Bitcoin Forum

For long, Bitcoin has been touted as the "store of value" of the crypto/Blockchain space with its limited supply of 21 million coins. Based on estimates, all Bitcoin will be mined by 2100. Now, what if developers decide to increase that hard cap in supply? If at that point in time, Bitcoin's prices stay just the way they are right now (less than $1m), it may become unprofitable for miners to continue supporting the Blockchain. With no block reward, they'll be living off fees. If prices are too low, earned fees won't be able to sustain miner's operations. By then, developers would need to raise the limit of 21 million coins to a higher value, re-introducing a block reward in order to attract miners into the Blockchain. Otherwise, the security of the Bitcoin blockchain will be at risk.

Do you think that the need to increase BTC's max supply will arise in the future? Or will Bitcoin be able to "live" just fine with a max supply of 21 million coins? Your input will be greatly appreciated. :)

If it ever becomes a world reserve currency used for payments all around the world like some people believe we will have to think of something.

By the time Bitcoin reaches 21 million we will probably have at least 1/4 of that permanently lost and another 1/4 in safe accounts of lifetime hodlers which will leave only 10 million in circulation. That's not enough for over 500 million people. I said 500 because not all people in the world will use Bitcoin just like USD and EUR are estimated to be used by about 350 million people each.

It would still be profitable so long as more people start using bitcoin. This would me more transaction fees for the miners on top of block rewards

That won't be necessary. Unlike most fiat currency
Bitcoin has 8 decimal blockchain values (1 satoshi = 0.00000001 BTC) and 11 decimal values for Lightning network Payment channels (I millisatoshi = 0.00000000001 BTC)
So there would be no need to increase more coins if 0.001 BTC can be 100,000 Satoshi or 1 mBTC

Or introduce an even smaller denomination allowed to be used and recognized in between wallets? That might not be the best solution to address this non-problem but it gets the job done all the same, though entirely dependent on the value of bitcoin by then of course. Manipulating the supply cap of bitcoin would only make things complicated, as that will show that bitcoin can also be controlled by someone which will then make the community lose their trust in it and eventually abandon bitcoin. Maybe I'm exaggerating things, but that could really happen if decisions like this would be followed hastily without much thought.

I think Bitcoin can live with the 21 million supply, I think we have enough:


https://www.btcsatoshi.com/

And technically the supply can be increase, but it will require a consensus that everyone needs to agree, because you need to change the code. And then we will have to see another hard fork.

But we have to understand the very simple principle of core value of Bitcoin, limited supply, which gave it a deflationary throughout, until the very last BTC is mine.

Well, bitcoin max supply will remain 21 million and it will always the same as what Satoshi created that code, --unless if you will change the bitcoin code and protocols just to increase the supply. Bitcoin miners will always incentives because of transaction fees, the more active on trading the more transactions will be made by those miners. Bitcoin won't work without miners and miners won't incentives if there are no transactions and perhaps that is enough to sustain the miners' work and also we are paying high fees. Remember that when there is bull run bitcoin fees will also bullish.

I'd rather use smaller fractions of satoshis instead. I think the limited supply of BTC now became a very powerful psychological thing and having the supply suddenly turn into billions of BTC might do more bad than good, considering supply is one of the reasons some people are here.

Smaller fractions of satoshis is about the same thing as having more supply, without having to think "oh, now we have more BTC!". If Bitcoin ever gets to $100k or more, I personally believe this will become a problem not just for miners, but for everyone else.

yeah, it just translates to the fact that smaller fraction of satoshis will be valuable in the future. no need to have additional supply. who knows in the future 1 satoshi will be worth $1? so whatever the supply right now is enough. the value of every fraction will just change thru time. if the fees received by the miners will just be few satoshis, that means at that time every satoshi counts and very valuable

In my opinion it is better to make another coin same as bitcoin and tradable too but in different value. Until such time that coins market price are at the same value and ready to merge. This way prices of bitcoin will not be change but the supply will do. I think it could be done a done and pretty sure that the new bitcoin creation will get a hype and eventually will be able to get the same.price as the bitcoin in just a small period of time. Well I guess merging could be the best way to add more btc supply.

Increasing the supply is like the helicopter money.

I don't think that there's a need for it to increase. It's bitcoin and its scarcity is one of its asset and the best thing that it had. We are far seeing that day that there will be debates of increasing the supply. The concern is more of the transaction speed and fees.

This is a possible scenario, but keep in mind that just because the devs can release a new version of the client, it doesn't mean that the users will automatically adopt it. This is not Ethereum where developers can change protocol as they please.

I think the chance of this happening is higher than some might think, but overall isn't very high right now. If the community fill face this dilemma between inflation or low hashrate, I think most would choose inflation. Low network security is way worse for value than some small inflation rate like 0.5% per year. But for now we don't know what exactly the impact of no block reward will be, so it's all pure speculation right now.

We would maybe have enough if there were really 21 million bitcoins in circulation.

Do you guys really not see that up to 20% of all mined Bitcoins could be lost at this point? This is going to be at elast 30% in the next 10 years and so on and so forth.

I don't know what can be done about those lost coins but we will have to think of something eventually or switch to Bitcoin 2.0.

If it's increased once it'll be increased again which means it's never going to happen as down that road outrageous dilution and endless splintering lies.

