Should bitcoin be limited to 21 million?

[Artemis3]

Bitcoin should retain its 21 million limit. Induced inflation is not needed, this is where the Austrian school of economics trumps over all the others that unfortunately rule most of the world today, tho they wanted gold because something like this did not exist a century ago...

"Deflation", along with 100% reserve banking, allow for true savings (accumulation) of capital. Bitcoin happens to provide these two today.

You have to stop and think if it is really "deflation", when its actually everybody else that is inducing inflation. You say "stable" only when they appear in sync with each other, but to remain "in sync" they have to undergo inflation, and the difference is how big or small the discrepancy on their respective inflation is.

So if the JPY had 1% annual inflation and the USD had 0.8%, it would "appear" that the USD "gained", but it fact both were losing, induced by their own gov. Then if something comes along and its value remained and 0%, it would appear as if it was "gaining" value, only because everybody else was losing it.

But truth be told some bitcoins are getting lost forever, so there really is some deflation going on as well, just not that much.

[pooya87]

if stability of the price is your goal then you have to realize that bitcoin is currently not stable mainly because it is still growing and since that is going on you should expect big rises like what we had in 2017 which sometimes end with a big bubble and that has to burst and the final result is a roller-coaster while price continues to rise overall.
having no cap will not change this, but what it will change is that when bitcoin reaches mass adoption if it has no cap it will continue to decline. but with cap it can become stable.

[Kakmakr]

Why would people willingly devalue their wealth by adding more coins to the max supply that are defined by the Bitcoin protocol? One of the strongest pillars of this technology is the simulation of scarcity with a fixed limited supply of coins. I think once you mess with the total coin supply, investors will stop buying more coins. <It is all about the perception of scarcity and knowing what the total supply of coins will be in the future>

This is also something that are lacking in other commodities like Gold and Silver. <They do not know when a new massive deposit will be discovered> 

[kyucryp]

maybe that should be done. and all altcoins must have a limit on the number of coins that can be mined. if all crypto has a limit, the price of cyrpto will reach a stable point when all crypto has reached its maximum point. and crypto will have a very expensive value. if crypto does not have a limit, the crypto price will always fluctuate and will not reach a stable point.

[PrimeNumber7]

I see this question more as political than technological one.

Yes, exactly.

There are absolutely arguments for both a fixed coin supply and for an ever increasing coin supply. There are also arguments for a 100% premine/presale and for miners to mine the coin supply over many years. All of these arguments are economical and political.

[Dreamchaser21]

Bitcoin is less of a currency and more of an asset class. Finite supply is a fundamental feature of Bitcoin. No compromise on it will be accepted.

This. There is no reason to increase the supply of BTC. You will only dilute the asset that is the functional use of BTC. It's already working the way it is. No reason to change that.

Exactly, if we want a more expensive bitcoin then we should stay with the current supply and I think it will be hard for Satoshi to increase the supply since he is still unknown. There is no need for us to increase it and yes bitcoin is working very fine and for sure if we continue to invest on this market even if the supply is limited we can still expect a smooth transactions.

[posi]

Bitcoin is less of a currency and more of an asset class. Finite supply is a fundamental feature of Bitcoin. No compromise on it will be accepted.

In addition, Bitcoin been more of an asset than currency is what will make people have more interest in it and if the total 21 million supply which was planned change today it displease some people and the banking sector who are actually after Bitcoin will definitely laugh. However, I believed the limited number of Bitcoin was also sett as a means where Bitcoin will give chance for another coin to take the crown as we both know no one can ever be king.

[pawanjain]

I have mixed views on this because most currencies stay stable with some sort of inflation. Quite frankly you shouldn't be inflating by 2% per month as thst a huge market but I don't think anyone would be against an increase for this to be accepted as a currency.

