Bitcoin Forum

I personally don’t think it would ever come to that point, since the value of bitcoin adjusts to satisfy the demand. I’d like to hear other opinions?

It is not possible for us to have shortage. When there is high demand for bitcoin the price will directly increase and the least fraction will be expensive and profitable. That is not shortage. People will only avoid satoshi not full bitcoin.

Nope I don't think that it is possible,
Bitcoin has small fractions so even if all of the supply has been mined it would never have a shortage,
The price of Sats could get higher and I don't think that there could be a shortage since every sats count ,
I don't even think that we could see 1 Sats =$1 .
So it would really be impossible.

your question doesn't have anything to do with value of bitcoin or price.

shortage of bitcoin can only happen if there were more people wanting to have some amount of bitcoin but there weren't enough for them. for example this can happen if an extremely large number of coins were lost. the amount has to be huge though, something like 15 millions bitcoin lost! but that is highly unlikely to happen.
so we will continue to have a little less than the cap which is 21000000.00000000 bitcoin and that is enough for the world.

in our time it is impossible there are lots of bitcoin to be mine and halving will took place to it, and we are all dead after the last bitcoin will be halve, and since there are some instances that the bitcoin are on the address that no has an owner it will affect the market of bitcoin in the end.

And also, if ever 15 millions of bitcoin actually gets lost, always remember that bitcoin is very divisible. Satoshi or "sats" currently being the smallest denomination(8 decimal places) that's currently being used.

There will be no shortage in bitcoin no matter the situation is. Considering that bitcoin is divisible into lower units just like mjqlqw said, even if there's a handful of bitcoin left for the world to share, everyone can still receive their part of the pie. Also, nobody needs to have one whole bitcoin for them to be considered owners of bitcoin, even a handful of dust makes you one proud owner of a revolutionary cryptocurrency, so why think of shortage when it's entirely out of the question?

That's good for theory! But bitcoin shortage can actually happen in real life. Even if the demand increases to some unforeseen height and the price follows the same pattern, we will have 8 decimals to use. Now as per your scenario, lets assume that the price of a single satoshi reached to $1. But can you actually send one satoshi to another address for any low value transaction? I believe not! The current network won't be able to handle this transaction, not even LN!

So for theory, we can keep dividing into decimals as bitcoin's price keeps on increasing, but sending such smaller transactions would become a real challenge! The network will be overburdened with transactions which will push the fees into next level. So you will end up paying fees which will be higher than the transaction value.

So we can have bitcoin shortage most certainly! But chance of happening it is pretty slim! Probably the entire market cap of bitcoin would have to reach few thousand trillions to see such incident, but it is nothing immune from happening!

That depends on the part Bitcoin will play and on the units we use. For now we are far from shortage, of course. However, if the population and with it the amount of money in the world grows with Bitcoin taking the bigger and bigger stake in it, we might arrive to problems. Let's say we are in the world where Bitcoin is legal tender, transactions and fees issues are somehow solved and we come to the point when 1 Satoshi is worth around $1. This means that there are now some things that should cost less (say, a chewing gum or a candy), but it cannot, because we don't have anything smaller than Satoshi. I went through some discussions on the possibility to break down Satoshi into smaller units, and it seems that it's impossible currently but might be possible through gradual changes. If it is, Bitcoin shortage will not happen. If it's not, it might theoretically.

You could say its 21,000,000 bitcoins, but you could also say its  2,100,000,000,000,000 satoshis. LN is already using 12 decimals instead of 8, but Bitcoin is ready to use 16 decimals should the need come.

I think in the future bitcoin value can keep going up, and it might come a time where a simple satoshi could buy coffee or such, then they would just extend the decimals. This is a deflationary coin, not only will there never be more than 21 million, but there are also coins that are lost forever, you will see because they are not moved in years, people losing their wallet/key etc.

The last bitcoin will be mined in 2140 and until that year bitcoin production will slow down, so the supply is slowly decreasing while the demand grows. But its ok, because it will start finding its value, kinda like gold did.

Yeah,it is possible to make trading based on short selling. Crypto trading platforms are not here only for long trading positions and Bitmex is known trading platform for this purpose. Demand increases with increasing prices and nowadays supply is more than demand IMHO.

