go around.

In other words we can deal with 0.00000001 Bitcoins or 1/100,000,000th of a Bitcoin.

Think I finally got the number of zeros correct...  Tired...

Despite 1 bitcoin = 100 millions satoshi, but it is still a finite amount and it can be lost forever. Will 7 billions of people, 1 person may be able to get only 140,000 satoshi. How we going to transect with such a small amount of currency?

Interesting question OP. It seems like the code can be modified if necessary to support smaller units based on this thread: http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/122/will-we-ever-need-smaller-amounts-of-bitcoin-than-a-satoshi

Also, there doesn't need to be enough bitcoins for everyone in the world for them to have value. There's not enough gold for everyone in the world but it still has value as a currency. If there aren't enough bitcoins in the world, the gap will be filled with alternative cryptocurrencies, and the scarcity of bitcoin could even reinforce its dominance as the "gold" standard of cryptocurrencies because it has the most hashing behind it.

Is this a serious question, or are you trolling here?

You can increase and decrease the amount of time a number can be divided.  The next easiest way to divide BTC is with 16 zeroes, as opposed to 8.  However, I am uncertain if this will cause a hard fork or not.

One thing is that not everybody will want to get bitcoins.

I figure that if bitcoin get's at least 10 percent of paypal's market we'll be doing pretty good.  Plenty of bitcoins to go around for that.  :)

There will be 2100000000000000 satoshis. Currently (at the time of this posting) there are 1099347500000000.

It is also not at all likely that BTC will become ubiquitous to the point of being used by everyone on earth, and exclusively.  It is most powerful as a way to send money over the Internet, but local currency is here to stay.

One thing is for certain, all the bitcoin markets will have to start trading in satoshis - otherwise, buying 0.0001BTC will feel like you are not buying anything at all, buying 0.1 bitcoin for 10 euros now already feels like a rip off :P People like whole numbers!

If you do not like 0.1 BTC call it 100 mBTC then, or if you really want to feel rich call it 100,000 uBTC!

Get real, you won't defeat fiat currencies, forget about it. Invest in crypto, play your cards right, and make a profit, then turn that profit into fiat and give yourself a treat (or if you were smart and lucky enough to make a big investment, live the good life), cryptocurrencies won't overthrow fiat, not in our lifetimes, but cryptos are a good way of making an easy profit, it doesn't takes a genius to know you have to buy low and sell high.

While that's definitely better, good luck getting most of people on this planet to follow without having to google the conversion every time ;-)

Fiat currencies are suiciding, we don't have to defeat them, they are already ruining themselves.

More decimal places can always be added i would think so yes

Don't forget that 2 billion people do not even have access to electricity, let alone Internet..

The problem with Bitcoins (v1) is a few people have most of the supply. Much like fiat in the real world  ;)

LiteCoin (v2) is fairer, in that people who can build FPGAs/ASICs cannot gain an advantage in mining speed

I'm thinking (v3) needs to have a in built peer-2-peer exchange too.

The Money Revolution has only just started, and like the car, it's not going to stop with the Ford Model A

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b6/1903-ford-rc.jpg/280px-1903-ford-rc.jpg

More people have access to the Internet via cell phones worldwide than have access to a flush toilet.  Access to electricity is not a pre-requisite. 

I'm pretty sure most of us will be dead until all bitcoins have been mined. And all those great minds will come up with a solution when the prices for Bitcoins skyrocket like crazy.

Why such a half measures? Call it 10M satoshis! Feel like a millionaire!  ;D

Correct. But all those cell phones need to be charged somehow.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=168176.0
Most fiat currencies issuers have at least 5 more ways to destroy bitcoin completely.
If they want to destroy it, Bitcoin will be done. Bitcoin is alive because they don't care for now and that's because bitcoin is nothing for now.

False.

Stop and think, young man.  5 volts at half an amp, or 2.5 watts.  A standard bike headlight is about 3 watts, whatever shall we do???

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-p20hxRVj5c

Of course there are already existing infrastructure for charging phones, as some people have made a business out of using a solar panel to charge phones for others.

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/428569/solar-charger-made-for-africa-coming-to-the-us/

And using a cell phone to send money isn't even a foreign concept to Africans as much as it is to Americans...


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa

Therefore, you're argument is invalid.

Untrue. I know there is a dailymail article which made a similar claim, But there is a flaw in the article and your statement is not the same as dailymail's.

First of all, It's true that there are 6 billion mobile subscription in the world. But it does not necessarily indicate that 6 billion people held each subscription.
In case of United States, There are 321.7M wireless subscriber as of JUN 12. And guess what? There are only 313,914,040(est) people in the US as of 2012.
And It's not a rare event. In Hong Kong, There are over 13 million wireless subscriber(2011) but the population of Hong Kong barely exceeded 7m(2011).
Therefore, The number of actual phone holder must be quite lower than 6 billion. It could be lower than 4.5 billion which is the number of people who have an access to flush toilet.

And most of 6 billion phones are not even smartphone. A cumulative smartphone sales figure won't pass the 2 billion bar in this year. In other words, there are at best 1-1.5 billion people who have a smartphone and internet connection service provided by network operator. Plus, there are some people who has a phone but not a computer especially in underdeveloped countries, but computer owners usually have a phone nowadays.

Therefore, a number of flush toilet user must be 2-3 times higher than a number of internet users.



Read the link.



It's not widely accepted. Can you make a claim that most of the people who doesn't have an access to electricity have those kind of bicycle-powered charger?
Of course you cannot. Therefore, there are still electricity related issues out there.



Think about cell tower. It's very common that people don't have an access to electricity because their closest electricity line is at least 20 miles away. And in this case, There will be no power to activate the cell tower they need. Powering it up by solar panel? Hello? Their governments don't have money to spend on electricity line.

Really?  So your logic is that, since there are non-zero percentage of wireless subscribers in the United States and Hong Kong (many of which are held by regular business travelers, not residents) then it's reasonable to assume that enough common Africans with a cell phone maintain more than one phone number?  Do you maintain more than one cell phone subscription?


I'm not worried about that either, the trend is obvious.  There are likely to be older model smartphones by the time that Bitcoin is truely mature anyway.  And even if that wasn't so, M-Pesa ran on normal cell phones.  A service similar to BitcoinSpinner could run on just about anything, if the service provider was interested in doing so.


Must?  My wife doesn't use a smartphone, and her phone cans still surf basic web pages.

I did.  It's false.


Issues, sure.  You think small.


If you're waiting for governments to provide for infrastructure, you'll be waiting a long time.  And yes, a minimalist cell tower could be powered by solar alone, but most of them usually have a small genset at well.  If you want to see how wireless communications can actually work in distant places, do some research on how the US miliatry does it.  I used to build these things.  It's not trivial to establish and maintain a 100 kilometer link, but nor is it beyond reach.

I dont think there's enough.

Why not?

i don't have a habit of feeding trolls, that's all i'm saying.

Excuse-me, but why should everybody have bitcoins?

There are Ferrari cars, there are houses with a swimming-pool, but most people don't have one. There are hundreds of millions people who don't have enough food each day. In Africa and India, there are millions who don't have shoes.

So forget the question, it's totally irrelevant.