Bitcoin is NOT mathematically limited to twenty one million bitcoins

[HeRetiK]

I would have no issue changing the code to allow a 1 bitcoin reward for every block forever... to ensure a strong distributed mining community.  

By then transaction fees will be enough. Either due to larger blocks or due to cumulative fees for settling 2nd layer solutions. In both cases due to the fact that the market will always strive towards an equilibrium of Bitcoin price and mining cost.

Another solution to a collapsing mining community would be to periodically change the proof of work.

That would definitely endanger network security and stability. Also there would be an unwanted incentive for miners to influence the decision which proof of work to use in their favour.

[bohr]

Bitcoin is NOT mathematically limited to twenty one million bitcoins.

I do not support raising the cap at this time but if we had overwhelming support like we did for Segwit we could raise the limit to any number we could dream up.  

I would have no issue changing the code to allow a 1 bitcoin reward for every block forever... to ensure a strong distributed mining community.  

I understand this must sound like blasphemy to the majority of the community but it irks me to see such a false statement about bitcoin repeated over and over again in every Bitcoin youtube video out there; there has to be a better way to phase it.

In a way what you say makes sense but I do not think that is going to be supported by anyone that is invested heavily in bitcoin, that will only lower the value of their own bitcoin so in a way you are taking value from them and giving it to someone else and also if that happened then bitcoin will not be that different from fiat.

[Quantus]

Again I'm not asking for support to raise the cap, I'm just pointing out it could be raised and that we should stop referring to it as some aspect of Bitcoin that is mathematically limited by fundamental laws of the Universe because its not, its consensus limited.

Its a "fundamental principle" of the Bitcoin community yes, its  strongly held as one of our core tenets. But it could still be changed. So stop saying its limited without pointing out what its limited by.
Other things about Bitcoin irk me too, like the wallet should be called a key chain. Bitcoin is inflationary not deflationary. Or how 60% of all bitcoins have never been spent and are likely lost forever But no one takes this into consideration when calculating the market cap of Bitcoin.


It just irks me and I'm pointing it out.

[Sadlife]

I think a 21 million market cap is not the limit of bitcoins there is a lot of blocks to be found in mining bitcoin therefore may add up to the current market cap that is $45,702,542,735 billion. Obviously it has already surpassed the 21 million market cap so bitcoin will continue as long as more an more people decides to use it or to hold it and the price will add up also. The only limit is when we've mined all the bitcoin blocks then two problems will be faced one is the supply will be limited and whoever holds the most of it will be the riches. Can't we find any solution to continue mining bitcoins?

[erep]

If you take 1 Satoshi as a base value then your problem is solved. You are thinking 1 Bitcoin as the base value but in few years we will be working and selling our stuff for satoshis. Its already happening actually, there are some services in the forum which pays you 10k-100k Satoshi for a job.

[franky1]

I'm kinda confused over here, isn't raising the caps on the number of satoshi in the bitcoins system devalue the currency, I believe that's what happens in the world of economics, print more money and you will devalue the currency. Look at Zimbabwe for example.

its not printing more money.
its cutting a bank note into confetti to then make each scrap of paper sharable. in the hope that each scrap of paper pushes the value up

EG
imagine a $10 bank note buys 10 loaves of bread.

cut the $10 bank note up so 1000 people can have a 'bank note' instead of one person. and hope that each scrap of paper buys 1 loaf of bread. making if you selotape the scraps together... a whole bank note be valued at 1000 loaves of bread.

(which converting to old fiat value becomes $1000 value of whole bank note)

its the opposite of zimbabwe's inflation where one day 1 bank note of X ZD buys a loaf.. then later it requires printing millions of ZD to buy a single loaf.

ZD=inflation
dividing units of measure = deflation

but thats just visually. because the confetti analogy is a new twisted method of creating new 'smaller' bank notes.. so it gets confusing to people depending on which way you look at it

[HeRetiK]

Again I'm not asking for support to raise the cap, I'm just pointing out it could be raised and that we should stop referring to it as some aspect of Bitcoin that is mathematically limited by fundamental laws of the Universe because its not, its consensus limited.

Where has it been claimed that Bitcoin is mathematically limited by fundamental laws of the universe? I can only think of the infamous "Bitcoin - Your money is secured by the laws of the universe." image with the sun in the background, but that's referring to Bitcoin's cryptographic key space, not the 21 million limit.

[Soros Shorts]

Its a "fundamental principle" of the Bitcoin community yes, its  strongly held as one of our core tenets. But it could still be changed. So stop saying its limited without pointing out what its limited by.

Well I would like to also point out that if the 21 million cap limit was increased then what we have is no longer Bitcoin.

Even if 99.97% of the users still call it "Bitcoin" it won't be Bitcoin to me. It would be a PoS coin. Not proof-of-stake, but piece-of-shit.

