The supply issue

[jiamijiang]

I'm seeing this particular topic on twitter today and it's got me a bit stumped. So I would like to ask my hero bitcoiners here for their advice:

If bitcoin's price and market cap continue to increase, and if a 2nd layer or off-network protocol allows people to subdivide their satoshis into smaller and smaller units, does the whole 21 million BTC supply cap even matter anymore?

[Coin_trader]

Yes because it's still limited supply no matter how much you subdivide the satoshi. In the end, there is a limitation on splitting each satoshi if this become possible due to the value of each satoshi. Splitting a cents is not valuable anymore tho.

A 21 Million supply is still 21 Million supply no matter how many times you split it.

[1miau]

I'm seeing this particular topic on twitter today and it's got me a bit stumped. So I would like to ask my hero bitcoiners here for their advice:

If bitcoin's price and market cap continue to increase, and if a 2nd layer or off-network protocol allows people to subdivide their satoshis into smaller and smaller units, does the whole 21 million BTC supply cap even matter anymore?

I don't know who made up this nonsense argumentation but you don't need to worry about it.  
Dividing Bitcoin does not mean increasing it, it's always be capped at 21M.

To own 1 BTC, you need to buy 1 BTC
To own 0.1 BTC you need to buy 0.1 BTC
To own 0.01 BTC you need to buy 0.01 BTC
...

Dividing into smaller units does not mean increasing supply.

There are many on Twitter confusing it:
https://twitter.com/_benkaufman/status/1343839142287990784

 

[jackg]

Unless supply somehow increases then yes, but increasing supply might dramatically drop. The price and adding 0s to the end is ultimately a better idea for deflationary assets (the zeros coming after the decimal point). 

The 21million is in the code and would require a consensus from miners at least in order to increase the figure.

https://twitter.com/_benkaufman/status/1343839142287990784

If anyone wants to prove their tweet, I require 2^64 grains of wheat flour.

[fr4nkthetank]

Well...lets say you can sub divide to an infinite amount of decimals...that does mean "supply" never becomes a problem.  As in, there will always be enough bitcoin to buy with paper money or other things.  Since If I buy 1 bitcoin for 1 $, the 2nd one for 2$, the 3rd one for 4$, the 4th one for 8$, etc.  After 30-40 iterations of this....you get the picture.  Its the same for if I buy 1 bitcoin for 1$, then 0.1 bitcoin for 1$, then 0.01 bitcoin for 1$, etc.

But the hard cap on supply means that you can't create new bitcoins, only assign higher and higher values to smaller and smaller units of bitcoin.  It is why in the long term, assuming bitcoin survives and is still relevant, 1 satoshi will be worth a lot of money and people will go mad searching for lost dust/satoshis on this and that computer/exchange they had in the past.

[philipma1957]

Well...lets say you can sub divide to an infinite amount of decimals...that does mean "supply" never becomes a problem.  As in, there will always be enough bitcoin to buy with paper money or other things.  Since If I buy 1 bitcoin for 1 $, the 2nd one for 2$, the 3rd one for 4$, the 4th one for 8$, etc.  After 30-40 iterations of this....you get the picture.  Its the same for if I buy 1 bitcoin for 1$, then 0.1 bitcoin for 1$, then 0.01 bitcoin for 1$, etc.

But the hard cap on supply means that you can't create new bitcoins, only assign higher and higher values to smaller and smaller units of bitcoin.  It is why in the long term, assuming bitcoin survives and is still relevant, 1 satoshi will be worth a lot of money and people will go mad searching for lost dust/satoshis on this and that computer/exchange they had in the past.

Yeah, but the hard can does have a loophole.

Lets say out of the 18.5mill issued

2.3 million are locked and have never been withdrawn from

untouched since creation see below  this is block 50

https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/17iyRRXBHJKbv5DKPPkttWewm3CHdNPGQd

I think these will be reclaimed and recycled in 2049 or 2059


which would mean a development ruling to reclaim abandoned blocks after 40 or 50 years of no withdrawals.

So even if there are 21 mill coins.

it may allow for 23 million with 2 of that being recycled from original 21 mill.

To me this is a more interesting and likely idea than the op's find on twitter today.

[mk4]

It matters, of course.

This has been a pretty hot topic on Twitter quite recently, with some people thinking that Bitcoin being possible to cut up to smaller denominations makes it's supply sort of "unlimited". It's like saying that you can feed 50 families with one whole pizza because you can slice it up to 50 pieces. I really don't get it. I mean holy crap that Frances Coppola woman on Twitter is totally bollocks.