Supply is more than the demand. When people know much about bitcoin we can see the market having a much increased number of users and decreased supply. This difference will create a large scale growth in marketcap as well with the price of bitcoin when the entire 21 million gets mined.

Bitcoin shortage?
Could you mean the currency per-se or the transaction?
Bitcoin cryptocurrency cannot go on shortage. I don't know if users can be more than the available currency.
But the tranction may be short, If the trading result as loss.

If every country make bitcoin legal, and the demand for bitcoin increases I still think its possible to have some shortages but not too much since many hodlers will sell their bitcoin to take some profit. The supply will not increase with bitcoin, but the demand continues to rise everyday so i think this is really possible in the future.

Bitcoin's value is reflected solely through the price mechanism, because of the fact that it trades on the open market without any central entity to regulate its price movements.

When there is excess demand that can't be handled based on the supply, then the price will adjusted accordingly upwards. There won't ever be a stage where bitcoin is unusable because of low supply or high demand, because we can infinitely divide bitcoin into subunits of account. So no, a shortage is not possible, even if substantial amounts of coins got hacked, because bitcoin isn't a good - it can be divided and still used in the same way.

However, long term I do see adoption playing a big role in pushing aggregate demand for bitcoin, because after all you do need BTC to carry out transactions on the bitcoin blockchain. And that's a reason why I'm quite optimistic about the long term investment aspect of it as well.

I don't understand what do you mean by "shortage"?
May be you are referring to high demand, remember even if we lose more million of bitcoins the remaining bitcoins will become more valuable.
There are 100,000,000 satoshi in one bitcoin, if bitcoin become expensive enough in future due to low supply, we can deal in Satoshi and other smaller units like mBTC.

There will be high demand but there will be no shortage especially after some more halvings when very little coins will be mined. When people start spending Bitcoin it will circulate like normal fiat money and go back to an exchange because some people will be unable to buy the things they need with it or some people will have to buy a local currency of a country where bitcoin acceptance is low. Traders will always keep some coins available on exchanges.

do you know there are only 185,000 units of gold in the world.
i know crazy right.
185,000tonnes. thats it. end of

but gold can be split up into kg, grams
but gold can be split up into ounces

bitcoin can be split up into 'bits' and 'satoshi's'

its like pizza. you may order only 1 large pizza. but it is sliced up so that more than one person have have a piece of it

Bitcoin is divisible up to 100 million (100 million Satoshi's in one bitcoin)

It is unlikely we will reach a day where there is not enough Satoshi's to go around, It starts to scale quite drastically as the price per satoshi climbs by say for example, a dollar etc.

But if we reached that day, that would be a phenomenal problem to have for those who believed in the technology early :)

Some say the 21 million bitcoin limit is not set in stone. Like this thread
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5116424.0
But as far as I know from the very beginning it does have a cap of 21 million, but will they all be claimed and circulated is a different story. There have been lost and theft of a portion of those 21 million bitcoins as you have mentioned.
With the law of supply and demand the price can not fall below a certain point from now on going forward.

ok. lets view it another way.

stats say people on average save up $24k fiat bank savings .. lets call it 21k for easy math
bitcoin will have
2100000000000000 sharable units

now lets say a 'bit'(100sat) was $1
$21,000,000,000,000.00
thats $21 trillion
or enough for:
1,000,000,000 (1 billion people to put their whole life savings into bitcoin)
or if they are smart investors that dont put al their eggs into one basket
10,000,000,000(10 billion people putting in 10% of their life savings into bitcoin and obviously diversifying the other 90% into other assets)

which. if this was done where $1 =100 sats(a bit). then 1btc=$1m

every coin has advantages and disadvantages, it is indeed a lack of the Bitcoin because if the request there is no then Bitcoin will die. at the end of 2017 the value of Bitcoin is getting higher because demand more and more and increasing.

you are confusing two different discussions. one being about "theft" and another being about "lost".
when some bitcoin is being stolen it is not lost, it just goes into possession of someone else. by "lost" we mean truly lost like when you burn coins (example is sending them to an OP_RETURN output).
that topic you linked is mostly nonsense, 21 million is set in stone mathematically but whether we eventually reach that is another discussion about how much is actually lost. in which case you have to count all the real lost  coins.

