Bitcoin Forum

Bitcoins (BTC) has a maximum supply of 21 million coins. Lets say as some people predict on a future date  a Bitcoin hits USD $1,000,000. During this scenario, is there any chance that someone can change the software program that restricts the supply of Bitcoins to mine more coins. Can someone give technical details if possible.

Thank you!

vnck25

Changing the block-generation reward to allow more than an asymptotic limit of 21 million coins would require a hard fork.  It would be a contentious hard fork, because many people strongly believe that the original plan should not be changed to dilute existing coins.

Then the smallest unit of bitcoin (1 satoshi) would be worth $0.01.  It is possible to hard-fork Bitcoin to allow further subdivisions; this would be far less controversial than increasing the maximum coin supply.

It would require a fork, which is something that anyone can do but no-one has to use if they don't want to. This is the same thing for Bitcoin; people can make forks which change the supply from 21m to 21 trillion Bitcoins, but it doesn't mean that anyone has to actually use whatever is on that blockchain, and they won't be able to use those extra coins unless there is someone that they can send the Bitcoin to.

It is impossible to change the supply without the community knowing, essentially. And the markets would be able to react accordingly, such as crashing because the limited supply no longer exists.

anything about bitcoin can change. it is just code that you can change to do something else. change the cap for example. but the trick is to change something without breaking the whole system, in other words have a solid reason for that change not just a guess about possible price. and also to get the whole system to agree to it so that the hard fork required for that change is accepted as bitcoin not just a useless altcoin.

you can look at all these recent altcoins: the controversial forks of bitcoin such as bitcoin cash, bitcoin gold, bitcoin silver, bitcre,... they have proven that you can change anything but when you don't have the support, you are  creating an altcoin that will die slowly because of lack of interest.

Just like how you can modify a software programme the same way you can modify bitcoins its not a great deal.
We have software updates like android updates..and stuff they all do the same...
Changing the bitcoin system will need... Consent of every authority related with bitcoins especially the creators and offcourse the public support because bitcoins is genuinely run by the public.
Thus I don't think that they will (the people) agree tp change Bitcoins maximum supply because in the future they can be benifited from it a lot !
But yes its possible

The effect is the same as fiat money. If you observe, when our fiat money has increased supply the value of it becomes lesser or lower but when the supply it cut off or there is a maximum supply then its value has a lot of possibilities to increase.

There would be a problem when the supply of bitcoin would increase same as fiat money. The problem would be, if they increase the supply or production of bitcoins, the value will decrease and when they decrease the supply of bitcoin the value would increase. The effect is the sameto fiat money.

Many here say it would require a hard fork "and that many don't want to see that" but perhaps at some point it will be the condition for Bitcoin to survive.
Not saying right now, but in one or two years.
A good product has to evolve and adapt to current markets, this is true for any product and any industry, why would it not be the case for Bitcoin?

Maybe it can be change and increase the supply of bitcoin but that's only possible if they can go over to the software of bitcoin made by its developer but I don't think it can be reiterate that easy because if that is easy in the previous years someone must already try doing that instead preparing hard fork and offering alternative coins to divert the increasing market and demand for bitcoin

i'm thinking what would happen if at some point devs will decide to increase the BTC cap, not with another fork but BTC itself.. what would happen? how the community will reach to this? It can be an interesting point of discussion and i don't know how it can affect the current market community.

This number was hardcoded by satoshi himself, and whoever wants to participate on the network should accept it to be part of it, that can actually be worked out, with BIP process. And this definitely a hard fork, and won't achieve sufficient consensus for it. If they force it they'll make an alt.

The supply of bitcoins is fixed and only 21 million bitcoins
can be mined with no additional increase in supply can be
made. It can be changed but then it will lead to a hard fork
which won't be bitcoin.

If the supply of bitcoin could be changed, then it would defeat
its purpose and basically be just like fiat. It has a fixed supply
just like gold which makes it lucrative.

According to official data, it is impossible to change the number of bitcoins, but we are all people and understand that if we could create bitcoins, then we can add more bitcoins to them. All this is decided by high-ranking managers of the crypto-currency world.

personally, id support this solution far more than raising the coin cap; it might get to be a headache counting the decimal places and such, but the 21 million cap was made so curb inflation and keep a stable amount in circulation. now, in macroeconomics, currency must be injected and taken out of circulation on a regular basis to accommodate for economic trends, but i think this would lead to a bitcoin bubble. now, i would accept an increase in the coin cap, if the coin reward was adjusted proportionately to match, effectively capping the market at a similar point in time, but this would also lead to the devaluation of the current coins in circulation; not much for that idea.

Far as i know there is nothing that can make bitcoin change, that is why it is having a lot of forks, because they really want to change bitcoin, but they have to do it indirectly.
The supply can not be changed, and that is maybe the main the reason of why bitcoin is being so expensive nowadays, $8300 per each bitcoin because the supply is very low compared to other cryptos (most of them have at least 50millions of coins in circulation)
But no, there is no way that there could be more forks, and if bitcoin touches 1 million dollars, 1mbtc is going to be worth $1000.

Well it's already made: after the hard-coded limit of 21 million is reached/mined completely, no one can create any more new coins. The coins in the circulation are the only ones that can be traded and will be traded in the coming years. It can be changed if the whole community agrees; if not, it stays the same. I'm inclined to think that this will not be changed since that will defeat the purpose of bitcoin being deflationary. Most devs would just compete about bitcoin being the king of microtransactions, scaling, fees etc. etc. and I don't even think that they'll do something about the 21 million limit. Not at least at these times.

Why do you want to have more supply? it is a waste of time, and you are going to have more coins, but the same amount of money if it really happen, only if we assume that the total supply is going to be increased, but it is never going to happen because bitcoin has already been created and the code can not be changed.

