Is it possible to change Bitcoin's max supply?

[malupetz43]

We know that the bitcoin's max supply is 21m

So the question is:
Is it possible to change it's max value? For example, making it 30m so that more bitcoin can be mined. If so, what will be the effect on it's price? Will it be higher or lower?

[franky1]

We know that the bitcoin's max supply is 21m

So the question is:
Is it possible to change it's max value? For example, making it 30m so that more bitcoin can be mined. If so, what will be the effect on it's price? Will it be higher or lower?

some devs have proposed this many many many times.
simply changing the cap from 21mill to a bigger number can be done but a majority of nodes need to accept this new rule.

in actual fact there are 2.1 quadrillion shareable units of measure (called satoshi's) right now
21000000.00000000 bitcoin
2,100,000,000,000,000 satoshi's

some people have tried also to pretend to keep the 100million satoshi basket term of bitcoin at 21mill baskets.. but allow more units of measure/shareable units(sats/millisats) per basket(bitcoin)

this is where bips about allowing millisats have been proposed. but the end result is the same
increasing the shareable units of measure above 2.1quadrillion, either by allowing more baskets(bitcoin) above 21mill or allowing more units per basket(millisats) both RUIN the rarity value of the currency.

its like gold.. if its known that there are only about 200 tonnes of gold with 170t mined so far and someone comes along and says they can make a million tonnes in a laboratory.. the gold market will plunge..... answering your question. it would be lower

just be happy that there are 2.1quadrillion shareable units

[HabBear]

We know that the bitcoin's max supply is 21m

So the question is:
Is it possible to change it's max value? For example, making it 30m so that more bitcoin can be mined. If so, what will be the effect on it's price? Will it be higher or lower?

Yes, anything is possible. Just like it's possible for Bitcoin to reach $1,000,000 per coin. Is it likely? No.

Bitcoin is code that can be changed and used. For changes to be successful node owners need to accept the new version of the code. This is called a hard fork.

A better question is - why would anyone want to increase the max supply of bitcoin?

The finite supply of Bitcoin is one of the primary differences and benefits from fiat currency.

[The_Real_One]

Why bother increasing the max supply when idiots are doing hardforks.

[HabBear]

Why bother increasing the max supply when idiots are doing hardforks.

This is an interesting perspective on an obvious point. The OP just doesn't understand Bitcoin well enough to know that such ideas...to increase the supply of bitcoin...are ridiculous.

Hard forks do provide a more productive way of expanding money supply while also preserving the "supply vs. demand" relationship within each coin type.

[emuLOAD]

In theory it's software, anything can be done. in practice increasing supply would without any doubt result in a contentious fork as there are a very strong Group of us users that do not even remotely consider accepting such a change.

The change you "might" see if bitcoin were ever to reach truly insane values (say 1USD per satoshi) would be a further subdivision of the currency (i.e. adding 0s after the decimal place).

So the most sensible answer is that it's impossible to increase the supply, because even if the entire dev team chose to and realeased versions to this effect, a large portion of the community would refuse to update. You'd have a BitCoin Cash-like situation, the "birth" of a new currency with an initial airdrop... nothing more. Which one will be worth more is more difficult to predict, but ceteris paribus it will be the legacy chain.

[Maveth13]

Yes it's possible, a change in protocol and most of bitcoin network would do it. But it wouldn't be sensible to do it. The limited supply of bitcoin was purposely made that way to prevent inflation, so increasing the supply would oppose that.

[Nhor1011]

      I think that is impossible because once the supply increase, the price of bitcoin getting low even there is a higher demand that's why there is a limit of 21Million of bitcoin to mine.

[Kakmakr]

The fight over SegWit or Block size upgrades should still be fresh in your minds. Can you imagine what fight this will spark, if people decide to propose this. We did not even reach consensus on how scaling should be done and this lead to the break away and fork for BCash.

The price will take a nosedive if this was ever proposed and implemented. <because it will devalue the existing coins>  ^grrrrrr^