IMO there will be no shortage of Bitcoins. As all know that there are only a limited amount of Bitcoins created but still, it's impossible to mine them all. Moreover as the price of Bitcoin too volatile and keeps on increasing and decreasing so it will be not possible for someone to mine .
But who knows about future, maybe we can come to an era where there will be no more supply of Bitcoins be there to meet the present demands but still it gonna be a really tough time to reach that time period in near future.

For my own opinion, my answer is no. It is not possible for the supply of Bitcoin happen a shortage. Because even the time that it bullrun like it went high going to the moon, it never happens, the demand of the Bitcoin always satisfies and as of now, we can clearly see that it cant be happen where the crypto market goes like this.

Wait what? It is possible lmao. It's actually projected to happen around year 2140. You might want to do more reading on the subject.


I agree that it's incredibly unlikely, but $19k is far from the moon people are expecting lol. I do get your point though, that even at Bitcoin's peak, people never actually felt shortage of any kind.

True but theft can result in those bitcoins being lost as well.
Just look at the quadrigacx debacle that is still going on. They essentially stole the crypto which were held in confidence of their customers in cold wallets. But now those bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies are lost due to the wallets private keys being known only by the ceo of the company but he apparently died.
So the result was at the being a theft of their cryptocurrencies but then it became a loss without recovery in sight of those funds.

That's a really bad argument. While it may not apply in the same exact context, saying that bitcoin is not scarce because we have altcoins is like saying that gold is not limited because we have silver. Same with the forks; they're nothing but copies. Sure people can fork and create as much altcoins as they want, but whose actually going to accept and use them? Most altcoins are pretty much like monopoly(the board game) money.

Shortage will not be referred to its price. Maybe you are talking about the bitcoin cap. And if somebody is holding a very huge amount then you will only be seeing less amount of bitcoin circulating the market. However it could still not cause a shortage of bitcoin from the market as its price will just goes up and the circulation will go down

 Shortage could theoretically  happen if Bitcoin remains stable,    and the 21 million Bitcoin supply limit is reached with billions of people using Bitcoin.
But I think the stability can be forcefully breached if the demand is on the extreme when whatever is keeping it stable tries to keep it stable.
Developers could make bitcoin supply unlimited to avoid such shortage assuming Bitcoin continues to be stable.

I don't think OP is talking about short selling of BITCOIN. The shortage is impossible for bitcoin.  For satisfying the current demand, we need lower prices, so everyone will want their piece from the cake.

yes, public demand will create value, high or low. BTC's supply every time always decreases, whereas we see today, that public demand for crypto is very large.

it will create a bullish market. but, now I call it the recovery market. so the market moves slowly.  and BTC only has a little shortage. because the market is determined by fast charts.

This will always be subjected to circulation, and if we think about the shortage it won't happen because every people has their own decision. Holders will not stay longer, they'll come to a certain point that dumping is their final resort when goals is reached. Having good profit is the target if every trader, so that's expected that the price will eventually drop down.

I don't think that's going to happen. Many wonder what will happen when all bitcoins are mined, but the deficit is unlikely to be expected.

There is the unlikely chance someone will find a new source (there is still some gold extraction going on in my country, at the expense of destroying the rain forest that nature took millennia to grow), i like to think eventually someone will find gold in the asteroid belt... So its not impossible, that the price of gold could go down.

I'm not sure we will find new sources, BTC is the end of transaction innovation. gold and BTC will be the first choice and compete for the future. So, I see that BTC shortages cannot be improved by anything.

BTC shortage will be in the spotlight in the crypto world, today, tomorrow and the future.

In the cryptocurrency deficit can not be. If the demand for cryptocurrency rises, its price rises and it is bought at a higher price. It should also be borne in mind that there are thousands of different cryptocurrencies on the cryptocurrency market, and many of them have surpassed bitcoin in their functionality. In my opinion, even from this point of view, there will not be a bitcoin deficit.