The longer Bitcoin stays alive the less likely the prospect of a fundamental change in its nature is. There'll be simply too many clashing points of view to ever reach enough consensus for a change that profound. It could well lead to a bunch of forks once more but they'll be ultimately irrelevant like all the others.

I'm yet to be convinced lightning networks will ever amount to anything, but they have the ability to break a satoshi down into 1000 smaller units. If that's still a problem we'll all be so dead and/or so incomprehensibly rich we'll be long past caring.

I do not think it will be necessary or even if it does, the coin will no more be existing. BTC is popular because of its limited supply of 21million. If it changes, or even if it changes to another limited number, there will be a deflation and I doubt many investor or long term holder would love that.
Satoshi had predicted that either BTC will be so expensive or it will just die. So, if miners can not be happy with the fee (if price low), bitcoin will no more be existed.

bitcoin is a currency that can work also as a store of value. if it were only a store of value then 1 million coin would have been more than enough!

bitcoin is decentralized so the community must decide not the devs.

if price couldn't rise and it were causing problem for miners to make profit, raising the supply would crash the price and that new reward would be worth a lot less than what they were given before the stupid decision!

not because of miners reward, that's for sure.

Bitcoin mining is designed such that it will always be profitable to mine for some people.


You concern is well-founded. Bitcoin is designed such that the block reward determines the level of protection from a 51% attack, and if the block reward is too low, then Bitcoin may be vulnerable to a 51% attack. The question then is how much of a block reward is necessary to prevent a 51% attack, and will fees be enough? The answer to that question is unknown. We have seen 51% attacks against other coins, so we know how much is not enough. We just don't know how much is enough.

OTOH, a very low block reward indicates that nobody uses Bitcoin, so in that case it really doesn't matter if Bitcoin is attacked because Bitcoin has already failed.



No. There is no benefit to increasing the limit.

They'll just have to find a way to make it work, miners don't deal on bitcoin alone as countless number of them mine various other cryptocurrency. Therefore, in a scenario when all bitcoin minable are exhausted I think the miners would just have to feed off the transaction fees with addition to mining other cryptocurrency available and keep the ecosystem running.

Increasing the supply of bitcoin isn't a way out of the problem since we doing that won't make us any different from the centralized government operating in our different countries that constantly increase the supply of fiat by printing trillions from nowhere. There has to be another solution which will be found before that due date, lets just keep faith with bitcoin.

I don't need to see higher supply for bitcoin. Higher supply, lower price.

There are people think that tBTC or Bitcoin Testnet will have value someday so they hold it for the future but I think they exaggerate the future value of tbtc. It is important but don't hope or try to build its value like bitcoin. Things for tests, they should be free.

Soon if bitcoin price is high enough, then people will switch to talk about value of satoshi. How much does 10k satoshi cost at current market price of bitcoin? I think people will talk about it next 8 or 12 years.

The moment you increase the bitcoin supply, the bitcoin will dump so fast that you can't imagine. Why we see so high bitcoin price is that it's supply is limited and fixed. This makes it a valuable currency. Since more people will use bitcoin, its demand will keep increasing but the supply will always remain the same.

Isn't it we already have those bitcoin fork coins? BCH and BSV and others? Yes, it is doable because it is just a piece of code that can be modify specially that it is a open source. But the community will be split again.

For me there's no need to increase the 21 million supply, it is what it was designed. And the unit can be divisible. For the miners, it is still profitable, until the last every bit of bitcoin has been mine. It will just complicate things.

There is always a possibility of a fork, and then it's a matter of time to see which chain live and die. I also believe that the 21 million is somewhat a magic number that has been marketed through various channels (regardless we want it or not) as the bitcoin important value compared to fiat.

When the time come we'll see, I don't really think we need to predict so early.

Not really. IF the issue of supply was because there wasn't enough, Bitcoin could be split into satoshis and that could be used to transact, heck, that's what most transact it most of the time anyway afaik, since transactions with 1BTC or more are pretty rare (unless you're trading). The issue with miners fighting over profits should be remedied if the number of miners was gradually reduced. Mining farms are the ones that are profiting right now due to the sheer amount of miners each farm has but really, once the profits seen from there are reduced, miners would gradually reduce to a point where they would still get profit off of fees.

A 51% is possible, yes, and if it happens, you can honestly believe that Bitcoin would probably lose a lot of support. But I doubt people would vote to increase the supply to avoid the attack, simply because doing so goes against what Bitcoin is after all.

Why do we need to increase the maximum supply? Bitcoin is very dividable, so 21M is enough.

it seems like it would be better if the supply was not added, the rarer the better, no need to worry about losing miners, but if the value is high enough it will keep coming new miners for bitcoin, 21 million supply I think that's very sufficient

Being scarce is why many look at bitcoin as a valuable asset.

Yes, if the time comes and its supply will be increased, many things can happen and we have no idea if those things we have said will actually be one of it.

But as of looking at it, there's really no need for its supply to be increased.

I've read similar articles and I am certain that this subject will be up to a lengthy discussion at some point, but for now, we do not need to worry about this. It is actually consensus that will decide as developers alone do not rule Bitcoin. Communication between all entities that constitute the Bitcoin Community will decide. But as said it is a subject that probably won't be discussed for at least another three years and the next halving of miners rewards.

This will happen way before a satoshi could touch $1. Even if it was worth a penny (and it's getting closer and closer to that point), it'd still be too much imo. Fungibility should be a thing even if BTC touches an insane price point, and one of the most interesting aspects about BTC is that you can precisely pay a very, very small fraction of a penny if you need to.

