Bitcoin Forum

Good Day Everyone!
I think this is the most appropriate section where I can post my question regarding the development of Bitcoin.
I just read the Bitcoin whitepaper and most of it content are difficult for me to understand, lots of them are Mathematical Equation and programs. Upon reading  there is only one question. that pops in my mind.
What processes or steps in order for the creator to increase its Supply Limit? [I am also pertaining  to Alternative Coins not just Bitcoins]. Someone says that it is complicated.
Can you cite some relevant previous post or links?

The maximum number of Bitcoins ever to be created is more or less an arbitrary choice. That choice has been made before the first block was mined, and it will never be changed.

For you to change the total supply of the Coins that can be mined it can be done with a hard fork but, another coin would just be made with the name Bitcoin on it. it's imposible for you to change the supply it's made only to have 21m on it (BTC).

For bitcoin, you would have to make hard fork, meaning you would have to convince whole network to increase total supply of coins in order to make it happen. Otherwise, if only part of the network agrees, you would end up with separate chain, another "bitcoin", a worthless copy with higher supply.

Regarding other coins, it's really case to case basis but for most of them, the same rules as for bitcoin, applies.

For most ERC20 tokens, it's impossible since it would require new smart contract and in practice new coin.

Overall it's very difficult thing to do and if you don't have really good reason and will convince whole network, you won't be able to do it.

To answer your exact question (bolded) I think if Satoshi Nakamoto suddenly showed up and asked everybody to increase the Supply Limit, it might happen.

Not that it's a good idea or a bad idea.

Just like any other network rules, the block reward could be modified through hard forks. If you convince everyone to run your client with the new block rewards, then you have effectively increased the supply limit. Anyone can do this, not limited to the creator. The whole point of Bitcoin is for anyone to be able to make changes and people can choose to or not to follow you.

Anyways, there is no economic incentives to do so. It would just devalue Bitcoin.

Could he even prove who he was any more? Moving coins from the appropriate blocks only proves that person has control over those private keys and nothing else.

And I'm sure a large proportion of Bitcoin fans would take great pleasure in ignoring the opinion of one person just to prove a point.

As for the original question, a hard fork with overwhelming consensus would be required to raise the supply. It would take a truly epic PR campaign and probable mass hypnosis to get it through.

This thing is only possible on forking it but changing the total supply of bitcoin itself wont really be changed since the first block been mined just like the same on those guys posted above. Why wont bother such thing? Just leave bitcoin as it should be  ;D

I now understand the concept. So basically, the maximum 21M supply will never be changed when the first block was mined. It's like you only have one chance to change its limit.

Correct.

You can. As long as you modify the code to increase the block reward and people run it, you would have effectively increased the total possible coin in circulation. The change can only be for those running your modified client.

It wouldn't be considered Bitcoin anymore though, since the coin cap violates one of the few goals that Bitcoin is trying to achieve.

Bitcoin is a protocol written by Satoshi Nakamoto in whitepaper ---> https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf (https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf).
limited supply Is an option developed by the developer to create a scarcity in the currency of Bitcoin, which Considers the most important reasons for decentralization and high value.
Satoshi is able to modify this number.
Developers can modify it and that is called Hard fork.

one of the reasons bitcoin is hard for Governments to meddle in btc,is its limited supply. When bitcoins get seized such in what has happened with BTC-E exchange the prices goes up.  Forgetting the fact you would have to hard fork, you turn bitcoin into a fiat currency and it value would fall.

The maximum number of bitcoins that will ever be in circulation is 20999999.9769, just shy of 21 million. This number cannot be changed in vanilla bitcoin, but may vary in derivative coins or forked coins. The number chosen was supposedly random for BTC, whereas other coins choose a number that has some meaning, such as pi, or the number of estimated ounces of Gold in the world.

Satoshi cannot modify this number and make everyone accept it. Anyone with decent technical knowledge can modify the number but they cannot expect everyone to follow it.
It's actually a lot less than that. Factoring out the lost Bitcoins, the maximum possible number of Bitcoins to be generated is roughly 20999827.243BTC.

That's when the fork comes, they are modifying everything according to what they believe that's right. Everyone that will hear a person that wants to increase the supply limit will mostly be ignored. We do believe already that 21 Million supply is a good number and we can't argue with it anymore. And mining the total supply limit of BTC will take time, so we're all dead by that time - assumed year (2140).

It would increase but not more than the usual, if we would just know everything about  mining we would know that each new block release new bitcoins into the network and would continue to do until the year 2140. If it is a hard fork, then there would be two different coins and each would ave 21 million as a limit, if it was just a soft fork then the supply would just stay the same.

Increasing supply limit technically needs a consensus, most of the people need to support this option and upgrade their wallets, or there will be a hard fork. However, I think increasing the supply limit will reduce the price of 1 bitcoin, and the big whale will not support it.

Sorry this post has got nothing with the original post but I HAVE to comment.