There are 100,000,000 Satoshi in one Bitcoin and more than enough for everyone, if the demand outweigh the supply. So most people will not be able to afford 1 whole bitcoin, but they will be able to own a number of Satoshis.  ;) 

Bitcoin was developed to mimic Gold and the scarcity and price of the commodity, determine the value of the smaller units of that commodity. <Not a lot of people own Gold bars, but they do own rings and jewellery that was made of Gold.>  ;)

If the fees can be remove from the bitcoin transaction then a bitcoin shortage will not a be a problem in the future. 1 satoshi will be like 1 dollar or even a $1k even when some bitcoins get lost in the circulation because some people have lost it or the owner is now dead.

it will not be possible to experience a lack of bitcoin, because supply and demand affect and prices affect the number of bitcoins on the market. Bitcoin has been set according to the current market.

I think the 21 Million supply is more than enough for bitcoin user and investors. Even some of miners and companies hold and hides their coins, It will only make its price to increase and that way the whales again will sell there BTC for a higher price. Vice versa.

    When the entire world will be using Bitcoin and the demand is rising due to all the people in the world is using Bitcoin there naturally arise a possibility in shortage but in Bitcoin there is a limited amount of Bitcoin available that is an amount of  only 21 million Bitcoins are there and not more is been produced .The reality is there will not be a shortage since when there comes a shortage there will be difficulties to mine more Bitcoins so we can assume that there will never arise a shortage in Bitcoin over the world Bitcoin will lead to an expensive market as the demand increases and the supply will remain the same .

When full adoption do happens there would be shortage, imagine 21M total overall supply of BTC excluding for those coins lost forever then it wont really
be enough to circulate basing on total population worldwide which would use btc as a payment.There are alternatives though but if we do talk BTC supply then there would be shortage.

No it is not possible.

The very nature of your question, "is it possible to have a shortage" , reveals a lack of understanding in the free market.
- If price is free to adjust to demand as is the fundamental characteristic in a free market, there can never be a shortage.  

Even if all but one Bitcoin were lost it would/could be adjusted through a fork to allow infinite division, allowing everyone in the world to use it.  But the price for that last whole Bitcoin would represent the total capital value of the whole Bitcoin market.  

And if some family descendent of yours 100 years from now found the recovery seed key in a long lost safety deposit box you put your backup for a dozen BTC, ---they would own the world.

most of this will work in conditions like now, although only having a potential increase of only tens of dollars, I think it is still considered good. The only thing to do shortage is BTC should be stable, when that conditions doesn't meet, then you should avoid that

No, there will technically not be a shortage given that the price is reached when supply and demand are at equilibrium, but as a practical matter if bitcoin reaches $50,000 or higher we can say there is a shortage for most people at a price they can afford, so they will have to resort to accumulating satoshis.

You mean shortage of the coins? Nope, i don't think it will happen. First of all, there is a maximum supply of 21 million coins. Assuming 20 million of the coins are lost, there will still be 1 million of those coins. The price of those will be extremely high (or very low due to people losing faith after the 20 million of those coins are lost) and the coins will be can be further divided into smaller values than 1 satoshi. We might even consider 1 satoshi as 1 whole coin too.

You think this is still possible with Bitcoin gradually becoming a stablecoin? We all know the original goal was to make Bitcoin mimic gold with its scarcity but some believe this is no longer important

There can be no shortage of bitcoin or other specific cryptocurrency in cryptocurrency. If demand for cryptocurrency rises, and supply cannot meet demand, the price for this cryptocurrency rises and buyers and sellers come to an agreement based on the increased price of cryptocurrency.
In addition, the cryptocurrency market will always contain many homogeneous coins and tokens with similar functionality in the future. Therefore, the choice should always be large and diverse.

I dont think all investors agree to the price of bitcoin to be stable, and not all investors agree that fluctuations are shortages? many people take advantage of fluctuations for profit, so I don't think that the price of bitcoin should continue to be stable? and after all the price can't be dictated to be stable right?

Quite Impossible.

As Bitcoin is made with a specific specification which has given more potential to Bitcoin to maintain its distribution according to demand by controlling its price against fiat currency. As well as Bitcoin Bitcoin has a great feature to get divided into 100000000 parts which can be individually identified on a network and it's called Satoshi.

Bitcoin has a great future considering the technology behind it. The blockchain is really innovative and revolutionary technology can bring more flexibility, mobility, and transparency along with security for businesses in the coming future.

Bitcoin rates are based on increasing use and demand for the world and supplies available. If the world accepts this new technology, then definitely the price of bitcoin will be a skyrocket in the coming future.