If $1 will be equal to a satoshi, at that point it'd just crash BTC's price as you'd have to pay more bucks for the fees than you'd send/receive - and nobody's interested in doing that. If price keeps increasing the same way it did after the past few halvings, by 2024-2028 this should already become an issue.

Even if it arises, I think due to the decentralization, it will never be supported by the majority of the persons. As a result, we will see another shit fork of bitcoin claiming to be the real bitcoin. I would oppose to such a proposal if I keep alive.

If anyone wants to see Bitcoin plummet and never survives it, they should increase the total supply above the 21 million. I have no iota of doubt that it's the limited supply of the coin coupled with its pathfinder's status that has given it the value and patronage it currently enjoys despite all the delayed transactions and backlogs that characterized it. Nothing else, IMHO. If coins like LTC or ETH enjoys the same limited 21million supply as Bitcoin; they would've beaten Bitcoin to the number one spot long time ago. So, I think the devs won't for any reason want to adjust Bitcoin supply because they should know there will be grave consequences if they do.

The limited supply is what made it more valuable. It's very limited but  its also divisible up to 8 decimals which 0.00000001 BTC might still have a value one day. if the price can extremely explode up. I guess the transaction fees would have to adjust that we'd be able to send a satoshi. Miners do have an option to mine other coins too if they feel like its not worth mining anymore.

Its fixed supply makes it a unique coin, miners would charge higher transaction fees when it comes to that angle of 2100; it would be interesting to watch as when it is completely mined in the next halving. Increasing the supply means breaching the security more as it is one of the things your being anxious of and aggrieved with.

1. If they supply is increased it means there is no fixed supply of the coin which makes it more difficult for nodes and traceable in times of scam and fraud.

It will not. Actually the reason of why many people think the price is rising over the time if because of the limited maximum supply. Imagine there will only 21 million bitcoins and 21 million people how can have latest one bitcoin in all over the world. This greed to collect more bitcoin is the reason the demand and price rising. There will never needed to increase maximum supply because soon after bitcoin reaching higher prices people will only trade satoshis instead of the bitcoins.

actually its been debated before and there are those people that love to increase the supply of btc and there are those who dont  . its ok if you disagree on the movement but decision depends on the devs or the ones that create btc  .

its one of thier reason but there are other reasons too like btc is too trusted or too old so people invest on it .

whats the connect ? if they want to increase theyl increase it . price is high now but it depends on the people capacity if theyl trade with satoshi only or with full bitcoin

I am neutral. I am confused what should be the right thing to do. Both choices of increasing or not increasing the bitcoin's supply does have advantages and disadvantages.
I guess, that should be resolved when the max supply is reached.
I trust the final decision that will be made regarding this matter. It's for the betterness ofcourse.

Increasing the supply will not be a solution because it is not going to change the value of bitcoin since price of bitcoin is proportional to demand and supply so increasing the supply will result in the drop of value.Well more people using bitcoin means more transaction then more transaction fee for them so it will give enough profits based on the fiat value and it will be more than enough for their expenses.

at best, the supply should not change if we want to keep the value of bitcoin, and bitcoin can be counted towards a very small number, so no worry about whether the supply should be increased or not.

If Bitcoin becomes widely adopted, what we'll need to ensure that there's enough BTC to cover people's needs. However, I don't think the problem should be solved with making a bigger supply. A more realistic and still viable solution would be to mainly deal with satoshis rather than Bitcoins and perhaps split satoshis into smaller bits. This, however, would only make sense if the scalability issue is solved, and transactions can cost 1 Satoshi or less. Otherwise, people would not be able to own these really small bits of BTC and use them. All this also depends on what kind of future we see for Bitcoin. It's difficult if it's the future of money, but all these concerns can be avoided if Bitcoin is to become the new gold or something like that.

Lightning networks can do that. You can divide a satoshi by another 1000. The question is whether they'll solve all the other stuff like being simple, safe and appealing enough to become the de facto front end for Bitcoin. I certainly ain't convinced yet.

any POW coin that shares mining algorithms (eg SHA256) and has a weaker hash rate is vulnerable to a 51% attack. every SHA256 coin is extremely vulnerable to attack by bitcoin miners. this is one of the reasons why minority hard forks are not particularly viable---minority miners must live in constant fear of rollbacks by majority miners.

unfortunately, that doesn't tell us much about the hash rate required to keep bitcoin secure from 51% attacks.


what is your reaction to this assertion made by peter todd? https://twitter.com/peterktodd/status/697532042553065472

I think it's a bad idea to increase the Bitcoin max supply, because Bitcoin is trustworthy and different from other currencies
the reason is because the Bitcoin supply is limited to only 21 million coins. If Bitcoin increase the supply again, what's the
difference with fiat, which can be printed continuously.I am sure Satoshi Nakamoto never planned to increase the Bitcoin
max supply, because if it was done he needed to change the code. And it can make Bitcoin lose trust. In conclusion Bitcoin
will be fine with a max supply of 21 million coins.

For me Bitcoin could live just fine with a max supply of 21 Million and the creator already knew it that is why we have Mbits,Bits and Sats to make sure that it is enough.
The price could expend and it wouldn't matter because we could always send small amounts or use small amounts for every transaction it is not required to have 1 BTC so why would we need to increase the max supply?