[slapper]

21 million bitcoin is a specific number. You cant change that fact even if you try to divide the coin into smaller parts. And if bitcoin can be truly split into several mini parts (such as 0.1 or 0.01 satoshi), it will make bitcoin even more valuable. The supply remains unchanged defeating the inflation that always happens with fiat.

And I do like the idea of splitting satoshi. It will give people more chance to interact with bitcoin, especially those who do not come from the start. Most of bitcoin is currently owned by big companies and whales. Smaller people also have few bucks in bitcoin but when the price keeps increasing, many people cant not have bitcoin if 1 satoshi worth more than a dollar

[davis196]

This has been repeated many times in the forum and I can't stress this enough.
Dividing Bitcoin into smaller parts does not create new Bitcoins!
This is the same as the stupid idea,that hardforked Bitcoins are actual Bitcoins and hardforks create new Bitcoins out of scratch.
I don't know why this discussion appeared out of nowhere,since this question has been already answered years ago.
I guess that the FUDsters and Bitcoin haters simply don't know how to shit over Bitcoin right now and they have no valid arguments left.

[Oshosondy]

People need to realize that bitcoin supply can not be decreased or increased, it is only 21 million. This is what Satoshi Nakamoto did and inside bitcoin white paper. I do not see how another layer protocol would increase bitcoin supply. Anything that can increase bitcoin supply can only be a bug which will definitely be fixed while bitcoin supply remain 21 million. In the future, even if some bitcoin community propose this, it will only lead to a hardfork in which another shitcoin will be created. This is nothing to be bothered about because bitcoin will remain bitcoin and the supply can not be affected but remain 21 million.

[exstasie]

I'm seeing this particular topic on twitter today and it's got me a bit stumped. So I would like to ask my hero bitcoiners here for their advice:

If bitcoin's price and market cap continue to increase, and if a 2nd layer or off-network protocol allows people to subdivide their satoshis into smaller and smaller units, does the whole 21 million BTC supply cap even matter anymore?

If you break up a half cookie into 10 pieces, and put it next to one whole cookie, most children will actually opt for the half cookie because it looks like more to them. This "dilemma" reminds me of that.

Breaking satoshis down into sub-satoshi units obviously doesn't create more BTC, or make the maximum supply unlimited. It just makes smaller values easier to spend. It's just a potential solution should Bitcoin's scarcity cause sky high valuations, so that BTC is accessible to poor people just the same as rich people.

[20kevin20]

While it does not create more Bitcoins to circulate around, I honestly think what truly matters is what the average person thinks about adding another zero after the decimal. Like, would the vast majority of people take that as a supply increase? Because if yes, then it'd be a dangerous move.

I personally support the denomination change as well. It doesn't change anything but solves some of the issues we currently have. Trust me, no real BTC supporter would want a supply increase.

[Reid]

Yes because it's still limited supply no matter how much you subdivide the satoshi. In the end, there is a limitation on splitting each satoshi if this become possible due to the value of each satoshi. Splitting a cents is not valuable anymore tho.

A 21 Million supply is still 21 Million supply no matter how many times you split it.

I guess that's the simplest way on how it could be explained. Thank you.

To OP. It might just be wasting time dividing it into many units.
The total will not change.
I am guessing they are trying to make an imaginary Bitcoin out there where they could add more to the total by splitting it.
I don't really know if that's possible but I doubt it is.
All I know is there will be a huge number that will be missing.

[bits4books]

21 million bitcoin is a specific number. You cant change that fact even if you try to divide the coin into smaller parts. And if bitcoin can be truly split into several mini parts (such as 0.1 or 0.01 satoshi), it will make bitcoin even more valuable. The supply remains unchanged defeating the inflation that always happens with fiat.

And I do like the idea of splitting satoshi. It will give people more chance to interact with bitcoin, especially those who do not come from the start. Most of bitcoin is currently owned by big companies and whales. Smaller people also have few bucks in bitcoin but when the price keeps increasing, many people cant not have bitcoin if 1 satoshi worth more than a dollar

But after all, such behavior will cause talk that BTC is a huge bubble. You have a strict limit of 21 million and then you decide "and let's divide 1 BTC indefinitely". And why? What is the difference between the infinite division of one whole and the gradual emission of new funds when necessary? These are two absolutely identical processes from the point of view of the end user - only the first one causes fear that this is a bubble, and the second one causes a certain level of inflation.
If you hate inflation so much, why do you use any money at all? Natural exchange is your salvation, but certainly not the desire for an even greater division of BTC.