I'm not saying impossible but it's highly unlikely. We have a huge amount of bitcoins lost in forgotten wallets etc true, but bitcoin is very divisible as many here already mentioned. Even if the value of a bitcoin goes to 1M, there's still enough satoshi to go around.

Bitcoin becomes more stable if there is more bitcoin into circulation beyond the supply limit. As the demand to supply is the major factor making the price of bitcoin, automatically the demand for Satoshi keeps increasing same as that people now speculate about bitcoin. In this way to the population the 21 million bitcoin is more than enough.

I dont think so,because bitcoin was continuing it rotation and the supply of its own was fitted for many people ,so the chance for the bitcoin shortage was so small,just remember everything was always move when you say cryptocurrencies.

The 21 million supply of bitcoin is not just number but a deflating commodity if the demand get higher the total supply the the price become the determining factor.

If needed, we cut just keep adding more zeros after the one satoshi level.  So shortages of fractions of bitcoins are impossible, but we might one day see shortages of sellers who want to sell a whole bitcoin.

We can already see exchanges that offer trades in fractions of satoshis. I think It would make good sense if the bitcoin blockchain added a fraction of satoshi level also, we already now see the lowest transactions payment for one bytes is down on 1 Satoshi, so we already now need a lower amount than 1 satoshi for byte transactions.

If we are looking at the bitcoin's value today we are clearly say that bitcoin shortage is impossible. It is like a demand and supply and in current situation is supply of bitcoin is more than demand of market. And I think bitcoin shortage will never happen because it is not a image form and it is a digital generated.

today maybe but in the future its possible . just so you know bitcoin total max supply is only at 21 million   . the time will come that all 21 million supply will be mined out and that can cause a shortage  but that's  good i think because they said that once the supply runs out the value of bitcoin can also become expensive  .  yet im still scared if shortage happens because whenever i hear the word shortage the first thing that comes to my mind is bad news or something bad will happen   .

Even if the demand increases i think the supply is still enough to satisfies the needs of the public. If there’s a buyer for sure there is sellers and the cycle will continue. The currenc supply can last for the next 30years, but its hard to be sure in the future. We are still on the good side and too far for this one so don’t panic.

At the moment that's not something anyone is being worried about as Bitcoin shortage involves multiple parties selling their Bitcoins at a full scale.
I still think its likely to happen ONLY if government requests so which again i do seriously think it will happen...

The way the market is heading with Bitcoin is so green that it's very unlikely

if bitcoin has reached 21 million and bitcoin cannot be mined then the lack of bitcoin will occur. for now, the number of bitcoin is very much. we can get large amounts of bitcoin in the trading market and now it's very easy to buy and get bitcoin. and currently, the number of bitcoins has not reached 21 million so the availability of bitcoin is still very much.

What do you mean that BTC should be stable?

What good does it give when it is stable? If there are a lot of people that are demanding for Bitcoin, I don't think we should really expect a not volatile Bitcoin or stable Bitcoin. That means, it is still volatile but the thing is, since we are talking about Bitcoin being in demand, the price of it is so high so I think even if there are a lot of people wanting it, even with a satoshi they can really use it.

The value rises eventually as the demand rises. Since the supply is fixed, it will not be affected even if the demand will have an exponential growth, as it is predicted in the foreseeable future. The supply, even when it reaches its maximum level, will still be dwindling considering that there are a good number of Bitcoins that have been permanently lost and forgotten. This is still growing until now. So there is no other adjustment but to the value alone. Time will definitely come when .001 BTC is already a treasure.

Like all the other are posting it's not possible, because of it's being divisible, but in the future even a 1 Satoshi will have big value in the market, if what Mcafee predict come true that it will hit $1 million I would like Bitcoin to reach $1 million I don't want that old man to eat his dick.

Looking at Bitcoin, its nature and also how secured it is, people have been always demanding or buying BTC rather than altcoins. This is because they know how BTC works. Looking at this post, I can boldly say that BTC will never be in shortage because of its high demand and also so many altcoins being paired with it on the various exchanges.

Yeah at best it's going to be an alternative to fiat so even if it has a finite quantity, i doubt the demand will be that high to warrant a shortage. The supply just moves around and would just probably increase in value if the demand rises.

