Should bitcoin be limited to 21 million?

[r1s2g3]

I really hope Nakamoto comes back and adds a way for time mining via addresses on a side chain

It is open source code and we do not require Nakamoto to do the changes. All we require the consensus in the community.
I guess we are discussing about future and we have more than 2 decades to solve this problem.

[Jating]

I really hope Nakamoto comes back and adds a way for time mining via addresses on a side chain

It is open source code and we do not require Nakamoto to do the changes. All we require the consensus in the community.
I guess we are discussing about future and we have more than 2 decades to solve this problem.

And I guess the consensus is that bitcoin should be limited to 21 million as it is how it was originally design by Satoshi himself.

Of course there are advantage of having more bitcoin, but on the contrary, it makes bitcoin one of the most desirable assets because the total supply is limited. Which mean the price could really go up in the future as more demand will sets in.

[pey]

I believe it is limited to 21 million to make an unit of Bitcoin equal to $1 in the very long term when Bitcoin is totally adopted.

''My choice for the number of coins and distribution schedule was an educated guess. It was a difficult choice, because once the network is going it's locked in and we're stuck with it. I wanted to pick something that would make prices similar to existing currencies, but without knowing the future, that's very hard. I ended up picking something in the middle. If Bitcoin remains a small niche, it'll be worth less per unit than existing currencies. If you imagine it being used for some fraction of world commerce, then there's only going to be 21 million coins for the whole world, so it would be worth much more per unit. Values are 64-bit integers with 8 decimal places, so 1 coin is represented internally as 100000000. There's plenty of granularity if typical prices become small. For example, if 0.001 is worth 1 Euro, then it might be easier to change where the decimal point is displayed, so if you had 1 Bitcoin it's now displayed as 1000, and 0.001 is displayed as 1.''

@satoshi

[1Referee]

I believe it is limited to 21 million to make an unit of Bitcoin equal to $1 in the very long term when Bitcoin is totally adopted.

If the supply was capped at 100 million BTC it would still be able to do so.

The 21 million is already a number that will never ever hold much weight due to how many coins have been lost and will be lost in the future, and how second and third layers can split even 1 satoshi units in smaller fractions.

Considering that Lightning is Bitcoin's killer app and most likely road to mass adoption, it makes more sense to start thinking about calculations based on Lightning units. 1 satoshi for example can be split into 1000 smaller fractions with Lightning. Right now it's hard to imagine that these small units matter, but in the future they definitely will.

[arpon11]

i think this question of bitcoin being limited to just 21 million is a little bit to useless at the moment because it has already being created and can not be recreated as there is no possibility of that existing again. we can consider it not recreateable and that makes it limited to its supply

There is nothing any person can do about the number of bitcoin that will be mine and it is truth that there is no reason of asking if it number can be increase from 21million in future!  I don't think we are going to have another whitepaper and road map on bitcoin again and that is the major reason why we have altcoins.  We should be able to mine the remaining bitcoin in few years to come though bitcoin mine or rewarding is going to reduce next year I think the remaining units to be mine will happen before our eyes and from there the market will start to determine the price of bitcoin.

[pey]

I believe it is limited to 21 million to make an unit of Bitcoin equal to $1 in the very long term when Bitcoin is totally adopted.

If the supply was capped at 100 million BTC it would still be able to do so.

Exactly, ''It was a difficult choice'' so 21 million supply is not that magical, but it might be so as well considering how much deliberation went into this decision.

[Heisenberg_Hunter]

i think this question of bitcoin being limited to just 21 million is a little bit to useless at the moment because it has already being created and can not be recreated as there is no possibility of that existing again. we can consider it not recreateable and that makes it limited to its supply

I have been following this topic quite closely, but now they are being rambled upon with just no idea on what is being discussed about and what happens from a technical standpoint. Foremost, satoshi has never mentioned 21 million as the supply in the code. But rather they have been mentioned only in the announcements.
Could you please explain what does recreation and possibility of existing again mean?

With the halving taking place, each block generates coins which are diminishing over the years. This is probably the reason which makes the supply to be limited.

That's how it's build, it's only 21 million in total supply for bitcoin but we have more than that if we use satoshi.
Actually when it first came out, people are maybe transaction one who BTC but since the value has increase, we can expect we will be transacting more in satoshi in the near future and that makes the name satoshi more popular than BTC.

