Bitcoin Forum

There has been debates about a possible intending alteration of the blockchain supply limit of bitcoin 21 million market cap. In 2019 (https://news.bitcoin.com/proposal-to-increase-bitcoins-21-million-supply-sparks-debate/)  it spark a debate to which some describes the idea as sacrilegious. 

Recently on Twitter same controversial debate somehow resurfaced, and in my wide thoughts I had to kind of bring the discussion to the forum as a bitcoin community.  So we can generate our opinions and concern to a discuss as this.
Source: (https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoins-21-million-supply-cap-immutable-truth-or-future-flexibility/)

What do you have to say about a sudden alteration of the bitcoin 21 million cap perhaps in the future. Do you think it should ever be increased ?

What would an increment mean to you? And can an alteration of the supply limit spell a disaster as some opined?

Let's have a discussion here!

Bitcoin is not like those centralized coins that their developers easily increase or reduce their supply, bitcoin supply will remain 21 million BTC.

If the supply is increasing, the value will reduce. Nobody will wants that to happen because people are holding bitcoin as a store of value or as an investment.

In the protocol, bitcoin total supply remain as 21 million BTC.

I don't think Bitcoin supply will ever increase because everything planned by Satoshi at the start and we found nothing about increments of supply. In above article , we can read that many people are against this idea which did not allow others to do this. I think if we do voting from all over the world, I believe that only 10%-20% will be in the favor of supply increments.


No need of increments in future. The idea of increasing supply is because in the future demand will be high when more people adopt it but solution already available that price of btc will also rised with the time and no one will be able to buy full btc. Instead of increasing supply, buying only Satoshi will work.

If it happens with outside layer like Ordinals then I Don't think any big changes will occur because the main supply will remain the same but still there is some headache for long term holders if any official news comes out and we may see panics selling at the start but everything will be normal with time.

If Bitcoin total supply can be increased one time, it will be increased more times in future. People will believe that Bitcoin communities can vote to increase Bitcoin total supply forever, whenever they see it is not enough for them to buy cheap bitcoin.

Cheap bitcoin, I meant, that is not what we want if we are Bitcoin investors, we want Bitcoin to increase more in its value and price on market. To achieve it, its total supply must be capped at 21 millions, no more, can not be increased.

How is the 21 million Bitcoin cap defined and enforced? (https://blog.lopp.net/how-is-the-21-million-bitcoin-cap-defined-and-enforced/)

It's needless.

I think it should never be increased. And for me, the alteration is a disaster.

Alteration to this cap would be seen by some as a breach of trust and a deviation from the original vision.
Altering the cap could potentially reduce the perceived scarcity, which could impact its value proposition as "digital gold."
Altering the cap could affect the economic incentives for miners and, consequently, the security of the network.

The alteration will only damage Bitcoin's reputation.

I personally think it is too soon to talk about any changes in the supply. People can still use sats just fine, there are other issues that are likely more urgent in the near future such as the decrease of block reward and so on. I'd rather focus the discussion over there if people really need to argue over something. That being said, the limited supply is definitely one of the key reasons people invest in BTC. Still, you can still use BTC as a currency if your goal is not investment at all.

You are 100 right, increasing the number of BTC in supply will not  provide us some good results. As it will provide an opportunity to BTC haters to spread bad words about it. Besides haters, it will hurt the feelings of miners, validators, btc users and those companies which had trusted the scarcity factor of BTC and invested millions of dollars to build a fortune. This will looks like a scam or a phishing scam in which people will began to think crypto really is a scam as the king of all cryptocurrencies has scammed us.

Overall, you are right about  it will damage BTC reputation and in my thoughts it will damage the reputation of all those who invested in it and trusted the mechanism. But you know what, the supply of BTC has been already wrote means it is no more changeable. According to many studies it has made sure that BTC is totally scarced (mean have limited supply).

And there is one more thing, which is we might not have to worry about it but maybe our next generation have to because they are the ones who will face this disaster, if any happens. But I believe BTC developers must have some surprises to amaze us in the context of this question.

It's an entirely unnecessary thing to do. I am not sure if it's possible to increase the supply limit of Bitcoin because I always thought it was fixed and wouldn't be increased in the future. If supplies do not increase, the scarcity will increase over time, and my Bitcoin will be worth more daily. Let's say I bought Bitcoin hoping there wouldn't be any supply changes, and I was holding for a couple of years. You guys then increased the supply just like "Terra Luna" developers did before they collapsed. My bitcoin will be worth less again, and there is no point in being an early adopter.  

The early adopters will feel they were betrayed, and I don't think anyone else will believe the protocol anymore. I mean, if these things can be changed and others will decide the value of my Bitcoin, like centralized currencies, I don't need Bitcoin anymore.

