Bitcoin Forum

1) Why only 21 Million?

OK to stop debt and to stop hyper inflation...the problem is

There are so MANY transactions that go on during a day on this planet, how can so few units accommodate so many transactions.

2) And What happens to all the "lost" bitcoins.


I count LOST bitcoins as ones that a person had but:

- they "lost" the BTC (hard drive crash, paper wallet lost/illegible)
-the person DIES
- the person is on a long vacation or jail
- the FORGETS the wallet or key (maybe goes off to university)


These kinds of things happen with traditional currency...so ultimately the POOL of available bitcoin (even after all 21 million are mined) will shrink and shrink and shrink...while demand is growing...

Isn't this counter productive?

3) Why not a LARGER number....like 500 Million?

I am just asking how this came about and if there was any forward thinking involved.

IF i started a country on an Island, I would understand our assets could grow (to back currency) so I would ultimately make more currency (without causing inflation/debt)

4) what is to stop a FIAT based off of BITCOIN, once only a few hoarders have all the available coins?

There are 100,000,000 satoshi in every Bitcoin so there are 100000000*21000000 (2,100,000,000,000,000) satoshi to be mined.

And bitcoins can be divided even further.

ok so we will be dealing in satoshi rather than BTC

isn't that like pennies - or subdivisions of pennies?

right now people GIVE away satoshi - they have so little value right?

I am not sure if this helps or hurts the situation

hmmmm..... ???

I made a similar thread about this, and I was wrong, Bitcoin can be divided up infinitely, making those 21totalmillionunits just a figurehead.

yes why not can 0.0001 be a full bitcoin.  0.0001 bitcoins i have its in didgits and decimals

Thanks I was not aware of that.

So basically it is scalable

EVEN with LOST coins

uhm....

What school taught you there were only 21 Million USD????

and where are BTC worth 1.2 MM each?

"fucking dumb" indeed

iGrow -

Technically you could run an entire economy using 1 Bitcoin.

They would just modify the core code to allow for further subdivisions.

So yes - even with all the lost Bitcoins, there is no effect on the ecosystem.

Except that the people holding "whole bitcoins" become that much more rich.  Because its that much more rare.

So by all means people.  Please.  Lose your coins!

-B-

There are 21 million BTC  or  21 billion mBTC  or  21 trillion µBTC.

Enough to go around.

Lol exactly!  Uninformed people look at the 21million figure like it's a flaw.  It's by design!   :D

The more lost is actually a good thing for us "HODLERS".

yeah thats why u gotta get on it now before its too late, daily more businesses are accepting it,  Also savers who like to save money will get on it.  Now we need is retailers to gives a bit of discount for bitcoin buyers, and boom we have a revoulution

dont worry about the 21 million

worry when in 2140 there is no more rewards for mining and will transaction fees support the miners protecting from a 51% attack?

why 21mill coins is the same questions as why there are only 171,000 tonnes of gold on the planet. as that equates to less then once ounce of gold per person for the whole planet...world wide wealth exceeds the amount of gold in the world.

what about all the bitcoins lost? is the same question as what about all the gold in computer parts that ends up in landfill.. or tainted by being mixed with other metals to make it impure.. well the answer is that people have to share a depleting rare 'item'

Do you realize this is why we went off gold standard?  When you make currency convertible to a commodity.  The supply cant keep up w demand.  It leads to liquidity crisis

thats because banks got greedy, and printed more money then people wanted or needed. if banks stuck with the gold standard and only printed enough FIAT compared to gold value.. then the world would not be trillions in debt. instead the value of gold would have risen to compensate for a demand of extra fiat.

it is for this reason FIATs are born.  Which is the potential problem I was mentioning.

When dealing w money systems, what we care about is liquidity.   

Debt isn't good but its ppreferable to crisis

No that was to provide camouflage cover. The real reason we went off the gold standard was to accommodate big government. The US population in 1971 was about 200M and about 300M in 2008 or a 50% increase in 40 years. Take a look at the chart below. Over that same time period 1971-2008 the US monetary base increased about 700% in 40 years. Even worse from 2008-2012 or just 4 years it increased 300%! Liquidity crisis my rear. We're absolutely swimming in dollars. You should really listen to the following Peter Schiff episode. He really nails it talking about average people living on about $50 per week in the 50's yet having a full family, feeding & clothing the kids, without the wife working, and typically without a high school diploma, but it's because in today's dollars a comparable person would need to earn $140K per year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHDcl5aiGus&list=UUIjuLiLHdFxYtFmWlbTGQRQ

https://i.imgur.com/dQmjktz.png

actually that is also camouflage...

we got off gold (silver and gold certificates) to Federal Reserve Notes because we got tired of handling gold for the world and to secure the future of a global currency backed by oil. ie the petrodollar

this is not someones opinion...this is historical fact:

http://ftmdaily.com/preparing-for-the-collapse-of-the-petrodollar-system/

In the beginning people gave away whole bitcoins. Think about that for a minute.

