Ethereum - Total supply, POS and future price?

[FLHippy]

Hello,
I would like to ask you how many total Ethers will exist? I can´t find this information and it seems that number of Ethers will be unlimited? So Ethereum is created to be deflation currency? And what will happen when we switch the consensus to Proof of Stake? Many people will earn free Ethers and many people will want to sell they earned Ethers. So for me it seems that Ether will be cheaper and cheaper in the future.
What is your opinion, please?

[1715537680]

1715537680

[1715537680]

1715537680

[barrett_fire]

Hello,
I would like to ask you how many total Ethers will exist? I can´t find this information and it seems that number of Ethers will be unlimited? So Ethereum is created to be deflation currency? And what will happen when we switch the consensus to Proof of Stake? Many people will earn free Ethers and many people will want to sell they earned Ethers. So for me it seems that Ether will be cheaper and cheaper in the future.
What is your opinion, please?

I don't understand it all that much, but I found a Quora question about it: https://www.quora.com/Is-there-a-limit-to-the-supply-of-Ethereum. It seems like there is no actual limit. Here's a quote from the founder, Vitalik Buterin:

So here is a thought. Currently, because of the PoW ice age, the block time is scheduled to start increasing in mid-2017, and past around 2019 the increase is going to grow exponentially. The mining reward does NOT increase proportionately. Hence, there is already an exponential slowdown in the growth of the ETH supply built into the protocol; my script shows:

    Block 3000000, approx ETH supply 87962556, time '2017-01-16 00:38:33.067775' blocktime 14.86
    Block 3500000, approx ETH supply 90612556, time '2017-04-11 18:09:34.273529' blocktime 15.27
    Block 4000000, approx ETH supply 93262556, time '2017-08-15 18:20:24.642729' blocktime 30.01
    Block 4500000, approx ETH supply 95912556, time '2018-11-03 05:55:48.912370' blocktime 136.71
    Block 5000000, approx ETH supply 98562556, time '2025-10-02 11:47:30.658317' blocktime 835.81
    Block 5500000, approx ETH supply 101212556, time '2128-03-20 09:14:16.483692' blocktime 17183.83
    Block 6000000, approx ETH supply 103862556, time '5189-09-26 20:57:59.367004' blocktime 520901.19

    Hence, in the foreseeable future, the supply will not go far above 100 million.

Basically the difficultly of Ethereum just increases exponentially. This means that even though there is technically no limit, the mining difficulty will basically put a natural cap on in. Blocktimes will be so long long that there will hardly be any increase.

[melamiras]

Hello,
I would like to ask you how many total Ethers will exist? I can´t find this information and it seems that number of Ethers will be unlimited? So Ethereum is created to be deflation currency? And what will happen when we switch the consensus to Proof of Stake? Many people will earn free Ethers and many people will want to sell they earned Ethers. So for me it seems that Ether will be cheaper and cheaper in the future.
What is your opinion, please?

If ether becomes PoS it will be more valuable, as it will give dividends. However it would be considered a security and that would lead to lots of problems with regulators.

[FLHippy]

Hello,
I would like to ask you how many total Ethers will exist? I can´t find this information and it seems that number of Ethers will be unlimited? So Ethereum is created to be deflation currency? And what will happen when we switch the consensus to Proof of Stake? Many people will earn free Ethers and many people will want to sell they earned Ethers. So for me it seems that Ether will be cheaper and cheaper in the future.
What is your opinion, please?