This will cause a problem for sure and the fact that Bitcoin is deflationary will now be diminished because there is a chance that they can increase the total supply of it if they want too.

One of the reasons why people like to use Bitcoin or at least hold is the fact that it is deflationary unlike cash where they can print and print whenever they want, in Bitcoin that is not the case. Increasing the total supply of Bitcoin will surely affect the price of it. Bitcoin can be transferred or used in smaller bits too (satoshi) so I don't think that it will be scarce enough for the people not to have it.

I don't think is needed, instead of increse max supply why not try different consensus from PoW to PoS or something new.  8)

I think for now, the amount of Bitcoin that is available can cover all transactions every day? I am not sure in the future Bitcoin will be increased to the max supply. In numbers, 21 million Bitcoin cannot cover billions of human transactions. However, we do know that Bitcoin transactions can be further divided into 'satoshi' parts. Suppose a person wants to buy an item that costs 10000sats or 0.0001 BTC.
Therefore, even though the number of Bitcoin is limited, the BTC transaction system can be divided. And that's the advantage Bitcoin can cover its limited amount. Ja

I believe the ability to divide existing coins into smaller fractions should be enough. The more pressing matter is making sure we can accomodate the growing number of users and their daily transactions. We know that we can keep generating wallets indefinitely and have enough coins, but if Bitcoin is to fail somewhere I'd say it's going to be in transaction time and cost.
We're not ready for a real adoption boom yet.

I'm a newcomer on Bitcoin. My interest is not to specullate or technical but holding it for the future because I firmly believe that Fiat money is going to crash with the current debt policy.
One of the main appeals for Bitcoin is its scarcity. Raise the number of Bitcoins and you're killing it. Of course I would leave from Bitcoin as hell as soon as this idea would even be seriously considered.
There are hundreds of ways, by sure, to keep happy the miners, the developers or anyone.

Well I don't think that the supply of bitcoin will ever be increased since Satoshis itself can be used for payments.
But yeah I do think that when all the bitcoins will be mined the transaction fees will increase a lot.
I think miners would not validate transactions with low fees and the network would get congested and hence we will have to pay the higher transaction fees. I think that the lightning network would be used for regular payments and only large transactions would be done with bitcoin directly.

We don't know if 1% would be necessary, or if it would be sufficient. I think that an in-depth analysis would make a great research paper.

It is not clear if it would even be viable. How would you feel about your bank charging you a 1% security fee to hold your money?

To maintain a fixed money supply, the 1% subsidy could be accompanied by a 1% demurrage.

If the demand for bitcoin keeps growing with time, automatically the small fractions will be valued high. If the supply is increased the demand will fall, and there won't be any difference between the traditional fiat nd the cryptocurrencies.

With traditional fiat whenever required the governments start printing more and more money. This lead to inflation. Continuing the same process with bitcoin won't happen and if such a scenario happens surely bitcoin will also goes worth nothing.

That would not be a good idea, it would undermine one of the principles it was built upon. 21m btc stays!!

Probably not the best idea since having a big supply of bitcoin could easily affect the market price of bitcoin, Stil bitcoin today was still not adopted in a lot of countries that is why bitcoin is getting a very high market price.

In the future when bitcoin becomes a top digital currency for sure billion of people is going to use bitcoin at that point so increasing the supply could help a lot, because the market price might increase in a very high market price if the supply doesn't increase.

It will be 21 million Bitcoins at some point, you don't even need to have 1 btc to be a holder. You can hold small amount of Bitcoin since Bitcoin has 8 decimal points and by holding that, in the future when the time comes those small amount of decimal will worth really expensive for each bit i believe

it's unnecessary, what's the point of limited supply then?

no matter how it's implemented, paying for mining security is experimental. we don't know if fees alone will be viable either. that's one of the reasons i'm a small blocker. i want to err on the conservative side re the assumptions we make about security absent a significant mining subsidy. if that damages adoption potential, so be it. adoption shouldn't come at the cost of viability.

there are basically 3 ways we can pay for mining security: 1. fees, 2. inflation, 3. demurrage......or some combination. none of these are attractive to users. nobody wants to pay large amounts just to send money. nobody wants to have their money devalued by inflation. nobody wants to be charged money just for holding it.

still, we need to pay for mining security somehow. and since economics can't be studied empirically/scientifically, we're all just guessing at what the best solution is. we're also tempering that against our own selfish drive towards a tragedy of the commons, where we sacrifice long term viability because we don't wanna pay any of the costs. that's partly what is behind the motivation for big or unlimited block sizes---the other motivation being that it's a marketing point for adoption. you know, "cheap/instant tx".

Why are the people so scared about BTC's max supply ? I personally think that it is more than enough because we don't really need 1 whole BTC we could always have it in small amount of Sats.
And Sats could be used for transaction I also don't think that 1 Sat would be $1 in the future so there is no reason for us to worry about the max supply.

It good you believe increasing BTC max supply is not the best idea and I don't see it as something important in the future when billion of people is going to use bitcoin cause it shows the purpose of block halving to be meanless cause ATH price of bitcoin market will be affect and what I expect us to be talking about is the solution of things that may hinder the mainstream of bitcoin.

I believe Satoshi Nakamoto determines the max supply of Bitcoin with full consideration. So increasing the Bitcoin
max supply is not necessary done, because Bitcoin is different from fiat in which Bitcoin is divided into several satoshis.
So everyone in the world doesn't have to owning 1 whole Bitcoin, just 1 satoshi could have a large value in the future.