These are the words of some tired, old man who has seen a battles too many. He is gazing at the sunset, leaning on his stick and wondering  "Ohh, Was it all worth it??"

A lot of people must bet tired of the constant flux and the pettiness of human nature on display. Like, why did Satoshi ever think that us semi-apes could ever arrive on consensus..LOL..Sorry again, meant no disrespect to anybody. This post just triggered a few emotions. To ends this rant:
Í dub thee unforgiven!!

"A tired man they see no longer cares
The old man then prepares
To die regretfully
That old man here is me"

So the truth is that there is no real reason why the totale supply of bitcoin was made 21million, it is just a number chosen by the creater and he only is the one capable of giving the reson behiend it, as for the altcoins you can see that they have different supply and some of them have crazy amount and i am here refearing to ripple which has 100 billion coin of a supply, my guess that the supply should be small but not crazy small so that many people can get it and its value would increase over time, otherwise it will be worthless if it was unlimited.

That's not entirely true. It really depends whether the original design's transition from subsidy to fees works as intended. The recent uptick in the fee portion of block reward is a good sign, but we still have very limited data. The premise that fees will replace subsidy without fundamentally threatening the network's security is still untested. It's theoretically possible that waning future block rewards could lead to hash rate drops that throw Bitcoin's byzantine fault tolerance in question. Severe enough drops in hash rate could allow older generations of hardware to come back online, opening up the possibility of massive block reorganizations -- and therefore utter unreliability as a value/monetary system.

If this were to happen, a perpetually low but predictable inflation rate -- which guarantees some mining security incentive (fees cannot do that unless they are mandatory and sufficiently high) -- would look very attractive in comparison. That's your economic incentive.

You can but no one will take those modified and increased supply coin, just like those forked coins.

I would say that is mostly due to the limitations of Bitcoin as of now. This could be sustainable though, if the transaction volume continues to increase and miners are able to accomodate more transactions per block.
Massive block reorgs would most likely happen if someone decides to execute an attack on Bitcoin. Old and obsolete ASICs are still able to come back as of now. There isn't any relation to older ASICs coming online, as far as the security of the network is concerned. If you're going to attack the network, might as well as use the most efficient ASICs out there, no need for old ASICs.

I'm really bad at economics, so forgive me if I misunderstood anything. Isn't the additional coin going to affect the market? If its too small, it wouldn't make a difference to the miner.

The main thing that attract most of us is that Bitcoin has a fixed and transparent coin supply. I doubt most people would support breaking the basic feature that defines Bitcoin.

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So, let me ask you again. Can you technically increase the supply of coins? Even if its a hard fork? It seems like what you meant is that the rules of the network cannot be changed since the genesis block, while changes are still being made. It is possible with consensus.

Bitcoin diamond did it, they changed 21 million to 210 million coin. I think what he meant with "no one will take those modified coins" is that we only treat those forked coins as shitcoins.
Raising the supply is just a matter of changing the code, the hard part is to get everyone to accept that new coin.

Maybe you missed the point about "hash rate drops that throw Bitcoin's byzantine fault tolerance in question." I wasn't making a statement about potential attacks on the system as is. The context is dwindling block reward (due to lack of fee income), which disincentivizes mining and sends hash rate into a downward spiral. Consider this IRC discussion from 2015 (https://botbot.me/freenode/bitcoin-wizards/2015-08-25/?msg=48126773&page=3):



Of course it will affect the market. So does Bitcoin's current and historically high inflation rate. The point was that it might have made economic sense -- particularly from a long term perspective -- to pay (via inflation) for better security guarantees. Those security guarantees may in turn have made your investment more valuable in the long run. I assume this is why Peter Todd feels this way (https://twitter.com/peterktodd/status/697532042553065472):



Yes. Unless the protocol became fundamentally broken, in which case, users might be incentivized to fix it. We'll see how Bitcoin fares when the subsidy begins to run dry:

No Bitcoin holder would ever agree to this.

I don't think that increasing supply limit is a good idea. If someone do this then people will not thrust to bitcoin anymore. If the supply limit increase its mean that there is inflation probability which is bad for bitcoin holder. I think lowering fee cost is more important than increasing supply limit.

Sorry for a long discussion about the increasing supply of Bitcoin or any other currencies. I've read all of the replies and almost all of the terms used are beyond my knowledge about Cryptocurrencies, I am expecting replies that in order to create or increase the supply is all about reprogramming the cryptography used, but it turns out that there is something to do with genesis blockchain, the creator and the people using Bitcoins.

By the way, some said that an increase of supply will devalue Bitcoin, how?

Increasing the supply limit will devalue each bitcoin because more will be in circulation. It is like the American dollar. They just keep printing money and it keeps getting worth less and less in other countries.

Increasing the supply of bitcoin above the 21million maximum will no doubt destroy the credibility and value of Bitcoin. This has happened in the recent past with some altcoins and it didn't turn out well as many holders speedily dumped their units and left. It happened with Swisscoin on coinexchange. Price came crashing and the coins became as worthless as bitconnect coin now.