The alternative view is that this is what altcoins are for and most of the people won't see the last block with the initial rewards being taken up but at a point where we're at a low number of bitcoins per block it may come in handy to increase inflation slightly although if it becomes unprofitable to mine it'll be the node owners doing the mining which wouldn't be a bad thing (each node miner with a few chips to mine with like the gekkos side hack makes - id be into that).

We all know that Satoshi was a genius. If he had capped the supply to 21 million then it would have been done for a reason.
Inflation is not needed in the case of bitcoin since a limited supply means that after the limit is reached there would not be further halving resulting in increase in price.
If inflation would have occured with bitcoin then it's price would have dropped further low and even would have lead to a crisis.
The 8 digits behind the decimal are far more sufficient for bitcoin to be used as a currency.

[Questat]

The 21 million is a lie.

We know that's the total of bitcoins but don't forget about the zeros after the point... 8 zeros have the trick. We don't need to fork the chain to add more bitcoins, if we change the transaction fees to 1 satoshi, and let the price goes to the moon (10sat=$1dllr), then those 21 million would look like an enormous number.

I agree with this, 1 whole bitcoin now is so expensive and might have a higher value in the future, but we have satoshis.
If the wild prediction of the experts that 1 bitcoin will turn into millions, then we should be transacting using satoshis instead of BTC as most of us can't afford to have at least 1 BTC that time.

[AjithBtc]

According to Satoshi 21 million is the calculated number for bitcoin. As every four year there is a halving the demand is increasing as the supply is getting limited. If there is no limitations and it can be created upon the necessity with something as a backing same as countries print currencies on necessity will make bitcoin to be same as other currencies around the world.

[zbig001]

Inflation is not needed but miners need reward to keep the network secure.
If the only incentivization of mining would be transactional fees, will this currency be really secure?

Satoshi promoted the idea of merged mining

(...)
Instead of fragmentation, networks share and augment each other's total CPU power.  This would solve the problem that if there are multiple networks, they are a danger to each other if the available CPU power gangs up on one.  Instead, all networks in the world would share combined CPU power, increasing the total strength.  It would make it easier for small networks to get started by tapping into a ready base of miners.

If in the future merged mining would gain a lot of significance, Bitcoin miners could easily make money on the sale of merged mined coins.
There would be no need for high transaction fees to maintain Bitcoin mining profitable (when block reward will reach zero).

[Leonardo7]

The bitcoin has already been programmed to be 21million total supply, I see no need agitating for an increase, the community trying to reach a consensus to increase the total will tell on the integrity of the bitcoin, which I believe it's impossible to increase the total supply now.

[kryptqnick]

Quite frankly you shouldn't be inflating by 2% per month as thst a huge market but I don't think anyone would be against an increase for this to be accepted as a currency.

Well, most of currencies are regulated, so we have no idea how they'd do if they were set free. Cryptos fluctuate too much in comparison with currencies that require lots of people whose work is to make sure they're stable.

The alternative view is that this is what altcoins are for and most of the people won't see the last block with the initial rewards being taken up but at a point where we're at a low number of bitcoins per block it may come in handy to increase inflation slightly although if it becomes unprofitable to mine it'll be the node owners doing the mining which wouldn't be a bad thing (each node miner with a few chips to mine with like the gekkos side hack makes - id be into that).

Once all of the bitcoins are mined, the price will increase along with the demand. The only problem here is with scalability, but we already have a rather good even though not widely accepted solution, presented by the Lightning network. As for mining, it's unprofitable only for some time. Unprofitability -> some miners leave -> the difficulty rate adjusts -> mining gets profitable for those who stayed. Not to mention that if the prices rise, the problem is gone.

[BurgerCash]

I have mixed views on this because most currencies stay stable with some sort of inflation. Quite frankly you shouldn't be inflating by 2% per month as thst a huge market but I don't think anyone would be against an increase for this to be accepted as a currency.

