Why stop at 21 million?

[emilia79]

It is the first social contract where the inflation, the rigging or the manipulation of an exchange system would not happen.

No Q. Easing, no mega-inflation ( i.e. Germany, 1923), no inflation to ease jobs, employement or competitivity (war) against a pool of country.

I'd like to know what think tanks, social engineers, philosoph think about this system ?

[ajax3592]

The best thing to get an answer for this question is to ask this guy -
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=3

Is a Sr. Member and a 'ol timer, would surely help you out 

[Gator-hex]

If it bothers you mine Litecoin there are 4x as many 

1BTC = 100,000,000 Satoshis

2.1 Quadrillion currency units enough for everyone?

[aheilemann]

This is weird, why are people complaining about the number of bitcoin available.

Because 0.001 bitcoins feels like nothing, even though it has real value.
As bitcoins is used more often to buy goods, I guess it would more often be referred to as milliBits or mBTC (=0.001 BTC)

[niothor]

If it bothers you mine Litecoin there are 4x as many 

1BTC = 100,000,000 Satoshis

2.1 Quadrillion currency units enough for everyone?

I will take half of that , thank you!

[torrentheaven]

This is weird, why are people complaining about the number of bitcoin available.

People are not used to limited  number of bitcoins available. Gold supply is inflating, USD is inflating, population is increasing and so on

[William-Clayton]

Okay, "possible stupidity" spoiler alert here...

Okay, just thinking... If BtC is adopted big time, and the price shoots through the roof... what would it hurt to maybe cut the block reductions in half and mine 42 million (or maybe just 31.5 million) coins? Would the extra coins hurt the value that much? Is 21 million going to be enough if the whole world adopts the coin? I'm actually more worried about the effect on the blockchain if hundreds of millions of transactions start showing up... Anyway, can somebody give me a clear answer why we shouldn't mine a few more, other than "this is the way Satoshi said it should be"? And yes, I realize that we could go to 16 places past the decimal point...

russell

2.1 X 10 to the 15th power isn't enough?

Here is that number 21,000,000,000,000,000

So you are saying that twenty-one quadrillion currency units isn't enough?

[John Law]

#inflation

[utarinues]

Here is that number 21,000,000,000,000,000

So you are saying that twenty-one quadrillion currency units isn't enough?

One day, we will see this US debt in USD and it still will not be enought 

[hieroglyph]

I have no doubt that multiple people have posted what I'm going to.  Bitcoins are easily broken down into what we call Satoshi's.  The basic idea is to avoid inflation and having a maximum about of coins helps to avoid such problems.

[Kiki112]

because of inflation and also it's better for us because the less quantity the higher the value if you know what I mean?
altough it just counts for us (non-miners)

[masyveonk]

if the growth of bitcoin is not the limited, then the value will fall and it will not be worth. 

I agree, Bitcoin is designed to store value. It is like gold, but digital

[quone17]

I think it does make it valuable because there is only a limited quantity.  However, it is going to be weird if it gets adopted more and more to see transactions for .005 to buy a new car.  I think there has been some discussion of moving the decimal point over "officially," to make people more comfortable about it.   It's like I think the US used to have a half cent and they got rid of it.

[raspcoin]

You actually have inflation if you consider the entire cryptocurrency ecosystem rather than only Bitcoin. You simply cannot regulate inflation in a free market.

[jongameson]

people want a safe place to put their money, hence $750,000,000 target