Maximum supply of Bitcoins : Can it be changed? If not why?

[HeRetiK]

Many here say it would require a hard fork "and that many don't want to see that" but perhaps at some point it will be the condition for Bitcoin to survive.
Not saying right now, but in one or two years.
A good product has to evolve and adapt to current markets, this is true for any product and any industry, why would it not be the case for Bitcoin?

It would require a hardfork. That is a technological fact.

Even assuming that enough people would support a supply-increasing hardfork, under which conditions would you want do that? What would be the point of increasing the Bitcoin supply?

Nonetheless I'd now like to see a Bitcoin hardfork with unlimited coin supply, just to see how it would fare. Bitcoin fiat or something like that.

[Maveth13]

It can be changed because it's just a code, but doing that would require a fork. But unless everyone or at least a huge percentage agrees that this new coin would be the new bitcoin, it would just be treated as an altcoin. The most recent fork, bitcoin diamond, actually has 10x more supply than bitcoin which is 210 million instead of 21 million.

[Red-Apple]

Even assuming that enough people would support a supply-increasing hardfork, under which conditions would you want do that? What would be the point of increasing the Bitcoin supply?

the only reason that i have ever heard knowledgeable people say this is possible is the case where a huge number of bitcoin is lost. for example if 15 million out of 21 million coins were lost! and that only if we strongly feel the remaining coins are not enough.

Nonetheless I'd now like to see a Bitcoin hardfork with unlimited coin supply, just to see how it would fare. Bitcoin fiat or something like that.

LOL, we already have so many forks in a couple of months:
- bitcoin cash
- bitcoin gold
- bitcoin silver
- bitcoin diamond
sorted in order of creation date and uselessness

[Shamie1002]

Bitcoins (BTC) has a maximum supply of 21 million coins. Lets say as some people predict on a future date  a Bitcoin hits USD $1,000,000. During this scenario, is there any chance that someone can change the software program that restricts the supply of Bitcoins to mine more coins. Can someone give technical details if possible.

Thank you!

vnck25

Every OP saying that the change of limit of bitcoins needs hardfork are right. Some do want this kind of change for newbie chances in the industry. But we should realize that once that such change happen, bitcoin will be limitless meaning prices could drop anytime of the day and would be hard to make it rise. The decrease in stock makes the prices high and that would go the opposite way.

[HeRetiK]

Even assuming that enough people would support a supply-increasing hardfork, under which conditions would you want do that? What would be the point of increasing the Bitcoin supply?

the only reason that i have ever heard knowledgeable people say this is possible is the case where a huge number of bitcoin is lost. for example if 15 million out of 21 million coins were lost! and that only if we strongly feel the remaining coins are not enough.

Bitcoin is not Ethereum, so losing coins is not as simple as making the wrong smart contract call

Even then, 21 million is just an arbitrary denominator. Bitcoin can work just as fine with 6 million coins, or 100 coins or just 1 single coin. Worst case you'd have to increase the usable decimal places.

Nonetheless I'd now like to see a Bitcoin hardfork with unlimited coin supply, just to see how it would fare. Bitcoin fiat or something like that.

LOL, we already have so many forks in a couple of months:
- bitcoin cash
- bitcoin gold
- bitcoin silver
- bitcoin diamond
sorted in order of creation date and uselessness

Yeah, but they only do boring stuff like increasing the block size or changing the PoW scheme No one dared touching the block reward yet, unless that's what either Bitcoin Silver or Bitcoin Diamond are doing -- what exactly is it that Bitcoin Silver and Bitcoin Diamond are doing anyways?

It kinda feels like the Pokémon release cycle by now. Next thing we know we got Bitcoin Ultra Sun and Bitcoin Ultra Moon.

[africa34]

 Bitcoin is that has that limit to 21 million yes the max supply can changed but If that will be changed , immediately the community will invest in other coin like eth or ltc and this bitcoin will be die .

[AmXProX]

Yeah it can, But i'm pretty sure it will just be forked instead.

Forked coins are not bitcoin they will never be included in the supply of the coin.

Bitcoin is that has that limit to 21 million yes the max supply can changed but If that will be changed , immediately the community will invest in other coin like eth or ltc and this bitcoin will be die .