If the supply is increased, Bitcoin will be stripped of one of its main uniqueness, there will be little or no difference between Bitcoin and altcoins. Many people are investing in Bitcoin because they know the price will increase in the future when it becomes very scarce. Increasing the supply is not impossible but it will be very difficult. Miners might support the increase because it will sustain their mining fee but it will be difficult to sell the idea to other key players in the Bitcoin ecosystem. And I don't think this modification will happen because it will cause more harm than good to Bitcoin. 2140 is still a long time and most of us will not be there when the last block will be mined.

It must never happen, very rarely I am that definitive about anything as there is always a chance that I am wrong and I leave the door open in the case I was, but I am completely sure this is not the case here, increasing the maximum supply of bitcoin even by a single satoshi will send the signal that bitcoin is just like any other fiat out there.

And in that case why adopt bitcoin at all if more bitcoin can eventually be created at will? Many people, and I am including myself on that statement, will jump ship if that ever happened, in fact the sole discussion of this topic among the developers and miners could generate a huge drop on the price and that is not good for this market.

There can't be a sudden alteration with Bitcoin's supply. This is not possible at all. Nobody can change the supply of Bitcoin. In the event that some will try to make changes to the base protocol, this would require a fork. Changes are done to the copy of Bitcoin's codes. Anybody can do that. As a result, you will have your own coin with a higher supply, but that's not Bitcoin anymore. Call it Bitcoin Future or whatever but that is essentially an altcoin. It will be not unlike Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin Diamond, Bitcoin SV, etc. And like them, it will also die.

The 21 million maximum supply cap is one of Bitcoin's biggest strengths — the fact that no one can print more than that limit. Removing the supply cap goes against one of Bitcoin's strengths so I totally doubt the masses would support this in the first place even if some people are for it.

Also, screw Bitcoin dot com.

The 21M cap is wonderful and anyone who wants to increase it is either an enemy of bitcoin or has no idea.

The debate in any case if the day comes should be whether to subdivide the satoshis, to create smaller parts, but not to increase the supply.


Oh yeah.

Satoshi Nakamoto introduced Bitcoin with 21 million hard cap and that's one of the strongest features of Bitcoin and I don't think that any single person can change that cap. Although, it may be technically possible to increase its market cap if most of the miners, developers, nodes, and other important community members agree to alter the total market cap of Bitcoin blockchain, but I still think that anything like that would completely destroy the trust of the investors.

Bitcoin isn't like any other cheap alternative coin where developers can change anything without anyone's consent and we must know that even the developer of Bitcoin Satoshi Nakamoto can't change the market cap by his own. I'm quite sure that any such changes if ever done in future will break the trust of investors about Bitcoin. The 21 million market cap is the feature that increases the value of Bitcoin and it's because of that market cap that we can see higher price mark of Bitcoin as of today, and if that thing is altered then the value of Bitcoin will drop significantly and no one wants anything like that to ever take place.


 

You can take the bitcoin code and change the limit to like 100M coins. However you will need to get the general consensus to mine on that code.

So there would need to be a hard fork and all the exchanges and pools and miners would need to run that software, nobody would run it however because it would kill bitcoin pretty much. So you don’t have to worry about this ever happening.

The actual total supply is lower than 21 million, because several million BTC were lost in wallets, that cannot be recovered.
Changing the total supply requires consensus among miners and developers. I don't think that such consensus will be reached anytime soon.
Do we really need such change? Can't we just rename the satoshi to Bitcoin and measure everything in renamed satoshis? This way one Bitcoin will be worth less than one cent and the newbies will stop freaking out every time the BTC price drops. ;D
If you want a cryptocurrency with a bigger total supply, just choose an altcoin.

No, it should never be increased. If anything like that should happen, it will have effect on the overall decentralization that it was designed on. Alternating it means, some people have power of the control of it, something similar to the 50% attack which will not help bitcoin in any meaningful manner.



Increment means more supply, and if the supply continues to increase without any limitation to it, the crypto whales will have more control of the market which they are few in number. The market will become more manipulative and the undoable before will become doable. Changes will be made from time to time and there will be an overall changes to the unanimity the project is based on.

You have only two options: Make it a larger value, or make it infinite. Whether by setting the total supply to infinity or successively raising the supply cap via hardforks. And you've probably already seen from other altcoins why unlimited supply is a bad thing, but changing it to simply a larger value and leaving it like that is just a one-time fix, not a permanent one. So that's why it is not necessary.

No, if it works and nothing is broken, there's no need to fix it and that limit is already enough.

I don't know but it sounds like there will be no real decentralization if it happens to be increased. That's why these debates should remain a debate, and if these people want to alter the limit then they just do a hard fork of it and make their own altcoin.