When a Bitcoin demand is high then it will affect the increase in market prices so that it is profitable, it cannot be said to lack because there is a cycle of rotation in it. Therefore we will not lack Bitcoin.

No it is not possible
We have shortage of bitcoin free float because some of btc are staying on wallets with high amount of bitcoin .If bitcoins from that wallets will vanish than we will have panic sell off
some bitcoins has been lost forever
But overall  is 21 mln of bitcoin

Sooner or later it will happen. But when that happens its price will be very high. I would like to catch this time and see how to change the crypto market after that.

There is no shortage in the future, even how big the adoption is.
Let's make it simple, most of us holding BTC are investors and trading is active, so if there is a high demand, the effect is only the increase of price.

In essence, when more and more people want Bitcoin, it will increase the price of Bitcoin.
When Bitcoin supply is getting smaller, more and more people are having trouble getting Bitcoin.
So I think it's getting longer that the price of Bitcoin will increase and it becomes a benefit for all of us who have Bitcoin.

I am so sure as how I sure of the fairness of the gameplay   gambling (https://vegascasino.io/casino/video-slots/show-me-the-mummy?utm_source=ccshowmethemummy) site I am playing with. On a serious note, is because of how bitcoin is circulating. Many of us here are holding, and trading is very active, the only thing that could happen is the increase of price.

how can you say when there was only 21 million limited supply said by the experts but i dont think that there will be a shortage because like what you said , people are always actively trading and selling thier coins in which the bitcoin's can only circulate from time to time from different user but what if we were wrong ? what if those people will only prefer to hodl instread of selling because they are also aware that bitcoin's value will rise ?  well if that's the case then no worries , there are still other cryptos out there that have alot of supply .   some even have unlimited supply like doggie coin  .

No it is not a possibility.

Supply/Demand. In bitcoin supply is very stable but demand is changing a lot. If demand grows 1000 times, that means btc price would grow a lot. At some point people would sell their bitcoins when demanders give better price for it.

Bitcoin shortage will not happen unless millions investors comes this year to invest to the bitcoin and we don't know what happen once we have bitcoin shortage and for sure if Satoshi Nakamoto will see bitcoin shortage they qill add more bitcoin again for the total supply I think  but for we need to focus on the problem on the bitcoin which is the price on how we increase that we are far from the bitcoin shortage as of now.

Sure it's possible... When only 2.1 quadrillion people owns a single satoshi, there's no more satoshis left to distribute. Maybe in 200 years? Right now, we only have 7.3 billion people in the planet. Maybe an alien race with vastly larger population will cause a shortage, if they also buy BTC.

It is not possible since there are more than enough bitcoin for everyone in the world. Bitcoin although a digital currency can be treated like any other commodity on the stock exchange. When the demand becomes high, people are compelled to buy it at a higher price. Bitcoin cannot experience shortage but the only thing at stake is that price would go high when supply does not meet demand.

I don't think bitcoin can ever run short because these days almost every crypto enthusiasts is either trading some of his/her or bitcoins or using it to pay for transactions he makes. Anyway if it ever gets to the point of shortage i hope to be holding some then because the price would surely reach another all time high again. ;D

Demand for bitcoin can increase prices, which is created because the positive issues of bitcoin that occur in developed countries will be globally compressed so that the needs of bitcoin are getting higher.
If a negative issue occurs, of course the price of bitcoin will also be affected and the transaction will become less frequent, so the price is depressed and slowly decreases.

Yes it is not possible because the more bitcoin is being use the more it is generating by people but another reality is bitcoin demand is rising day by day, people from all over the world are asking for bitcoin and buying goods with bitcoin, so that’s makes sense if in market bitcoin become short but it is good for the market, price will rise with low supply.

 Bitcoin shortage is highly possible. When the demand for Bitcoin exceed the amount of Bitcoin available in the crypto ecosystem, there will definitely be a shortage of it. But the time for the shortage of Bitcoin is not close. Just now, the amount of circulating Bitcoins are more than the demand rate of it in the crypto ecosystem.

This is one point. This is fact.
Then is next one, which is bitcoin you can divide in theory endlessly so you never run out of it in circulation.
For this two facts, this problem won't exist in Bitcoin.