[cellard]

Its a "fundamental principle" of the Bitcoin community yes, its  strongly held as one of our core tenets. But it could still be changed. So stop saying its limited without pointing out what its limited by.

Well I would like to also point out that if the 21 million cap limit was increased then what we have is no longer Bitcoin.

Even if 99.97% of the users still call it "Bitcoin" it won't be Bitcoin to me. It would be a PoS coin. Not proof-of-stake, but piece-of-shit.

Same for me. The rules were set in stone, anything that raises the total amount of coins is a scam and not Bitcoin. Show me proof of Bitcoin having problems to survive long term without inflation because there's no sound proof to be found out there. The inflation will be so small by 2040 that you can consider all coins mined already, most of the revenue will be fees. Hell in just 10 years the curve starts becoming incredibly steep which is another reason why I think by 2027 the price will be 6 figures to a million dollars (assuming big block retards don't ruin it with wanting to hardfork everyday):



Notice how there is a big change in angle in 10 years. In 2040 you can consider bitcoin 99% mined.

[odolvlobo]

Again I'm not asking for support to raise the cap, I'm just pointing out it could be raised and that we should stop referring to it as some aspect of Bitcoin that is mathematically limited by fundamental laws of the Universe because its not, its consensus limited.

I feel like you are splitting hairs. It can be shown using math that under the current rules the number of bitcoins is limited to less than 21 million.

On the other hand, it annoys me when somebody claims that something has been proven "mathematically", where "mathematically" is intended to mean that the evidence is very strong.

[dreamer81]

The day someone raises the 21 mio limit, is the day that bitcoin will crash in price. SO many will get out at that point because it's the whole idea behind btc.

[hatshepsut93]

Bitcoin is NOT mathematically limited to twenty one million bitcoins.

I do not support raising the cap at this time but if we had overwhelming support like we did for Segwit we could raise the limit to any number we could dream up.  

I would have no issue changing the code to allow a 1 bitcoin reward for every block forever... to ensure a strong distributed mining community.  

I understand this must sound like blasphemy to the majority of the community but it irks me to see such a false statement about bitcoin repeated over and over again in every Bitcoin youtube video out there; there has to be a better way to phase it.

With the same reasoning that someone can fork to implement any changes (and some percentage of community might accept it as Bitcoin) you could argue that Bitcoin is not decentralized, not trustless, not immutable, not irreversible, et cetera, et cetera. This doesn't really proves or means anything, because consensus structures can't be inherently unchangeable. One could argue that all Constitutions are useless, because majority could vote and change them however they like.

[cellard]

Bitcoin is NOT mathematically limited to twenty one million bitcoins.

I do not support raising the cap at this time but if we had overwhelming support like we did for Segwit we could raise the limit to any number we could dream up.  

I would have no issue changing the code to allow a 1 bitcoin reward for every block forever... to ensure a strong distributed mining community.  

I understand this must sound like blasphemy to the majority of the community but it irks me to see such a false statement about bitcoin repeated over and over again in every Bitcoin youtube video out there; there has to be a better way to phase it.

The game theory involving the total supply of bitcoin is a self supporting one where the people with the most skin in the game are the strongest against it, because the more money you get on BTC, the less you like the idea of your savings depreciating by the total supply being increased, this is why I can sleep tight, because I know that the people with the most say in the game (the big holders) are all against that idea.

Also most people get attracted to owning BTC because of the limited supply.

I really can't picture a realistic scenario where the change would happen. While possible, in practice we can say it's set in stone.

[Yakamoto]

Bitcoin is NOT mathematically limited to twenty one million bitcoins.

I do not support raising the cap at this time but if we had overwhelming support like we did for Segwit we could raise the limit to any number we could dream up.  

I would have no issue changing the code to allow a 1 bitcoin reward for every block forever... to ensure a strong distributed mining community.  

I understand this must sound like blasphemy to the majority of the community but it irks me to see such a false statement about bitcoin repeated over and over again in every Bitcoin youtube video out there; there has to be a better way to phase it.

Well, it is currently mechanically limited to 21M, and I think that's all anyone talks about when they say that Bitcoin is limited. I have heard a ton of discussions about having a fork to change the maximum amount of Bitcoin, and they've been met with the typical comments of "that can't work", "it would ruin the trust in the blockchain", etc. And it makes sense, really. Halving forever would hypothetically be great for the value of Bitcoin, on paper, since the value would double every 4 years (in a perfect world, that is) and we would be able to reap the benefits of the mechanics of the blockchain rewards. Having one BTC/block forever would interrupt that balance, to an extent.

[d5000]

Although I support some of Quantus' arguments, Segwit is actually a bad example - because it's a soft fork and there will be no chain claiming it's the "original" one.