There is no purpose to increasing the supply limit now or in the near future and there is really no debate for or against altering the supply limit.

Bitcoin is divisible to the eight decimal place and that number can be brought much lower in the future if bitcoins get more expensive and demands for smaller units increases. This is a way to make more bitcoins available in the market while keeping the supply limit the way it is.

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Any changes to bitcoin supply will spark discussions of how much it can be twinkled and investors will fear they can wake up one morning to a 100 million unit supply limit or even more, effectively introducing inflation into the Bitcoin system.

- Jay -

This discussion reminds me of Strange block 74638^[1] AKA CVE-2010-5139 where 92,233,720,368.54277039 BTC was generated and bitcoin blockchain need a hard fork. Therefore, the only constant in the history of Bitcoin is 20,999,999.9769 BTC, and as long as that does not change when the market capacity of Bitcoin was not 100 billion and it was not so famous, it will not happen in the future or when it has a high value.

Therefore, it is true that Bitcoin will not reach 21 million, and we will not see anything like this in the future. The greatest danger is to create currencies less than Satoshi, which may happen if the value of Bitcoin is very large (we may not see this in 70 years).

[1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=822.0

Even if it's technically possible, I don't think it'll ever be done because that's simply too much, the majority of those whose opinions count on this one will be certainly against it. I think the desire to alter the total supply also comes out of wrong intentions. Some people feel greedy and worried that they won't get enough BTC because it's just 21 million total. Some are genuinely concerned that 21 million isn't enough, but that, IMO, is an uninformed opinion because Bitcoin is greatly divisible into sats, so the total supply isn't actually small.
To sum up, I think it's practically impossible and completely unnecessary to try changing the supply.

No, honestly BTC's supply is already been fixed at the moment of creation which indicates if alternation of supply is made then it will go against the words and trust of BTC which people had in it. People like me think of it as a scam.

But do not worry, It will not come to that. As supply is already fixed and can not be altered and that proves BTC has the scarcity factor which people needed. I just read a post about stabilizing the BTC. Op was suggesting mass adoption is only possible if BTC would be stabilize. Technically that's not possible and also not possible to change the supply but point is people look at the fluctuations made in btc price and they do not wants BTC to be stabilize instead they look at the factor of scarcity to analyze and make up there mind. Or I can say, they comfort theie hearts that everything is alright and in the long run due to scarcity BTC price will make huge jumps and will set new ATH.
YES, it would be disasters for all of us as people will lose hope and started to think of it as some kind of world biggest phishing scam ever. But as I said before nothing to be worry of things are not going to reach at that point of inevitable.

Whatever that alters Bitcoin's maximum supply of 21 million (whether in reduction or in increment) will destroy the staggering trust it has gained. The trust people have in Bitcoin stems from the assumption that it can't be tampered with. Once anything tampers with it, I trust the media to run with it on end. Again, there will be a classification of it being the same as the rest of the altcoins that can easily be manipulated. The panache it carries will die off instantly. To your second question, I say no.

As answered above 👆

When you see the source of the news, then you are not at all surprised that someone is even discussing it as something that should be questioned at all. Although we who do understand some things a little better understand why that 21 million is so important, we should also keep in mind that there are those who would very much like to see that number change to more for various reasons.

Some would want it because then the price would drop drastically and then they could probably buy one whole BTC and then they would wonder why the price would never go up again - some others want it just so that one of their crypto kings would ascend to the throne and to profit.

In fact, there are many so-called Bitcoins (forks) that have a much higher max supply, but there is no need to say how successful they were with these changes.

Printing more coins than is necessary is a fiat thing and is a way of weakening the Store of Value feature of Bitcoin and making the stored bitcoins of the Bitcoin Community worth-less. You'll need the members permission to do that and make sure they are aware of the implications of what you are trying to do. Whoever does that will be devaluing users stored bitcoins or robbing them, probably to fund something or pay miners more bitcoins. If you print more money than is necessary you are indirectly stealing from others because the purchasing power of their earn/saved money is weakened.

You only could consider that if Bitcoin is too scarce and hard to find or hard to divide(due to divisiblity issue).

For me, I think alteration in the Bitcoin 21 million total and max supply will rather spell doom for Bitcoin and the entire crypto currency market, though I believe it's not possible to alter the Bitcoin supply to reduce or increase it without a hard fork, but going by the fact that issues like this have resulted in several hard forks in the past, and the original bitcoin is still standing strong while other forked coins are all struggling to survive, tells everyone of us what the result of hard fork resulting from such issue may likely be .

Bitcoin supply is perfect the way it is, I don't see any need to want to increase it, this was if it was even possible to do without a hard fork as I have said above , but then, I am happy this is not possible , and even if they fork Bitcoin again because of this issue, the original bitcoin will remain the king .