The alternative view is that this is what altcoins are for and most of the people won't see the last block with the initial rewards being taken up but at a point where we're at a low number of bitcoins per block it may come in handy to increase inflation slightly although if it becomes unprofitable to mine it'll be the node owners doing the mining which wouldn't be a bad thing (each node miner with a few chips to mine with like the gekkos side hack makes - id be into that).

Bitcoin used to have two selling features - a fixed supply, which meant it could outlast fiat currencies, and transaction throughput.
The Bitcoin community decided that transaction throughput is unimportant for now, and we focused on the digital gold marketing.
If we ever break the 21 million bitcoin rule, bitcoin will be neither p2p electronic cash nor digital gold. It will slowly fade into irrelevance.
This limit should never be broken.

[Linkkoin]

Practically limit is much lower because many of the early Bitcoins are lost for good, as lost with the memory sticks and hard discs.

[tunapa]

It’s a good one , firstly it will avoid excesses and also increase scarcity. I don’t see any need in increasing the supply as long as we want to make it generally acceptable for transactions and as currencies. If any increase is made, people will lose trust and it means increments can be done at anytime they wanted.

[davis196]

I have mixed views on this because most currencies stay stable with some sort of inflation. Quite frankly you shouldn't be inflating by 2% per month as thst a huge market but I don't think anyone would be against an increase for this to be accepted as a currency.

The alternative view is that this is what altcoins are for and most of the people won't see the last block with the initial rewards being taken up but at a point where we're at a low number of bitcoins per block it may come in handy to increase inflation slightly although if it becomes unprofitable to mine it'll be the node owners doing the mining which wouldn't be a bad thing (each node miner with a few chips to mine with like the gekkos side hack makes - id be into that).

The 21 million total bitcoin cap isn't as important as most of the people think.Great mining difficulty reduces the mining of new bitcoins and keeps the supply low.The 21 million cap is just a psychological barrier that creates some trust amongst the newbies that the bitcoin price will keep going up,as long as there is increased demand for btc.Inflation would be bad for btc.

[Pursuer]

I have mixed views on this because most currencies stay stable with some sort of inflation. Quite frankly you shouldn't be inflating by 2% per month as thst a huge market but I don't think anyone would be against an increase for this to be accepted as a currency.

The alternative view is that this is what altcoins are for and most of the people won't see the last block with the initial rewards being taken up but at a point where we're at a low number of bitcoins per block it may come in handy to increase inflation slightly although if it becomes unprofitable to mine it'll be the node owners doing the mining which wouldn't be a bad thing (each node miner with a few chips to mine with like the gekkos side hack makes - id be into that).

The 21 million total bitcoin cap isn't as important as most of the people think.Great mining difficulty reduces the mining of new bitcoins and keeps the supply low.The 21 million cap is just a psychological barrier that creates some trust amongst the newbies that the bitcoin price will keep going up,as long as there is increased demand for btc.Inflation would be bad for btc.

what are you talking about? the cap that bitcoin has is one of the most important features of it that has set it apart from all other currencies that for 100 years had no cap whatsoever! and the number that was chosen (21 million) is a pretty good one, although Satoshi never said anything about why it was chosen but now we know that it is appropriate as it is not too much to negate the cap (like most altcoins make the mistake of having such a huge one) and it is not too small to cause users feel there is scarcity.

[Carlton Banks]

mining difficulty reduces the mining of new bitcoins and keeps the supply low.

no it doesn't, the difficulty adjustments keep the supply increases regular. That's like bitcoin basics fact no. 2 or thereabouts

The 21 million cap is just a psychological barrier that creates some trust amongst the newbies that the bitcoin price will keep going up,as long as there is increased demand for btc.Inflation would be bad for btc.

Bitcoin's had supply inflation since the first block, and will continue to inflate it's supply until the last block

[gesdan]

bitcoin is not "limited" at the first time we should know that bitcoin has max supply 21 Million coin, not more, not less, and its not limited right now because it already limited on the first time we know about bitcoin