In the opinion of many experts, the amount of Bitcoin is exactly 21 million coins, if the Bitcoin supply is enlarged / added, the price of bitcoin will become unstable and will even decrease drastically, they predict that if Bitcoin has been mined all, then the price will be more stable and expensive, so the miners will get adequate fees. most importantly the circulation of the amount of Bitcoin can be evenly distributed throughout the world, and there is no Bitcoin monopoly by the whales.

I think the core devs already considered that scenario, and surely by that time Bitcoin already became as the global currency. If not then the only choice is to switch from POW to POS or they may introduce a new feature in earning to miners, for instance they can earn just by setting up a node for Bitcoin blockchain network. Like the concept of flash loans or DeFi investment with compounding interest.

Personally, I think there is a huge possible for the total supply of Bitcoin to increase considering how the financial systems of the world works. I see the 21 million Bitcoins as the initial budget of the crypto coin to test how the financial economy of the world will accept and cope with it. It is very likely to see the total supply of Bitcoin to be 50 million if the 21 million is exhausted. 21 million of Bitcoins will definitely not be the total supply as the years passes. My reasons are based on how new bitcoins are created whenever a miner confirms a transaction.

As for this specific problem (if we can call it that at all), is exactly what we have today embedded in the human value system - millions have actually become too small on that scale, so some are asking why 21 million BTC will not be enough for everyone - which again leads us to the misconception that everyone should have at least 1 BTC - or that it is not possible to buy less of that amount.

When we talk about the last mined block, it should happen around the year 2140, but most forget the fact that in 10 years the percentage of mined BTC will be 99%. For more than 100 years, the total number of BTCs that will remain available for mining will be around 210 000.

I think the opinion of the majority (and mine personally) is that some basic things should not be changed and that they should remain as Satoshi programmed them. Any change in terms of increasing total supply would only be negative.

Using smaller denominations of a Bitcoin is an option. But if fees rise all the way to the moon, it will no longer be feasible. Raising BTC's total supply, should alleviate things a little. If devs still want to keep the 21 million coin hard cap, they'd need to focus on scalable solutions as much as possible. While we already have the Lightning Network, is still not ready for mainstream use. Even in its current state, adoption for second-layer payments is ridiculously low. Maybe it's because people are not aware about the LN or they don't know how to use it?

In the time being, we don't need to worry about raising the 21 million coin limit. Bitcoin will work fine for the rest of our lifetimes. By 2100, I'm sure devs and the community would've found a way to "tackle" many of Bitcoin's limitations. I'd expect a widely-scalable Blockchain network used by millions (if not billions) of people worldwide in a seamless manner. This, alongside high prices on the market (over $100k per coin), should make Bitcoin the best store of value in the whole wide world. If everything works as intended, miners could live off BTC fees without the need to increase the total supply at all. With many Bitcoin forks out there on the market, Bitcoin has essentially "raised" its total supply of 21 million coins. Just my opinion :)

In my opinion there is no need to increase the Bitcoin max supply, just fine with 21 million coins. Because there is no need to increase
the supply even Bitcoin can used by everyone in this world. As many people have said, to have Bitcoin you don't need to buy 1 whole
Bitcoin. Moreover, by only having a max supply of 21 million coins, this is what distinguishes it from fiat currency. Because Bitcoin will
become the best store of value.

My best guess is, a lower denomination comes packed with a lower fee as well - as in, you could pay fractions of satoshis per byte (and I think that already could be done without further changes to BTC's structure). If BTC gets to an insane price range such as millions, I doubt the network will still "fight" over the range of sats/byte we currently have as we speak. The more BTC'll be priced, the less sats people will pay for txs - and I think that's quite logical. It'd make no sense to pay hundreds/thousands of bucks per tx, even if we're talking about millions.

IMO, I don't think that is necessary. Since we are talking about the future and talking about the supply, I guess a lot of people are actually using it. That also means the demand is higher making the value of it high so I agree that we should just maybe introduce another denomination or maybe we should't think of that at all since Satoshi might be enough denomination for that.

Yes and no. I don't think that we will ever need an increase in the max supply, and you have given the reason right there, even if we get very widespread adoption, it'll prolly never go over 500m users, and 10m btc is more than enough, if it isn't, then price will increase and it will fit, as long as the chain can handle the traffic we should be good, there'll be a point where we'll switch from large transactions (0.01 or more btc) and, let's call it regular transaction volumes. To a smaller transactions (sub 0.01) but in much greater volumes, and it'll be dictated once price rises.

This issue had been discussed even before. It just differ from the previous topic but the thought was in it. The scarcity of bitcoin supply made it more valuable. Imagine, a shitcoin that has 10B supply of token it is useless since you can buy/sell it in a low price. Unlike with bitcoin, there is a volatility. And we all know that the more it fluctuates, the more investors want it to invest. It is good for me to have low supply of bitcoin because as a pioneer of crypto industry, it will be a win-win situation for us. Specially when it moves around 40K dollars above in the future.

In my opinion, with the current supply of bitcoins 21 million is a slight amount to the whales, even if Bitcoin has been distributed all over the miners, maybe bitcoin is above the peak plus if more and more trends in the community about Bitcoin, the price will still continue to rise because of the supply of a little.