A change to a more flexible supply model would always mean that a hard fork is involved - and that would mean that in the moment when the fork occurs, a chain would persist that continues with the 21 million limit. The people supporting this chain will always claim that they are running the original Bitcoin.

But actually the question "who's the original" is a social convention - because with every hard fork the same can occur. So in this aspect, Quantus is right.

Let's take the planned 2MB hard fork in November: I think if there is no agreement between Core and the Segwit2x folks, a minority chain will try to survive with the 1MB cap enabled and will claim that they are the original chain.

But the difference between the 1MB cap change and the 21 million bitcoins cap change is that the 21 million cap was "set in stone" at the beginning of Bitcoin's evolution, like cellard correctly points out, and is considered a fundamental principle. The 1MB cap, in contrast, has even described by Satoshi as a temporary measure (something Big blockers point out every day).

So the support for "21 million forever" is expected to be nearly unanimous (I think >95%) while the 1MB support may be a small majority or not even that. That's why a 2MB hard fork has much more chances to succeed in becoming "the Bitcoin" than a "+21 million" fork.

[RoftheN]

There will always be people who will only support a bitcoin with 21 million coins. Even if there's weekly forks of bitcoin with more supplies, those forks/chains can be ignored and us 21bitcoin supporters will always support the true 21 million coin blockchain. Even if it has 8MB or 40MB blocksizes and other upgrades, as long as the supply is not increased.

[cellard]

Although I support some of Quantus' arguments, Segwit is actually a bad example - because it's a soft fork and there will be no chain claiming it's the "original" one.

A change to a more flexible supply model would always mean that a hard fork is involved - and that would mean that in the moment when the fork occurs, a chain would persist that continues with the 21 million limit. The people supporting this chain will always claim that they are running the original Bitcoin.

But actually the question "who's the original" is a social convention - because with every hard fork the same can occur. So in this aspect, Quantus is right.

Let's take the planned 2MB hard fork in November: I think if there is no agreement between Core and the Segwit2x folks, a minority chain will try to survive with the 1MB cap enabled and will claim that they are the original chain.

But the difference between the 1MB cap change and the 21 million bitcoins cap change is that the 21 million cap was "set in stone" at the beginning of Bitcoin's evolution, like cellard correctly points out, and is considered a fundamental principle. The 1MB cap, in contrast, has even described by Satoshi as a temporary measure (something Big blockers point out every day).

So the support for "21 million forever" is expected to be nearly unanimous (I think >95%) while the 1MB support may be a small majority or not even that. That's why a 2MB hard fork has much more chances to succeed in becoming "the Bitcoin" than a "+21 million" fork.

Satoshi set the 1MB cap as a temporary measure, but he predicted that users would get "tyrannical" against raising it because of not being able to run nodes and so on.

Also, Satoshi did NOT have the current understandings of what different blocksizes would mean, he did not predict mining pools, he did not predict a lot of things.

ALL the experts point to a hardfork in 3 months being stupid, we should evaluate segwit for a longer time then take a more informed decision.

[DannyHamilton]

Satoshi . . . he predicted that users would get "tyrannical" against raising it because of not being able to run nodes and so on.

I've seen no such statement of Satoshi's.  Please provide a link.

Also, Satoshi did NOT have the current understandings of what different blocksizes would mean,

You have some way of knowing what Satoshi's understandings were?  Are you Satoshi?

he did not predict mining pools,

While he may not have publicly predicted mining pools prior to their existence, is clear that Satoshi was aware of the existence of mining pools as soon as they were created:

- snip -
Pool operators can modify their getwork to take one additional parameter, the address to send your share to.

The easy way for the pool operator would be to wait until the next block is found and divy it up proportionally as:
user's near-hits/total near-hits from everyone

That would be easier and safer to start up.  It also has the advantage that multiple hits from the same user can be combined into one transaction.  A lot of your hits will usually be from the same people.

The instant gratification way would be to pay a fixed amount for each near-hit immediately, and the operator takes the risk from randomness of having more or less near-hits before a block is found.

Either way, the user who submits the hit that solves the block should get an extra amount off the top, like 10 BTC.

New users wouldn't really even need the Bitcoin software.
- snip -

[HabBear]

I do not think the community would object to an inflation rate of less then 0.5% per year to insure a strong distributed mining community (in the event the mining community was not sufficiently subsidized by transaction fees) 

I would object.

Why do we need a strong mining community after nearly all the coins have been mine? Preserving spending power is a critical difference between Bitcoin and traditional currencies. If Bitcoin ceases to be more valuable tomorrow than it is today there will be less incentive for people to adopt it as a currency!

[buwaytress]

Basically, what we just need to do is reflect more accurately that Bitcoin is not immune to inflation due to a hard cap, since divisions of units is always going to be possible, if there is consensus. No matter, we've learnt to stop thinking Bitcoin is anonymous, we can adapt to this concept too.