It's a brilliant idea by satoshi, I can call this a perfect one.

The 21 million supply can be changed but they need to be forked to do so. The transactions will be moving to off-chain payment networks and developers will find a way in including more transactions in the blocks.

[minersday]

The 21 million is a lie.

I definitely think so. Maybe the 21 million Bitcoins stated  in its whitepaper as the total number of bitcoin was just an estimation made by Satoshi to give the general public an assumption of the total number of Bitcoin which will be mined if Bitcoin comes a globally used digital cash. I don't think Bitcoin is actually limited to the total number of 21 million, there are more available if the assumed number is exceeded.

[jademaxsuy]

As more and more people had been mining and owning bitcoin 21M supply of bitcoin will.not be enough. Probably it may soon mined all bitcoins to which it will affect the market price increasingly. Well, many will going to happy about it.

I think there are only few bitcoins left and those users aiming to get one should start buying now.

[jackg]

A couple of points after reading responses here:

1. I don't think Satoshi put much thought into th 21 million coins.
2. Non physically backed contracts already exist... Thus we have seen some inflation so far.
3. This topic is open to opinion however some are posting here without thought...

[Janation]

I think he never thought about this in the past.

I mean as far as I know he also said that he is not expecting anything from it, I think what he said there is that, there is either a lot of transactions or none of it. If he reduced the total supply, I think the price of it now is high enough to make it one of the best investments right now but if we will be adding or increasing the limit, that will make the price lower since we are following the demand and supply of it. For me, I think it is better to stick in 21M rather than increasing that.

[TimeBits]

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).

Watch this video, this is what happens with limited supplies (4 mins in if you can`t wait I show a simulation of gold/bitcoin in the future)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7TLFyK_3Pk

Do we start a 100m dash race because we showed up early? or do we all start the race at a set time?
Why do younger generations not even get a chance to mine? The are forced to be the slaves.

[denzkilim]

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.

That's correct and having a fixed supply helps to increase the price of Bitcoin over time, I know it might sound ridiculous but in my point of view, limited supply has an effect to the value in the long term. Even if the mass adoption of Bitcoin will happen in the future I don't think that it will be used as a currency because the volatility is still there and it will continue to fluctuate and most merchants and service providers do not like a payment method who constantly and dramatically change its value at any time. 

[Twinscoin2017]

I think bitcoin has no limit because bitcoin is really not depend on any institution or government its price is always depend upon the demand or its users, so i think if bitcoin will become more popular through the help of new tehcnology there will maybe a great posibility that it will really rise up high soon.

[killat]

Limiting Bitcoin to 21 million will definitely conserve its price overtime as this will avoid the hyperinflation.

Also, with less and less Btc remained to be mined and with new halvings coming,  the rewards from mining should decrease and this will help the price, too. Basically,  you mine less btc, but a more valuable one.

[market-beta]

if in my opinion it doesn't need to be limited bro. because the price of bitcoin is unstable and even soars it is very good. for investment either long term or short term.

[TheUltraElite]

if in my opinion it doesn't need to be limited bro. because the price of bitcoin is unstable and even soars it is very good. for investment either long term or short term.

I am really amazed at the lack of general concepts about Satoshi's ideology that people in this forum have started to express. Bitcoin was and is supposed to be made scarce day by day in order to make it a deflationary currency. That's how it was envisioned. You all should go through Satoshi's white paper once a while if you have never heard of it, yet.
The fact that Fiat is printable every when it's needed is one of the reasons of its current state. I don't understand why people are failing to understand these simple things. 21m is the golden number.

[jak3]

yes, don't think bitcoin as profit or loss commodity it is not made like that. it is not intended to be in a market, that's what people treat it nowadays but bitcoin was made against government and banking system where no money fraudulent or corruption can happen. Bitcoin is limited so no supper price drops can be seen which is common when banks print new money in addition to the old money.

[TheKeyLongThumbI]

The scarcity of bitcoin is one of the top reasons why people are buying and holding it for a long time. It's like a property that increases in value through time. But if ever they planned that, I think people would sell their btc right away. It should be limited only to 21 million because less means it is much more valuable.

[ðºÞæ]

Bitcoin is limited to 21 Million, anything not limited to 21 Million  is not Bitcoin.