Very simple but very fundamental question. Please let me know.

[bullnishikawa]

Every bitcoin evangelists mentions,  "The number of bitcoins in existence is not expected to exceed 21 million because of bitcoin protocol."

We know the limit of circulation is the one of the very strong advantages of Bitcoin....
However, what happens if Bitcoin Core members or Bitcoin Operation members agree to modify bitcoin protocol ?
I think, they can easily change the limit as they like upon their own agreement.

Or is that  technically impossible
Let me know.

Thanks

[magneto]

Every bitcoin evangelists mentions,  "The number of bitcoins in existence is not expected to exceed 21 million because of bitcoin protocol."

We know the limit of circulation is the one of the very strong advantages of Bitcoin....
However, what happens if Bitcoin Core members or Bitcoin Operation members agree to modify bitcoin protocol ?
I think, they can easily change the limit as they like upon their own agreement.

Or is that  technically impossible
Let me know.

Thanks

Bitcoin is not "expected" to exceed 21 million. It is a hard limit. It is one of the best advantages currently of using bitcoin and the reason why most people are interested in it apart from its irreversibility and decentralization...

It's a good question. Bitcoin, aka the current version of bitcoin cannot exceed 21 million coins total however if there is a hard fork to allow the creation of more coins than 21 million, then there is a possibility. It will most likely split the community into two and have two separate chains running simultaneously to each other. Anyone can create a fork of bitcoin, it's not just the bitcoin core.

I don't think that most people here would like bitcoin to ever have such an upgrade though, so therefore the fork is likely to not gain any traction and nobody uses it, and the tokens that is on that platform will probably be deemed worthless.

[BTCLovingDude]

the thing you need to know is that people (no matter who they are) can not just wake up one morning and say we want to make a big change in bitcoin which is a decentralized system.

take a look at block size debate. plan on changing 1 MB limit is taking forever, you can make a new version called SegWit, BU, Classic or BTC2.0 and put the proposal out there if you can get majority of the network accepting that change, it will happen (like the changes that have happened so far) and if you can't gain enough support it will never happen (like classic and XT)

so if some day we decide that there are a lot of coins lost and there is a shortage of bitcoin (which is unlikely) we can come to a consensus to solve it, it can be by increasing 21 mil limit or any other way.

[hatshepsut93]

Every bitcoin evangelists mentions,  "The number of bitcoins in existence is not expected to exceed 21 million because of bitcoin protocol."

We know the limit of circulation is the one of the very strong advantages of Bitcoin....
However, what happens if Bitcoin Core members or Bitcoin Operation members agree to modify bitcoin protocol ?
I think, they can easily change the limit as they like upon their own agreement.

Or is that  technically impossible
Let me know.

Thanks

Bitcoin can always fork at any time, anyone can create their own version of it and release it to be available for use and mining. Usually miners mine whatever is the most profitable at the moment, so if the price of a coin is high enough, miners will start switching to it. No one has a monopoly over Bitcoin, currently investors trust Core developers and buy coins of their version of the network, but it's possible that at some day traders will have to decide between competing versions of Bitcoin.

[bullnishikawa]

Thank you very much for all.

I now completely understand the concept of PoW and Forks.

Appreciated....

[franky1]

dont be so sure that it wont happen.

bitcoin protocol has the units of measure as satoshi's not bitcoin...
bitcoin is only a user facing mathematical display.. for user comfort

but in actual fact the rule is based on satoshi's. yep the CODE is based on satoshi's

core devs are already thinking of moving from 2.1quadrillion satoshi's to 2.1 quintillion millisats

in short

imagine a bitcoin as a crate of banana's
in the past people only wanted to trade crates. limiting the shares to 21million shares of what would ever be in circulation. meaning only 21million people at most can own banana's.

then as prices rose people started buying the banana's individually, meaning 2.1 quadrillion people could own banana's

now core want to split the banana's to allow people to share out amounts of slices of banana's

at highschool-dropout level.
some people will say foolishly "but there are still only 21million crates available". but the reality is that its a share dilution where instead of 21million people can ever own/fight over something.. in the future 2.1 quintillion people can own a unit of measure of something.

research: rusty russel blockstream LN millisats

[pawel7777]

...
at highschool-dropout level.
some people will say foolishly "but there are still only 21million crates available". but the reality is that its a share dilution where instead of 21million 2.1 quadrillion people can ever own/fight over something.. in the future 2.1 quintillion people can own a unit of measure of something.

research: rusty russel blockstream LN millisats

FTFY.

And why would more people being able to own a portion of bitcoin a bad thing?

--

Personally I don't have a problem with it, but the concept of introducing millisats exposes logic flaws among some of the "21 million purists". i.e. Multiplying max supply of base units x1000 is acceptable, but multiplying it by any other number not starting with "1" (ie. x500 or x2000) would likely be seen as absolute heresy and violation of Bitcoin fundamentals (while in both cases it would only be a non-value affecting, presentational change + some functionality improvement).

[franky1]

...
at highschool-dropout level.
some people will say foolishly "but there are still only 21million crates available". but the reality is that its a share dilution where instead of 21million 2.1 quadrillion people can ever own/fight over something.. in the future 2.1 quintillion people can own a unit of measure of something.

research: rusty russel blockstream LN millisats

FTFY.

lol yep though the FTFY is addressing it at the technical(code) level.
i was talking about it FROM the users FLAWED/foolish vision of the 21mill cap.. to the realistic future of a blockstream developed 2.1quintillion
as the sentence you amended shows.. where i said 'instead of' because people think that there are/were only 21mill shares..

And why would more people being able to own a portion of bitcoin a bad thing?

its about the foolishness of some people thinking 'if the payment utility is removed from bitcoin.. the rarity/scarcity of the "21mill cap" remains to give it value..'

which this topic and my post points out that the rarity is not fixed by making the units of measure sharable to 2.1 quintillion people instead of the flawed 21mill people mindset