Why would the community invest in other coins if those coins are different from the purpose of bitcoin? Besides bitcoin has 8 usable decimal units so if the price really goes high then a fraction of bitcoin is enough to make a purchase.

Bitcoins (BTC) has a maximum supply of 21 million coins. Lets say as some people predict on a future date  a Bitcoin hits USD $1,000,000. During this scenario, is there any chance that someone can change the software program that restricts the supply of Bitcoins to mine more coins. Can someone give technical details if possible.

Thank you!

vnck25

Every OP saying that the change of limit of bitcoins needs hardfork are right. Some do want this kind of change for newbie chances in the industry. But we should realize that once that such change happen, bitcoin will be limitless meaning prices could drop anytime of the day and would be hard to make it rise. The decrease in stock makes the prices high and that would go the opposite way.

How would forking bitcoin change the limit of the supply if the forked coin will also have a limit of 21 million? Adding a to b will not be possible since the original coin is different from the forked coin or even two forked coins are different.

[aanbudi]

Max supply for Bitcoin is 21,000,000 BTC. When Bitcoin is already in mine and touches 21,000,000 BTC, Bitcoin's price will increase due to its already limited amount. And the only way to get Bitcoin is to buy it. And to increase the total supply I still do not understand.

[Xabad]

Bitcoins (BTC) has a maximum supply of 21 million coins. Lets say as some people predict on a future date  a Bitcoin hits USD $1,000,000. During this scenario, is there any chance that someone can change the software program that restricts the supply of Bitcoins to mine more coins. Can someone give technical details if possible.

Thank you!

vnck25

Since it was programmed to have a maximum supply of 21 million it will be impossible to change it, and besides bitcoin is a decentralized technology which means no specific person is holding a program for it. Everyone who has the program needs to verify each transaction for it to be confirmed and it is hard to bypass that.

[kiwasmose]

Indeed, many people realize that the total amount of bitcoin can not be changed, it is fixed 21 million. The nearest fork may help to solve this problem, after all, with the increasing complexity of the encrypted money ecosystem, people will have more requirements for encrypted currencies.

[VitKoyn]

Bitcoins (BTC) has a maximum supply of 21 million coins. Lets say as some people predict on a future date  a Bitcoin hits USD $1,000,000. During this scenario, is there any chance that someone can change the software program that restricts the supply of Bitcoins to mine more coins. Can someone give technical details if possible.

Thank you!

vnck25

This is possible to happen through hard fork that will change the block structure and increase the total amount of Bitcoin supply. But I think it is very unlikely to happen because it requires the consensus of all Bitcoin community and all old nodes should upgrade to new one. It is similar to what Segwit2x hard fork want to happen they want all Bitcoin nodes to disappear and replaced by Segwit2x nodes but since people didn't want to support it, it didn't happened. The difference is they don't want to increase the total supply. And personally I think that expanding the total supply is not a good idea.

[FrueGreads]

Bitcoins (BTC) has a maximum supply of 21 million coins. Lets say as some people predict on a future date  a Bitcoin hits USD $1,000,000. During this scenario, is there any chance that someone can change the software program that restricts the supply of Bitcoins to mine more coins. Can someone give technical details if possible.

Thank you!

vnck25

My answer would be it is, but it's not likely for such a change to ever happen because it would result in a coin with less value. Technically you could fork bitcoin and change the max supply, and this is why it is possible to change the supply. Once you fork a bitcoin, to chains are created, and the community then decides which one will get their support. Right now all the forks in bitcoin resulted in two accepted coins (accepted by users, miners and exchanges), but it would be possible for the community to just support one, and this would work as an update to bitcoin.

So basically what I'm trying to say is that if a fork like that ever happened you could end up with three possible end results:
- Everyone adopts the new chain, and the new chain is now named BTC, and the BTC legacy "dies". This fork would behave as an update for BTC (in this scenario you just got the bitcoin max supply increased)
- Both chains are supported and you would have BTC as it is now, and an alt with a bigger coin supply (in this case, the BTC is the same, and you just have an alt with a bigger supply, but it is not bitcoin)
- The forked chain would have no support and it would "die". In this case the BTC supply remained the same.

Since BTC supply is crucial for it's inherent value, I doubt a fork like this would ever happen, and if it did, we would probably stay in scenario three, and that alt would have no support (from users, miners and exchanges) and would eventually "die".