[2019-10-19] With 18 Million Bitcoins Mined, How Hard Is That 21 Million Limit?

[gentlemand]

Because by then the block reward will be only BTC0.78.

And who knows what that 0.78 BTC will be worth by then? It could be zero. It could be enough to buy gender reassignment for all of your nearest and dearest. Mining seems so far to be very good at taking care of itself. I'm going to assume that continues.

[BitHodler]

What is even more important fact is that year 2140 as the end of mining does not mean anything for today's generations, but the year 2032 will be important because 99% of all Bitcoins will be mined+and 4 more halvings will happen by then.

That's true, but it still doesn't mean Bitcoin has to increase to some random $xxxk price level, especially when there are many platforms offering CFDs and other similar cash settled contracts to trade the price of Bitcoin.

Gold has been bought a lot into by central banks throughout the years, yet it had no impact on the price at all.... this is because of how many cash settled contract platforms there are allowing people to easily gain exposure to gold.

[magneto]

How hard is the limit? It's much more concrete than the debt ceiling on the central banks around the world.

To change the 21 million limit you'd essentially have to have a hard fork in the network, and I doubt that consensus will be reached in terms of actually changing it since people know that this limit is precisely what gives BTC its intrinsic value in the first place.

People should stop worrying about when we hit that. Miners are still going to be incentivised through transaction fees, and the world isn't going to end.

[Kakmakr]

How hard is the limit? It's much more concrete than the debt ceiling on the central banks around the world.

To change the 21 million limit you'd essentially have to have a hard fork in the network, and I doubt that consensus will be reached in terms of actually changing it since people know that this limit is precisely what gives BTC its intrinsic value in the first place.

People should stop worrying about when we hit that. Miners are still going to be incentivised through transaction fees, and the world isn't going to end.

Exactly, I did not for one moment expect that this whole Bitcoin Cap limit would become an issue in this thread. I think a lot of people think it is easy for a bunch of people to reach consensus on increasing the coin cap, but you only have to look at all the drama we had when we wanted to increase the scaling for Bitcoin <BTC> and the fork war that resulted from that. 

Now, imagine what will happen if a bunch of people want to increase the coin cap and effectively reduce the value of people's current coins. 

[Lucius]

Out of this 18 million, how many are lost coins? The biggest stash is BTC980,000 which belongs to Satoshi Nakamoto. I am not sure about the exact amount of lost coins, but a few months back I came across an article which claimed that 5 million BTC can't be spent, because no one have the private keys to access those coins. Another study measured the amount of lost coins at 4 million. Here is the breakup:

Lost coins are definitely an interesting story, but all of these analyzes are mostly based on the assumption that something was lost because it didn't move in a certain amount of time. But I don't think it's a very reliable way of determining the amount that is irretrievably lost, many have no reason to move their coins. I can take myself as an example, let's say I bought 1BTC back in 2015, and did not move it from then - is that lost coin?

Satoshi had his own opinion about this problem which I personally agree with :

Lost coins only make everyone else's coins worth slightly more.  Think of it as a donation to everyone.

[1Referee]

But I don't think it's a very reliable way of determining the amount that is irretrievably lost, many have no reason to move their coins. I can take myself as an example, let's say I bought 1BTC back in 2015, and did not move it from then - is that lost coin?

Not reliable at all. It reminds me of a situation where I'm not exactly sure if it was this or last year, but there was an address with thousands of coins in it that people assumed were lost due to years of inactivity, but it turned out to be one of Coinbase's older cold wallet addresses.

All these 'x million lost Bitcoins' clickbait headlines are the result of news outlets trying to spin up a narrative to convince people of how scarce Bitcoin is. I don't even consider satoshi's coins to be lost. It may very well be that he is THE holder of last resort. Waiting for the day Bitcoin becomes a reserve currency and he directly the wealthiest entity in the world.

It is that the bcash fork made me move my cold wallet holdings in 2017, but if there was no fork, I today would have had a few cold wallets with 5 years of inactivity, and they would remain inactive until the price of Bitcoin hits $100,000.

Also don't forget the funded 2011/2012 casascius coins that news outlets are blatantly blending into their total number of "lost" Bitcoin. Currently there are 3 active 1000BTC coins, which according to "research" of news outlets are lost too. 

[BitHodler]

To change the 21 million limit you'd essentially have to have a hard fork in the network, and I doubt that consensus will be reached in terms of actually changing it since people know that this limit is precisely what gives BTC its intrinsic value in the first place.

It's something no one should worry about.... there was a debate between Bitcoin and BSV proponents not that long ago, where the BSV camp pointed out how ridiculous it is that a Core dev was brainstorming about more inflation.

I'm pretty sure that most of the fud is coming from that direction because they know very well that brainstorming sessions of developers are just brain farts mostly, and never to actually be proposed in a serious manner. Fud galore!

[cr1776]

The 'real bitcoin' is not meaningless.  I agree there have been some changes to "what satoshi implemented himself" - certainly the overflow bug was a change in the implementation (that was about a month after I first read about bitcoin on slashdot and started mining), but there have NOT been meaningful changes to what Satoshi *designed* himself.  Implementations may have bugs, designs may have poor design choices, but the root design precepts have not.  Even if all the miners pass it, that alone is insufficient to make that the 'real' bitcoin, see the UAHF and UASF previously.

 

Anyone is welcome to fork bitcoin and add inflation, but it will no longer be bitcoin, it will be something else.
Inflatecoin, whatever.

What is best for bitcoin is to not follow fiat down the road of inflation. It might start at 1%, but then the arguments will be it should be 2,5, or 10% in order to be "fair" and the rate will change and it will have no advantage to fiat.

Please, fork it and go elsewhere and don't try to destroy the real bitcoin.  There are plenty of people who will stick with bitcoin or inflatecoin.

The 'real bitcoin' is meaningless. Changes have already been made to the protocol that go against what satoshi implemented himself. Unfortunately he's not around for us to be able to know his opinion anymore, but I highly doubt that he would have been steadfast in all his beliefs and refused to accept the idea of any change at all because "it wouldn't be the real bitcoin". If there is a BIP vote to add a gentle inflation in, and miners pass it, that is the 'real' bitcoin, because it's been passed by the same people who give bitcoin its inherent value.