I see only 21 million bitcoins that will remain in the crypto cycle forever, because if there must be additional bitcoins I think it will make bitcoin have a low price and the price decline is out of control. so it would be better if the bitcoin price remains where it is today

The total supply of fiat currency wont be enough to purchase by one entity so there is nothing much to worry about a single whale purchasing all the coins. The basic thing you need to understand is that the price of bitcoin is rallying because of the so called whales who have the purchasing power to hold the market.

@OP i hope no one would be dumb enough to increase the supply as it will have an impact on the price and it is better not to mess with that, the valuation will crash if that happens.

Bitcoin could be devided for very low part, we dont need to increase it supply while we can use 1 satoshi

yes maybe if the supply of bitcoin will be increased in the future because there are more bitcoin users. Besides that, the price of bitcoin will continue to rise as users and buyers in the crypto market continue to increase. if the supply of bitcoin is still as much as 21 million coins in the future, but bitcoin is still alive at a price that is much higher than the price of bitcoin today.

Good point. Since Bitcoin is divisible to 8 units, there might be no need to increase the max supply in the future. If prices go all the way to the moon, people might be transacting with "satoshis" instead of a Bitcoin. In the future, it's expected for Bitcoin to boost its transaction capacity like never before. It's hoped that the Lightning Network gains massive adoption in the mainstream world, making "satoshi" payments (micropayments) practical once more.

Based on my calculations, there will ever be 2,100,000,000,000,000 satoshis in existence (21 max supply / 1 satoshi). That's plenty enough Bitcoins for anyone to use worldwide. In case fees become too high relative to Fiat, people will pay less for their transaction to go through the Blockchain. That is of course, if people know how to set their own fees in their wallet of choice. With so many Bitcoin-based forks available today, the max supply of 21 millions coins has been virtually expanded. The main Bitcoin blockchain might be able to last for long with its hard-coded maximum supply for the foreseeable future. Future generations will have to see if Bitcoin will be able to live up to the standards after the year of 2100. Just my thoughts ;D

maybe need for additional btc upgrades in the future, but i am worried if the addition of btc supply in the future will affect btc prices. because we know if it will make btc more and more people hunt and the price in the market may decrease and bitcoin is not a superior coin in the future

I don't think increasing the amount of bitcoins is happening because it makes sense for a 4-year block reward reduction to increase the rarity of bitcoin. If an increase in the number of bitcoins occurs, it is certain that the value of bitcoin will decrease and both investors and users will switch to a better cryptocurrency.

No, it will depend on how it will be manage. In my own opinion it is better to create bitcoin version 2 and then waiti for time to come that both bitcoin version will reach the same market price and merge together. So, this can make bitcoin supply to increase and double its figure from 21M then it will go on 42M btc supply. However, I do not know how things will going to work but this is something I am positive that it is possible to do like that way. Well who knows one day it will be happening.

Hmm..But what about the technical aspect of this idea? I think it can never be the same because they are in different version as you have stated. It will just be like oil and water where it could not be mixed together. It will just create technical issues in the future especially when it comes to transferring or exchange of bitcoins. Two versions of bitcoin may be a good idea but let us wait for the developer for if it is really necessary to add btc supply or remain that way. Supply is not a problem because anyone can buy bitcoin in parts and prices will just going to have a good volatility due to lowers btc supply than adding more btc supply in the market.

If it did then what would be the difference between BTC and any FIAT currency? If you think about it, there would be no difference since you cannot say that it is anonymity since it is increasingly regulated and will continue to be. So that's why I think the MAX SUPPLY shouldn't change. Only time will tell for now deflation has been working. Just look at its price and see where it started.

The goal for 4 years to reduce the number of bitcoins mined in a block is to increase the scarcity of bitcoins. I think that if you increase the number of bitcoins, the halving won't make much sense and bitcoin will crash. Bitcoin is currently at its best and bitcoin only has 21 million coins.

One of the main Bitcoin's feature is its divisibility. Bitcoin is divisible into 100 million units and its smallest unit is called a Satoshi. That's why there is no need to have more than 21M Bitcoins.

I don't think the developers are even thinking about this.

If we will be thinking about it, we've been finding a solution to this as a problem because there will be a lot of people using it in the future. That means the demand of it is so high the reason I think that it will not be needed because the value or price of Bitcoin will be so high that even the smallest denomination will be of a good price.

Wont really be that necessary and if there would be alterations or additions then it will just surely lost its supporters towards bitcoin since they do know that they can do adding up a supply if they wanted to.
Just let it as it should be and we'll be fine.Hence, the last bitcoin would be mined in 2140+ as far as i remember. 21M would be just enough and even if it would be on that global adoption scale then we do
know that it can really be partitioned or divided on smaller units but though we do also know that there are lots who do own 1 btc into their wallets.So as usual there would really be an another issue
of uneven wealth distribution but its too early to mind of such thing but talking about potential then most likely we would really be heading there.

Indeed, this feature is called scarcity, meaning, the lower its volume and the higher the demand, the higher the price of each BTC could be and people in the future even today will value satoshis. I just wonder what could happen if all of the BTC's will be mined, will bitcoin attracts further? The reason I am worried about that is because I believe that miners perform a very essential role in order to make the price of bitcoin high. Related to bitcoin halving, there will be a small mining reward for the future blocks.

true and we can be two of that , that will be lost when it comes to supporting bitcoin because we dont want to increase its supply but if there are leavers there were also joiners or people that will put more trust on btc because i heard there are people that wants  btc supply to be boosted .

 the issue is hard but its nice to know that btc are  still being accepted no matter what are devs planning to do with it .

