Bitcoin is NOT mathematically limited to twenty one million bitcoins

[Quantus]

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.

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[talkbitcoin]

well, good news for you is that this limit that you are talking about is NOT 21 million bitcoin. it is 2,100,000,000,000,000 units based on what code says and that unit is called satoshi and is more than enough to sustain any kind of "overwhelming support"

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. 

take a look at Dogecoin and see what this kind of distribution did to it.

[Quantus]

well, good news for you is that this limit that you are talking about is NOT 21 million bitcoin. it is 2,100,000,000,000,000 units based on what code says and that unit is called satoshi and is more than enough to sustain any kind of "overwhelming support"

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. 

take a look at Dogecoin and see what this kind of distribution did to it.

oh of coarse yes that changes everything thank you so much for showing me the light. 

[aoluain]

would there be a need to raise the limit from 21,000,000?

currently 0.0000020 is equal to approximately $0.01c
bitcoin would have to quadruple [i think] in value before a raise in cap?

its a pity that 0.00000001 is not called 1BTC

[Quantus]

Year     #bitcoins       Inflation per annum
2009     1,624,250          -
--------------------------------------------------
2010     5,020,250        209.1%
2011     8,001,400         59.4%
2012    10,733,825         34.1%
2013    12,199,725         13.7%
2014    13,671,200         12.1%
--------------------------------------------------
2015    15,029,525          9.9%
2016    16,075,400          7.0%
2017    16,750,400          4.2%  (estimate)  
2018    17,425,400          4.0%  (estimate)  
2019    18,100,400          3.9%  (estimate)  
--------------------------------------------------
2020    18,575,200          2.6%  (estimate, halvening)
2021    18,912,700          1.8%  (estimate)
2022    19,250,200          1.8%  (estimate)
2023    19,587,700          1.8%  (estimate)
2024    19,806,350          1.1%  (estimate, halvening)
--------------------------------------------------
2025    19,975,100          0.9%  (estimate)
2026    20,143,850          0.8%  (estimate)
2026    20,312,600          0.8%  (estimate)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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) 

[franky1]

dont be a fool.

first of all.. at code level there are no "21million coins"

its all based in satoshis as the units of measure

EG
125000000sats per block reward right now, which mathematically gets to be ~21 quadrillion units of measure once 'rewards' have gone through all thir halvings.

[certain cartel] have already been salivating at the idea of changing
125000000units of measure per block(at code level).. to become
125000000000units of measure per block reward.. to be stupidly compatible with the [certain cartel]:LN code - (research millisats)

so think long and hard about the effect it has
..( v their lame excuse v )
 the way the code has been written in satoshis.. there will be a issue in 8 halvings time not 29 more as some thought.
.) 1250000000
1.) 625000000
2.) 312500000
3.) 156250000
4.) 78125000
5.) 39062500
6.) 19531250
7.) 9765625
8.) 4882812.5
..

so something has to change to avoid rounding errors.. and then again in 12 halvings from now(if they went with the 1000 multiplication of units of measure) another alteration would be needed

12.) 305175.78125

some people think its good to add on more units of measure. but that just extends the 'reward' mining for a few years

changing the units of measure is something to think about when needed to change things in 32 years time+.. but doing it now and then keep doing it is just ruining some aspects of bitcoin that made it better than fiat.. just ends up being done just to let people be greedy rather than as a fix for an issue thats not an issue right now

..
in short
although the GUI will incorrectly pretend there are only 21mill bitcoins. the number of shareable units will carry on increasing


please note my post contents of the maths is correct but i had to remove some of the comments about a certain cartel to avoid censorship deletions of my posts, so i apologise that the context does not flow

[talkbitcoin]

-snip-
oh of coarse yes that changes everything thank you so much for showing me the light. 

why do i fee a strong sarcasm in this

[soothaa]

A change may be required in many years, however with BTC being easily and totally usually down to 8 decimal places, I don't see this need arising for a while. It's simply the human mentality of liking whole numbers and numbers >1. An easy solution is to adopt the mBTC as some did back when BTC first touched $1,000

[DooMAD]

I don't see how such "overwhelming support" would ever materialise.  Anyone with eyes can see what effect unbridled money printing has done to the fiat economy, so I don't see why anyone would be willing to jeopardise introducing such a practice here when what we have works so well.  Perhaps "mathematically limited" is an incorrect way to phrase it, I can't really argue with that one.  But the 21 million cap is absolutely considered a fundamental principle.  

[Quantus]

I don't see how such "overwhelming support" would ever materialise.  Anyone with eyes can see what effect unbridled money printing has done to the fiat economy, so I don't see why anyone would be willing to jeopardise introducing such a practice here when what we have works so well.  Perhaps "mathematically limited" is an incorrect way to phrase it, I can't really argue with that one.  But the 21 million cap is absolutely considered a fundamental principle.  