I don't understand it all that much, but I found a Quora question about it: https://www.quora.com/Is-there-a-limit-to-the-supply-of-Ethereum. It seems like there is no actual limit. Here's a quote from the founder, Vitalik Buterin:

So here is a thought. Currently, because of the PoW ice age, the block time is scheduled to start increasing in mid-2017, and past around 2019 the increase is going to grow exponentially. The mining reward does NOT increase proportionately. Hence, there is already an exponential slowdown in the growth of the ETH supply built into the protocol; my script shows:

    Block 3000000, approx ETH supply 87962556, time '2017-01-16 00:38:33.067775' blocktime 14.86
    Block 3500000, approx ETH supply 90612556, time '2017-04-11 18:09:34.273529' blocktime 15.27
    Block 4000000, approx ETH supply 93262556, time '2017-08-15 18:20:24.642729' blocktime 30.01
    Block 4500000, approx ETH supply 95912556, time '2018-11-03 05:55:48.912370' blocktime 136.71
    Block 5000000, approx ETH supply 98562556, time '2025-10-02 11:47:30.658317' blocktime 835.81
    Block 5500000, approx ETH supply 101212556, time '2128-03-20 09:14:16.483692' blocktime 17183.83
    Block 6000000, approx ETH supply 103862556, time '5189-09-26 20:57:59.367004' blocktime 520901.19

    Hence, in the foreseeable future, the supply will not go far above 100 million.

Basically the difficultly of Ethereum just increases exponentially. This means that even though there is technically no limit, the mining difficulty will basically put a natural cap on in. Blocktimes will be so long long that there will hardly be any increase.

Thank you for explanation! This information I have also found. So technically unlimited but thanks to the difficulty it will be very hard to mine new coins, right? But what will happen when they switch into Proof of Stake, the reward for staking will be very low? It also makes no sense.

[KatrinSmile]

What are we talking about sharding? Sharding will reduce the size of the node by not less than 100 times, and possibly — by 1000 or more. Developers have not yet decided on how many "Islands" will be divided Ethereum network. This means that the estimated cost of storing information in the blockchain, which we talked about (1 byte of information in the node costs 0.000001 ETH per year), can be reduced by at least another 100 times.

[bigcash2011]

I think your information is not up to date, Ethereum does have a limited supply and that is around 90 million i guess, secondly pos model will increase demand rapidly as to take part in reward you have to have thousands of eth, so when pos is activated investors will start buying big amounts of eth causing rapid pumps and price can grow more than expected range, so i think it will be all good for eth and its investors.

[Prolifik]

I think your information is not up to date, Ethereum does have a limited supply and that is around 90 million i guess, secondly pos model will increase demand rapidly as to take part in reward you have to have thousands of eth, so when pos is activated investors will start buying big amounts of eth causing rapid pumps and price can grow more than expected range, so i think it will be all good for eth and its investors.

What are you talking about? Number of circulating Ethereums are more than 101 millions! But I agree that POS will bring many investors but also many short-term speculations.

[ATSgrowth]

I am also interested in this question because I am holding some Ethereums in my hardware wallet and I am thinking about selling them because Ethereum is less and less popular.
If you hold some POS coin, you earn atleast something, but for holding Ethereum you get nothing .

[butka]

What are you talking about? Number of circulating Ethereums are more than 101 millions!

You are right. The total supply has already crossed the limit projected by Vitalik in his reddit post:

Hence, in the foreseeable future, the supply will not go far above 100 million.

So now, Vitalik proposes to limit the total supply to about 120 million:

Meta: cap total ether supply at ~120 million

or even 140 million coins:

If for some reason this EIP is adopted at a point where it is too late to set a max cap at 120 million, it is also possible to set a higher max cap. I would recommend 144,052,828 ETH, or exactly 2x the total amount released in the genesis block including both the sale and premines.

Obviously, one of the most important attribute of a well designed currency is scarcity, and the ETH community has to find a way to limit the supply. Currently, they have an inflation rate of approximately 10 percent per year. IMO, that's too much.

[passwordnow]

but for holding Ethereum you get nothing .

I didn't get nothing but I got disappointment, joking aside.

If you chose to hold Ethereum, it's normal for you to check the prices and as it goes down you'll say that you get nothing. But what if you hold last year starting January 2017 up to the end of the year?

You have earned a lot and you can't say that you will get nothing.