No matter the need that arises in the future, the need to increase Bitcoin total supply is not possible as it has been enshrined in the white paper. The total circulation remains constant and that is the more reason why the scarcity will further increase the price and also increase the demand for it.

Halving will be useless if the max supply of bitcoin is increase. However, bitcoin won't crash even if it max supply happen to be increase cause it something Vitalik have done with ETH which didn't affect ETH price with quality but I don't think that what we need now concern bitcoin because there are more important thing we ought to focus in not max supply increase. 

We have a long journey ahead before Bitcoin reaches 21 million coins in circulation. Both you and I won't be able to live by the time all Bitcoins have been mined (which is the year of 2100). If Bitcoin remains actively popular, developers will continue to work on scalable solutions for people to be able to pay with satoshis. We already have the Lightning Network, so my guess is that people will be using it massively for micropayments using BTC's smallest denomination (which is 1 satoshi) in the future.

As I've said before, there will only be 21 quadrillion satoshis in existence. I think that's more than enough for all of the people in the world today. Knowing that not everyone will use Bitcoin for mainstream transactions, makes me think that Bitcoin's max supply of 21 millions coins is just fine. But no one knows for sure what will happen in the future. If developers decide to increase BTC's max supply to a much higher value, it might negatively impact Bitcoin's price. That is if they want Bitcoin to be used as digital cash instead of a store of value. But I doubt they'll go this route, as Bitcoin will be able to "live fine" with the Lightning Network enabling people to transact in satoshis further expanding its possibilities in the mainstream world. Just my thoughts ;D

Exactly. You and I won't be able to live by the time all Bitcoins are mined on the network. Increasing the max supply is more of a future concern than anything else. In case prices remain the same or go down the drain, developers will need to find a solution in order to maintain miners on the Blockchain. Since rewards will be paid solely off fees, miners will depend heavily on Bitcoin's price on the market. If development continues, I'd expect people to use "satoshis" via the Lightning Network for mainstream payments in the long term. By 2100, future generations might be dealing with very small fractions of a Bitcoin that are worth cents (in USD). Based on my calculations, there will be a total of 21 quadrillion "satoshis" on the network. I think that increasing BTC's max supply could make matters worse as it could devaluate the cryptocurrency on the market.

Nonetheless, there are far more important things to focus on making Bitcoin a better cryptocurrency for all. Increasing the supply is not mandatory for Bitcoin's mainstream adoption. Putting scalability and decentralization above all else, could allow Bitcoin to survive far beyond 2100. At least, we don't need to worry about Bitcoin reaching its maximum supply in our lifetimes. There's plenty of "room" for everyone with Bitcoin's current hard cap in supply. Just my thoughts ;D

This is what I sometimes think about, can miners survive only with the proceeds from transaction fees in the future, if the block reward is gone, which means the bitcoin market has reached the max supply. Then with blockchain technology that is still new and still in the free development stage, can it be possible to add max supply and not damage the block chain of bitcoin itself. Maybe for mining problems it can be solved with a hard fork if the bitcoin price can adjust, I mean here miners still benefit. The hard fork also makes the max supply take a long time, coupled with a solution using mBTC.

It is unlikely that any of us will be around to see the subsidy drop to 0, but some of us may witness the point at which there is only 1 bitcoin left to be mined (in 80 years), and most of us will be around to see the subsidy drop below 1 BTC per block (in 10 years).

I don't think there is any need to increase the number of bitcoins in the future because it is contrary to what Satoshi Nakamoto created. The community will not allow that, bitcoin needs to keep 21 million to ensure scarcity. If you look for ways to expand the number of bitcoins, then bitcoin will no longer be bitcoin.

Indeed. The whole community exist for this reason, to have continuous movement in the system and keep it regulated as well. Bitcoin, it is what it is, it has its own movement and distribution. And by 2100, I bet there has been many changes and improvements with Bitcoin and its community.

It is still bitcoin, but not the crypto currency this community will support if that even happens. Talking about this, I remembered the incident in the past where a lot of bitcoin is made. I am not saying that this will happen again but I think if the max supply will arise in the future it will be for profit and greedy reasons and I can certainly say that I am not alive at that time.

Not sure what you are talking about, suppose the developers wants to increase the maximum cap we have right now, it does not mean that they are holding the coins but they will alter the miners incentives and it will have a natural process like we have now rather than creating the coins for the developers to hold  :P. No one is thinking about raising the cap as there is no need for it and the story about greed is just absurd.

Agree with your thought. If the amount of BTC does not increase, then the demand for it will continue to increase day by day. So, I hope no one wants to increase Bitcoin’s amount.  If the amount will increase, we will see a big change in the Bitcoin market. may be the price will drop badly :'(. If the price of BTC goes down, it will not be good for us. We all wants a stable bitcoin market.  In this time, if the price of BTC will rises then its spread will be increased too, people will be more interested on it. And we need it for the bright future of BTC. 8)

If the number of bitcoins will increase, there must be a bitcoin founder first and until now the inventor of bitcoin has not yet been found, meaning that addition to bitcoin is not possible and bitcoin is still 21 million in supply.
So changes in the future will continue to occur, but not to add to the supply in terms of price, it is speculative, maybe in the future there will be a lot of demand and the higher the price because of the scarcity of bitcoin will become a stable coin if it reaches the amount of supply.