[exstasie]

You have a strict limit of 21 million and then you decide "and let's divide 1 BTC indefinitely". And why? What is the difference between the infinite division of one whole and the gradual emission of new funds when necessary? These are two absolutely identical processes from the point of view of the end user - only the first one causes fear that this is a bubble, and the second one causes a certain level of inflation.

One process debases the currency by increasing the money supply, the other process makes lower value transactions possible by increasing unit divisibility. These are two very distinct and unrelated things. Why do you conflate them?

In any case, I'm not sure we actually need more divisibility. Even if 1 BTC = $1M, a satoshi is worth $0.01. Do we really need sub-penny value transactions?

[nemey]

I think there is a limit of 21 million BTC which will make BTC different from the others. and this can continue to increase the selling value of BTC. Because the rarer, the more expensive it will be. So surely the team that directly manages BTC has also designed it well so that it can continue to maintain a supply of only 21 million.

[LogitechMouse]

As far as I know, dividing Bitcoin into smaller pieces doesn't mean that the supply is increasing.
There are 21,000,000 Bitcoins and it will never change. Now if you will divide it into Satoshi, the total number of Satoshis will be 2.1×10^9 or 2,100,000,000,000,000.
I just don't know the reason why people are saying things like that. Math really is hard nowadays :facepalm:

There are many on Twitter confusing it:
https://twitter.com/_benkaufman/status/1343839142287990784

This statements made my day again . Laughing hard on their statements. Anyway can't blame them though if that is what they understand about it. Debating on them would be hard especially if they only believe in one side.

[Husires]

The quantity supplied is not the problem, but the ability to print more currencies, when you say that the quantity supplied is 21 million and you do not change it, this creates value for it, but adding it or printing more is what makes cryptocurrencies similar to the idea of banks.
To increase the price, you need an increased demand A simple offered quantity will not make its price high unless there is an increase in demand.


Bitcoin have limited supply and increased demand.

[Noctis Connor]

I'm seeing this particular topic on twitter today and it's got me a bit stumped. So I would like to ask my hero bitcoiners here for their advice:

If bitcoin's price and market cap continue to increase, and if a 2nd layer or off-network protocol allows people to subdivide their satoshis into smaller and smaller units, does the whole 21 million BTC supply cap even matter anymore?

Well other says before they saying that bitcoin will be stable and will not move its price even inch, And look where the price of bitcoin right now it is in ATH and people are start having interest in investing in bitcoin even they missed the opportunity to buy when the price volume isn't that high. Other business are now in bitcoin industry even you say your earning small it is alright all people are been there Also even were at 21 million btc supply don't worry that much as long as there are people who wants to use it no there always a way.

[Ucy]

What matters in my opinion is the scarcity and deflationary feature. If you can keep Bitcoin immune to inflation (In whatever way that is sustainable, safe and decentralized) then the 21million cap wouldn't really matter much.

[Darker45]

The 21^st million Bitcoin is a dead end. The number does not go higher than that. It is the limit. This fact alone could somehow explain why Bitcoin is scarce. It is not unlimited.

Now, if the future is so positive for Bitcoin that all the billions of people around the world will have to have a share of that supply, then it is not a problem at all as there is indeed Satoshi and even much smaller units of 2nd layer protocols, but such subdivisions do not add supply to Bitcoin. It does not in any way alter the limited supply.

In a more practical note, I think I'd be happy if people would start dividing even a Satoshi up to 10 decimals. That means I have grown rich.

[Lucius]

The only supply issue which exists for some is one that does not allow them to mine BTC in the quantities they want. Given how the whole system is set up, they can always print as much money as they want, dig up as much gold or diamonds as they need, or produce anything in any quantity.

Bitcoin only shows that some of its features irritate some people who would like to control it and adapt it to their needs - but unlike calling the governor of a central bank or the owner of a company, how to influence millions of BTC owners around the world?

[darewaller]

Well, there are types of talks about this but one thing is for sure, bitcoin is bitcoin and nothing else is the same. For example you could have wrapped bitcoins as you might heard of, which means you basically have the same amount of bitcoin once over, but that just doesn't mean that there are two bitcoins, it means one of them is wrapped. Secondly you could have layers upon layers of bitcoin products, it all depends on buyer and sellers, the demand and supply, so yes in a way you could have billions of bitcoin layers, and as long as people want to buy it, the price will be alright.