Nixon went off gold standard & left Bretton Woods because there wasn't enough gold reserves to back foreign debt.  If foreign debt holders converted their bonds for US gold the USD would have crashed.  In fact Switzerland & France started to do this and it began to put pressure on the USD

Peter Schiff is a gold peddler and doesn't know squat about economics.  The problem we have now is not because there isn't enough USD.  The problem is money stuck in the financial world because private sector is deleveraging their balance sheets. 

you are exactly right, take a look at the article I posted right after his post.  Great history lesson on creating the petrodollar

Thanks for the link.  Very interesting article

yah a financial planner friend of mine keeps me up to date on the world economy...stuff like that is definitely food for thought in regards to the future of the USA and the Dollar. Also sheds some light on "wars" we do and do not choose to get involved with!

If the number was 500 Million, then people would have eventually said that was not enough.
21 Million cannot be changed, so we need to accept it.
(Like it/Love it/Use alt coins)

When we run short of BTC, the price will go WAY up.
Isn't that brilliant?  :D

Why are people who don't understand math allowed to post anywhere besides the Beginners forum?

There used to be a "newbie jail" but not any more.
It's a "free market" now. 

Which part is historical fact, getting tired of handling the world's gold or moving to the petrodollar? I can agree with the latter but certainly not the former. What are we, gold box boys at the supermarket? If we're so tired of handling peoples' gold, which by the way consists of moving a sticker from one stack to another while the physical gold doesn't move, why is our response to Germany upon request for their gold back, sorry we can't give it to you all at once, but will instead stagger shipments over several years?

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-01-19/germany-has-recovered-paltry-5-tons-gold-ny-fed-after-one-year

We got tired of handling other peoples' gold. What a bunch of nonsense.

Instead of 21m if it were 21, then also we did not have a problem. It is about divisibility

uhm -- did you bother to read the article?  if not, then I have no clue how you can say something you have not read is "nonsense".  If you read it, then you wouldn't be making the statement. so....sure....just spout uniformed opinion  :-\

uhm -- did you bother to read my comment? I didn't say the article is nonsense. I posted the article because it supports my position.

EDIT: your above quote is confusing because you linked the zerohedge article I posted. Now I realize you probably meant the article you linked farther up, the one that looks like an informational landing page to a get-rich-quick scheme: http://ftmdaily.com/preparing-for-the-collapse-of-the-petrodollar-system/ No I didn't read that, but I don't need to in order to know the statement "we got tired of handling the world's gold" is nonsense.

"By the end of the war, nearly 80 percent of the world’s gold was sitting in U.S. vaults and the U.S. Dollar had officially become the world’s undisputed reserve currency."


"As nations lined up to convert their dollar holdings for Washington's gold, the United States realized that the game was over. Clearly, America had never intended to be the globe's gold warehouse. Instead, the convertibility of the dollar into gold was meant to generate a global trust in U.S. paper money."


Quotes from the article....soooo...yah as I said...BOTH

What exactly is your point?

Actually, Bitcoin had to be called much less than 100,000,000 satoshi. Like 1 Bitcoin = 10,000 satoshi and now mined block = 250,000 Bitcoins

Not really difference, but average person like 1.5045 number much more than 0.00015045

Here, iGROWyourBiz, do me a favor and read the following. It's a link to RT, an international multilingual television network, the second most watched foreign news channel in the US after the BBC in 2011, not a link to a guy named Jerry Robinson's website:

http://rt.com/op-edge/gold-manhattan-new-york-594/


https://i.imgur.com/fP64VQf.jpg

A wall of gold bricks in the globally owned collection at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. (Photo courtesy of the New York Fed’s press center)

 

Who owned the gold that was lost (or stolen) under the World Trade Center?

1.) Bitcoin was the first and thus largely an experiment. It may well turn out that some other crypto takes the number 1 spot eventually by building and improving upon the bitcoin model. It has been widely discussed that it was a first attempt and has some flaws which we have since learned how to overcome. But the total cap of coins is intensely debated.

2.) As others have said it can be updated to allow further decimal places.

3.) As bitcoins become "lost" the total supply decreases which may increase value in the long run, which certainly won't make it any less popular. So unless something really drastic happens and a whole lot of people lose their bitcoins permanently, a slowly shrinking supply may not be a bad thing at all (for those of us who don't lose them.)

My guess would be the American people and I can assure you the gold was not lost.

there was already a lot discussions about this, no problem at all :)