A fundamental principle! Thats Brilliant yes thank you thats what I was looking for. And yeah I agree with you I'm just playing devils advocate here so chill out guys.
Another solution to a collapsing mining community would be to periodically change the proof of work.
But when someone asks you about the 21 million cap tell them its a "fundamental principle" and not a mathematically limited law or some shit because thats just a fairy tail.

[Lorilikes]

-snip-
oh of coarse yes that changes everything thank you so much for showing me the light. 

why do i fee a strong sarcasm in this

At first I thought sarcasm was in that line as well, but sometimes it takes another set of eyes to see the satoshis in front of you. 
Someday we will be buying iPhones with a few hundred or a few thousand Satoshis... that's the part that will make us seem very old to the youngsters.   I can almost hear my future self saying "way back in 2017 they gave away Satoshis at hundreds of sites!  10 bucks was a million of those, at one point." 👵🏻<-- that's future me.

[Dude.Lebowski]

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.

I see your point, op.

Let's hope SegWit is the worst mistake we make. A mistake as you describe would mean we actually failed in this Bitcoin experiment. Hopefully less than 50% of the miners will also ever think so.

[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 whole point of Bitcoin is that it has a limited supply. Some bad actors want to increase the total supply in the process (Bitcoin Unlimited would need that) but some people like Tone Vays which are known for their anti hardfork policy, have questioned if Bitcoin is viable forever with 0% inflation.

Im yet to see clear evidence of BTC not being viable with a limited supply forever. The fees derived from the transactions should be enough to incentivize miners to process the transactions, or at least that was Satoshi's original plan.

[DannyHamilton]

- snip -

there will be a issue in 8 halvings time

- snip -

7.) 9765625
8.) 4882812.5
..
so something has to change to avoid rounding errors..

- snip -

in short
although the GUI will incorrectly pretend there are only 21mill bitcoins. the number of shareable units will carry on increasing

- snip -

Bitcoin doesn't actually divide by two.  That's an easy way to describe it for non-programmers, but...

Bitcoins stores the block subsidy as an integer number of satoshis.  At each adjustment time (210000 blocks) it performs a "bitwise right shift" on that integer.  This has the effect of dropping the least significant bit and then moving all the other bits over one place in that direction.

So 1250000000 satoshis (12.5 BTC) in binary is:

Code:

1001010100000010111110010000000

If we chop off the right most digit (notice only 6 zeros to the right of the last one instead of seven) we get:

Code:

100101010000001011111001000000

Which as an integer has a base₁₀ value of 625000000 satoshis (6.25 BTC).

Now, if you hack off the last digit when it is a one, it has an effect identical to dividing by 2 AND ROUNDING DOWN TO THE NEAREST INTEGER.

9765625 satoshis (0.09765625 BTC) in binary is:

Code:

100101010000001011111001

When the code performs the bitwise right shift, the result is:

Code:

10010101000000101111100

Which when represented as a base₁₀ integer is is 4882812 satoshis (or 0.04882812 BTC).

Notice there is no additional unit or measure needed, and that extra 5 digit you mentioned doesn't actually exist.

As such, the total amount of bitcoins that will be created will actually be less than 20999999.9769 (less than 2099999997690000 satoshis).

[European Central Bank]

if enough people want it then so be it.

i can imagine the only people who'll want it will be miners so it'll be them versus everyone else apart from the usual power grab crew.

by the time it does become an issue hopefully we'll have found a way to dispose of small cabals of miners holding everyone else to ransom.

[crazyivan]

Just a short question, WHY?

Why would anyone consider this, want this or support this? It s like asking if it would be possible for BTC to be official currency of Mars.

[odolvlobo]

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 don't believe that a 1 bitcoin per block subsidy forever is necessary to "ensure a strong distributed mining community". I guess you assume that blocks will remain small and transaction fees will remain close to 0 forever. I don't believe either of those.

In what ways to you believe that the strength and distribution of mining depend on the amount of the block reward? In my view, the security of the network depends on the amount of the block reward. High block reward means high security, and vice versa. But I don't know how it could affect the distribution of mining.

Finally, how did you arrive at 1 BTC? Maybe 10 BTC is needed to "ensure a strong distributed mining community". Maybe 0.

[DannyHamilton]

It's like asking if it would be possible for BTC to be official currency of Mars.

That's already been asked multiple times on this forum.  Here's an example from 2014:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=724884.0

Some day in the future we will have human settlements in Mars can they use bitcoin?

[soothaa]

It's like asking if it would be possible for BTC to be official currency of Mars.

That's already been asked multiple times on this forum.  Here's an example from 2014:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=724884.0

Some day in the future we will have human settlements in Mars can they use bitcoin?

This... might be one of the best responses I have ever seen! Thank you for the great laugh on a Friday afternoon here. We have just been swapping dank memes here in the office.

[yoseph]

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.

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.