However no matter how many type of tricks the finance world pulls off, no matter how many people are fine with buying it, there are no possible ways that bitcoin could ever change, one bitcoin is still one bitcoin and all the other layers are just the fake version of it.

[jaysabi]

I'm seeing this particular topic on twitter today and it's got me a bit stumped. So I would like to ask my hero bitcoiners here for their advice:

If bitcoin's price and market cap continue to increase, and if a 2nd layer or off-network protocol allows people to subdivide their satoshis into smaller and smaller units, does the whole 21 million BTC supply cap even matter anymore?

Yes, no matter how small the pieces of the pie you cut, the size of the whole pie never changes. That is, 21 million bitcoins is the size of the pie. You can cut it into satoshis, or sub-satoshis. The pieces can get smaller and smaller, but no matter what, you never get more pie.

[adzino]

I'm seeing this particular topic on twitter today and it's got me a bit stumped. So I would like to ask my hero bitcoiners here for their advice:

If bitcoin's price and market cap continue to increase, and if a 2nd layer or off-network protocol allows people to subdivide their satoshis into smaller and smaller units, does the whole 21 million BTC supply cap even matter anymore?

Yes, the 21 million BTC supply cap still matters. If this 2nd layer off network protocol allows you to subdivide satoshis into smaller unit, the 21 million BTC supply is still the same. It's not like when you split those satoshis into two, your supply changes to 42 million BTC. Add all those subdivided satoshis and you will end up with the same 21 million BTC. If there wasn't any cap, things wouldn't have been the same. We wouldn't even need those off network protocols or sub divide it into smaller units.

[Twentyonepaylots]

The supply would still matter because Satoshis are basically just utility tokens for bitcoin. So those have no value on their own and is piggybacking off of bitcoin's price. Regardless if you can subdivide your Satoshis into mini-Satoshis or not, the one who still holds the value is bitcoin, and in doing so would retain the integrity of the 21 million supply because soon as that runs out, future Satoshi Holders would have nothing in them but sad lumpy utility coins.

What matters in my opinion is the scarcity and deflationary feature. If you can keep Bitcoin immune to inflation (In whatever way that is sustainable, safe and decentralized) then the 21million cap wouldn't really matter much.

So far it does not seem to be affected by inflation the way fiat is, perhaps mainly because it does not really have a commodity that it's basing its value on, so it's not affected by inflation or whatsoever.

[acener]

Yes the supply would still matter even if we have a smaller fraction of Sat's or Satoshi.
Even if we would have smaller unit the whole supply would remain limited.
I don't even think that we would need a smaller fraction of Satoshi as of now but it is better to be prepared.
I wonder what would be the price of BTC when we finally be forced to use those small fraction of Satoshi like how we use Sats right now.

[inoes]

it seems less useful if the bitcoiners agree to add the fraction after Satoshi, because I don't really care about that. the bitcoin supply remains the same and as btc becomes more expensive, the transfer fees will increase in price. What will happen if we make a BTC transfer but the transferred fee is more expensive than the funds we transfer?

[zanezane]

The only supply issue which exists for some is one that does not allow them to mine BTC in the quantities they want. Given how the whole system is set up, they can always print as much money as they want, dig up as much gold or diamonds as they need, or produce anything in any quantity.

Bitcoin only shows that some of its features irritate some people who would like to control it and adapt it to their needs - but unlike calling the governor of a central bank or the owner of a company, how to influence millions of BTC owners around the world?

The only way I think that some individual can influence millions of user is by buying a lot of bitcoin. Mining is out of question because it incrementally gets more difficult as there are more bitcoins mined. Dividing it into smaller parts does not seem to be a good idea in my opinion because it defeats the purpose in some way, the people that owned 0.0001 would be richer than they were before the division.

[0t3p0t]

I'm seeing this particular topic on twitter today and it's got me a bit stumped. So I would like to ask my hero bitcoiners here for their advice:

If bitcoin's price and market cap continue to increase, and if a 2nd layer or off-network protocol allows people to subdivide their satoshis into smaller and smaller units, does the whole 21 million BTC supply cap even matter anymore?

I read a thread like this on the forum discussing about scarcity of Bitcoin compared to a piece of pizza but still ends something like your thread OP though it is on different source I think.