Yes, bitcoin is still bitcoin and the community will no longer support it and those who make the amount of bitcoins increase will no longer be trusted. Increasing the number of bitcoins is worse than a 51% attack, it will pull the value of bitcoin to zero. I think if the DEV team is going to do so, then Satoshi Nakamoto will appear again and prevent that from happening.

I think it could still be possible by having an announcement first to all the bitcoin users of their plan. It could be arrange actually by having another bitcoin v.2 that will be merge to bitcoin v.1 when both crypto will have the same market price. We can expect a good supply after it will be merged. However, I am not sure if this will work and only the bitcoin dev can say something about merging if its possible.

In February 2019, news.bitcoin.com published this article.
Proposal to Increase Bitcoin’s 21 Million Supply Sparks Debate
Bitcoin’s Fixed Supply – Arbitrary or Mandatory?
https://news.bitcoin.com/proposal-to-increase-bitcoins-21-million-supply-sparks-debate/

I agree with you that scalability is the concern.
however, with this proposal, you shouldn't think that this debate is far away to happen.
something that you think most likely not gonna happen usually has more probability to happen than you think.

Why people only think about increasing the bitcoin supply if there is a scalability concern. The developers can easily make more decimal places in the bitcoin and replace the satoshi to other even more shorter value like 1/100 of a satoshi and that can actually do the trick and solve the bitcoin supply problem, even in the future when the bitcoin price could reach let's say $100 million then the smallest divisible value, i.e. A Satoshi would be equal to $1 and we can then add more decimals to the bitcoin value so the smallest value then can become 1/100 satoshi i.e. 1 cent which is economically a good choice than to just increase the hard cap of bitcoin.

Well, I am talking about if the cap is increased, I think a lot of people would be hating the idea and might not support the crypto if that ever happens. I know that it will not happen and I am just saying that if it happens, just a big "IF", I think it could be at that purpose, thanks for that explanation though and yeah, I also disagree with the idea.

That's certainly true, mate. Honestly, there's no need to worry about raising the max supply for the foreseeable future. As you've said earlier, most of us won't be able to live by the time all Bitcoins are mined. AFAIK, there will exist a total of 21 quadrillion satoshis on the BTC blockchain. That's more than enough for the world's current population. With plenty Bitcoins for everyone, I think the hard cap of 21 million coins is perfect. In the future, people might be dealing with satoshis due to high prices on the market. It's expected that the Lightning Network will be stable enough to make people use satoshis for micropayments and such. For large money transfers, people will use the main Bitcoin blockchain for added security and reliability.

If Bitcoin continues to grow in popularity and mainstream adoption, then it'll survive way beyond the year of 2100. Miners will be living off Bitcoin's fees, as prices become a lot more higher than what they are right now. With years of success, Bitcoin can remain a truly unstoppable store of value for the whole wide world to enjoy. Raising the max supply beyond 21 million coins will only make matters worse. Just my thoughts ;D

Can it add supply to the fixed blockchain chain? This is too far away to think about as we still have little information about the future to aim for. Hard forks, 8 decimal bitcoins, reward transactions, stabilization and many more things that we haven't been able to add to the blockchain supply. I think it's better to wait another 50 years, if what you say by 2100 the max supply of bitcoin has already been mined.

Although this is too far away to determine now, I think there will be need to increase Bitcoin's max supply in the future. With increasing adoption of bitcoin over the coming years, with a large percentage of these people keeping bitcoins as a store of value and not as a currency which would keep it in circulation, there would be need to increase the limited 21 million supply of coins into circulation.
This might invoke the need for a much better and higher technology and codes, it will inevitably have to happen. Besides, technology is evolving and we will get to that bridge where we've exhausted the limited coins, we'll cross it.

After all the 21 million BTCs are mined - estimated at the year 2140, two scenarios are likely to occur. The first one involves miners abandoning their work since there won't be any rewards except transaction fees. Since miners are at the core of decentralization, this may force the centralization of BTC or its total collapse. A second scenario is where BTC's value is high enough and transaction fees are high as well. Here, miners can live off transaction fees and BTC continues. Hopefully, the second scenario comes to pass.

Honestly, I think Bitcoin is (and will do) fine with a max supply of 21 million coins. That's largely because Bitcoin is divisible up to 8 decimal units. There are 21 quadrillion satoshis for anyone to use in the mainstream world. That's more than enough to satisfy the world's population. Increasing the supply to a higher value will do more harm than good to the price of Bitcoin on the market. Even if Bitcoin's supply remains the same, it has already been theoretically expanded by the number of Bitcoin-based forks that emerged since 2017. Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV both have a max supply of 21 million coins with the same protocol as Bitcoin (only with a few minor modifications). Bitcoin holders prior to the Bitcoin Cash hard fork in August 2017, have now doubled their coins on competing blockchain networks. If we were to perform calculations, Bitcoin has effectively increased its max supply to 63 million coins (which is the sum of Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Bitcoin SV's 21 million coin supply).

If prices become a lot higher than what they are right now, we could expect people to deal with "satoshis" instead of a Bitcoin or 1/10 of a Bitcoin. With the Lightning Network already gaining traction, it's possible to send satoshis across the blockchain at a fraction of the cost. At least, we won't need to worry about Bitcoin's max supply during the course of its lifetime. Just my opinion :)