That is the main purpose of those shitty forks, they all were trying to fix some things over bitcoin, and they were trying to increase the supply of it, that is why they have their own supply and they gave us 1:1 of our bitcoin balance, because they want us to have more coins, but with the same amount of money (but the prices of those forked coins has been increasing during the last time)

For the base of the foundation of bitcoin to be changed, it will be very difficult or impossible. Instead of bitcoin to change its total supply, then there will be a continuous hard fork of bitcoin, for new coins to come up.

It is possible to change the maximum supply of bitcoin but this can lead to inflation that is why bitcoin have a limited supply. We do not even have any need of much supply.

Yeah it can, But i'm pretty sure it will just be forked instead.

It would require a hardfork. That is a technological fact.

Even assuming that enough people would support a supply-increasing hardfork, under which conditions would you want do that? What would be the point of increasing the Bitcoin supply?

Nonetheless I'd now like to see a Bitcoin hardfork with unlimited coin supply, just to see how it would fare. Bitcoin fiat or something like that.

It can be changed because it's just a code, but doing that would require a fork. But unless everyone or at least a huge percentage agrees that this new coin would be the new bitcoin, it would just be treated as an altcoin. The most recent fork, bitcoin diamond, actually has 10x more supply than bitcoin which is 210 million instead of 21 million.

the only reason that i have ever heard knowledgeable people say this is possible is the case where a huge number of bitcoin is lost. for example if 15 million out of 21 million coins were lost! and that only if we strongly feel the remaining coins are not enough.

LOL, we already have so many forks in a couple of months:
- bitcoin cash
- bitcoin gold
- bitcoin silver
- bitcoin diamond
sorted in order of creation date and uselessness :D

Every OP saying that the change of limit of bitcoins needs hardfork are right. Some do want this kind of change for newbie chances in the industry. But we should realize that once that such change happen, bitcoin will be limitless meaning prices could drop anytime of the day and would be hard to make it rise. The decrease in stock makes the prices high and that would go the opposite way.

Bitcoin is not Ethereum, so losing coins is not as simple as making the wrong smart contract call ;D

Even then, 21 million is just an arbitrary denominator. Bitcoin can work just as fine with 6 million coins, or 100 coins or just 1 single coin. Worst case you'd have to increase the usable decimal places.



Yeah, but they only do boring stuff like increasing the block size or changing the PoW scheme ;D No one dared touching the block reward yet, unless that's what either Bitcoin Silver or Bitcoin Diamond are doing -- what exactly is it that Bitcoin Silver and Bitcoin Diamond are doing anyways?

It kinda feels like the Pokémon release cycle by now. Next thing we know we got Bitcoin Ultra Sun and Bitcoin Ultra Moon.

 Bitcoin is that has that limit to 21 million yes the max supply can changed but If that will be changed , immediately the community will invest in other coin like eth or ltc and this bitcoin will be die .

Forked coins are not bitcoin they will never be included in the supply of the coin.



Why would the community invest in other coins if those coins are different from the purpose of bitcoin? Besides bitcoin has 8 usable decimal units so if the price really goes high then a fraction of bitcoin is enough to make a purchase.


How would forking bitcoin change the limit of the supply if the forked coin will also have a limit of 21 million? Adding a to b will not be possible since the original coin is different from the forked coin or even two forked coins are different.

Max supply for Bitcoin is 21,000,000 BTC. When Bitcoin is already in mine and touches 21,000,000 BTC, Bitcoin's price will increase due to its already limited amount. And the only way to get Bitcoin is to buy it. And to increase the total supply I still do not understand.

Since it was programmed to have a maximum supply of 21 million it will be impossible to change it, and besides bitcoin is a decentralized technology which means no specific person is holding a program for it. Everyone who has the program needs to verify each transaction for it to be confirmed and it is hard to bypass that.

Indeed, many people realize that the total amount of bitcoin can not be changed, it is fixed 21 million. The nearest fork may help to solve this problem, after all, with the increasing complexity of the encrypted money ecosystem, people will have more requirements for encrypted currencies.

This is possible to happen through hard fork that will change the block structure and increase the total amount of Bitcoin supply. But I think it is very unlikely to happen because it requires the consensus of all Bitcoin community and all old nodes should upgrade to new one. It is similar to what Segwit2x hard fork want to happen they want all Bitcoin nodes to disappear and replaced by Segwit2x nodes but since people didn't want to support it, it didn't happened. The difference is they don't want to increase the total supply. And personally I think that expanding the total supply is not a good idea.

My answer would be it is, but it's not likely for such a change to ever happen because it would result in a coin with less value. Technically you could fork bitcoin and change the max supply, and this is why it is possible to change the supply. Once you fork a bitcoin, to chains are created, and the community then decides which one will get their support. Right now all the forks in bitcoin resulted in two accepted coins (accepted by users, miners and exchanges), but it would be possible for the community to just support one, and this would work as an update to bitcoin.

So basically what I'm trying to say is that if a fork like that ever happened you could end up with three possible end results:
- Everyone adopts the new chain, and the new chain is now named BTC, and the BTC legacy "dies". This fork would behave as an update for BTC (in this scenario you just got the bitcoin max supply increased)
- Both chains are supported and you would have BTC as it is now, and an alt with a bigger coin supply (in this case, the BTC is the same, and you just have an alt with a bigger supply, but it is not bitcoin)
- The forked chain would have no support and it would "die". In this case the BTC supply remained the same.

Since BTC supply is crucial for it's inherent value, I doubt a fork like this would ever happen, and if it did, we would probably stay in scenario three, and that alt would have no support (from users, miners and exchanges) and would eventually "die".