this is a great thread and a good question.
Hopefully more people can weigh in on their thoughts. I really would like to know exactly how that would happen
or how it would be decided
I agree, very good question and topic. I have the same question, can it ever go past 21 million coins and who and how is it decided?
If someone changed their code from the 21 million limit to a higher inflating limit, it becomes an alt-coin and bitcoin itself goes on with the 21 million coin limit.
There would be a fork between the two block chains, one fork would be bitcoin, the other inflate-a-coin or something like that. Everyone who had coins pre-fork would have coins on both forks.
In all likelihood, the fork with the inflation built in would lose value quickly since it would not hold value over the long term. Smart people would sell their inflate-a-coin coins and buy the real non-inflated bitcoin.
thanks for the response. What does this mean that "smart people would sell their inflate-a-coins..." How will these coins differ from Bitcoin? So if I have 2 bitcoin in a wallet online are they still bitcoin?
Let's look at what happens:
1. You have bitcoin as it is now.
2. Someone decides to fork bitcoin to create a new coin that includes some inflationary provisions.
3. At this point you have the original bitcoin and the inflate-a-coin fork.
4. Every person who had coins on the original fork has coins on both forks right after the hard fork.
5. Bitcoin continues along with the 21 million limit. Inflate-a-coin also runs in parallel - assuming you got people to switch to this new fork.
So you have the smart people who are saying, "inflate-a-coin is not a good store of value, so I'll sell my inflate-a-coins and buy bitcoin with them. Then I can buy back more of the inflate-a-coins later if I want to for some reason and get more of them since they are losing value due to the programmed inflation."
OK, that makes sense thank you for a great explanation. Who are the potential people or groups that would be interested in a fork to create a new coin?