Isn't it a bad thing to never have more than 21 million coins?

[qxzn]

Good and bad are in the eye of the judger, but I'll spout some words.

I believe 21 million coin limitation is the central reason for bitcoin's stagnant adoption rate. The lack of a stable value (not to be confused with a stable exchange rate!) is keeping people from using the currency. The reason is that there's always this spectre of radical price appreciation. And whenever there's a spectre of radical appreciation, there's also downward risk. The problem is value instability, and bitcoin has a lot of that because of the 21 million thing. Cryptocurrency will really take off as more people recognize this and start moving towards new designs with value stability in mind.

One such coin in the design stages right now is EnCoin, a coin based on the value of 10kwh of electricity. Another idea is HashCoin, one based on a particular # of ghash, which could be achieved by simply increasing the payout-per-block based on the difficulty of solving that block (and having on limit on the number of coins).

I suspect bitcoin is not the future of money, but something like it is going to be a major player. Whether or not that's bitcoin itself will depend on bitcoin's ability to own up to it's 21-million-coin flaw. If it does not, it probably will lose to a competing currency that deals with value stability. If the bitcoin developers agree to fix the 21-million-coin problem, then bitcoin could become a big deal. However, in that case you're not going to get rich off of it because in fixing the 21-million-coin problem you've remove the "radical-upside" (fantasy) that so many are talking about with bitcoin.

You may want to think twice if you're buying bitcoins as an "investment" and holding them on the expectation that they'll make you a lot of wealth. You're taking a very big risk.

[1714043890]

1714043890

[OnyxCorp]

This site has a lot of answers to questions like that

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Myths

[panerai]

smaller increments will just be worth more, that's all

[Nyaaan]

I think it's a good thing, because the value of BTC will increase slowly once the cap is hit.

[cm68jd]

There are not 21 million coins. There an infinite number for all practical purposes. Bitcoins can be divided to a thousand decimal places. It would take a simple programming change to do this.

[P4man]

There are not 21 million coins. There an infinite number for all practical purposes. Bitcoins can be divided to a thousand decimal places.

Sure but you cant divide them without dividing their value too IOW, you can divide your coins all you want, but it wont affect mine. With dollars/euro's etc, some entity can create more and thereby affect yours.