For me there is no issue regarding the supply of Bitcoin because as an enthusiast, investor, user or whatever you did with Bitcoin you already know from the beginning that you can have small fractions of it and acquiring Bitcoins won't make the supply increase as opposed to what others think of it coz it will be getting scarce no matter how small you got plus the halving of course.

[mu_enrico]

This is not a supply issue but a proportion or wealth distribution issue. The supply remains the same, i.e., 21 million unchanged.
Imagine someone owning 1% of Bitcoin, and ordinary people own 10 sats or 10,000 msats (let's say equal to $100).

The dude will have too much wealth. Therefore, there are many articles about this limited supply is a weakness.

[Hydrogen]

If bitcoin's price and market cap continue to increase, and if a 2nd layer or off-network protocol allows people to subdivide their satoshis into smaller and smaller units, does the whole 21 million BTC supply cap even matter anymore?

Years ago the minimum BTC wager on sports gambling websites was 0.01. Years later the minimum wager was adjusted to 0.001. Today many websites offer a minimum wager of 0.0001.

Its a natural progression for increasingly smaller denominations of BTC to become normalized as BTC value increases.

The extra decimal places on the right side could be considered a design feature to accommodate future growth and expansion.

[Dabs]

All of the practical bitcoins will have been mined in the next 20 years. There will have been 3 or 4 halving events by then, the block reward is down to 1.5 BTC or less, and there will be around 20 million whole bitcoins. In other words, the supply of coins would be about 99% already. The last one percent will take another 30 halving events over the next hundred years.

So between 2021 to 2040 ... each whole BTC will be at least 1 million USD already.

[magneto]

I'm seeing this particular topic on twitter today and it's got me a bit stumped. So I would like to ask my hero bitcoiners here for their advice:

If bitcoin's price and market cap continue to increase, and if a 2nd layer or off-network protocol allows people to subdivide their satoshis into smaller and smaller units, does the whole 21 million BTC supply cap even matter anymore?

What they're spewing is absolute nonsense and you should ignore it. Just because someone seems to be an "expert" doesn't mean that their opinion should trump your knowledge basic mathematical principles.

Subdividing does nothing more than helping people transact when BTC prices go up further. Note the causal effect here - only when BTC prices go up is there ever a need to subdivide more. Subdivision does NOT cause prices to go up or bitcoin to become more abundant overnight.

Just think about this analogy. If your bank has an accounting system that goes to 5 decimal places even when others only have 2, does that mean that fiat all of a sudden becomes more abundant? Absolutely not. It's just for the ease of accounting when values have appreciated so much to warrant it.

[exstasie]

The extra decimal places on the right side could be considered a design feature to accommodate future growth and expansion.

Well I guess that's one of the questions being raised here: what happens if/when satoshis become too large of a unit and there are no more zeros to the right? The obvious answer is to sub-divide into smaller units.

But if you think about it, that situation seems rather unlikely: $1 satoshis implies $100M BTC. I'm insanely bullish, more than most, but even I can't conceive of that, assuming USD hasn't hyperinflated.

That's why this whole discussion is sort of a joke. A very unrealistic hypothetical (like $100M BTC) is being used to arbitrarily shake faith in Bitcoin's supply dynamics.

I wonder why?

[jacafbiz]

It does not matter, it doesn't matter, Bitcoin can still be divided into Bit or Sat. As we know now, many people can't afford to own one BTC at the current price and if you want in, you buy fraction of it. With new institutional money entering the space I expect more of this supply side issue on exchange because no one would want to sell at the current price knowing the price could go up tomorrow

[eaLiTy]

If bitcoin's price and market cap continue to increase, and if a 2nd layer or off-network protocol allows people to subdivide their satoshis into smaller and smaller units, does the whole 21 million BTC supply cap even matter anymore?

You do not need a second layer solution to subdivide the coins into small fractions, just take fiat currency, one dollar can be subdivided into 100 cents and yet it is one dollar and you need to apply the same standard to BTCitcoin until anyone convince me otherwise which is highly unlikely because 21 million BTCitcoins is the benchmark on the number of coins in existence .

[bits4books]

You have a strict limit of 21 million and then you decide "and let's divide 1 BTC indefinitely". And why? What is the difference between the infinite division of one whole and the gradual emission of new funds when necessary? These are two absolutely identical processes from the point of view of the end user - only the first one causes fear that this is a bubble, and the second one causes a certain level of inflation.

One process debases the currency by increasing the money supply, the other process makes lower value transactions possible by increasing unit divisibility. These are two very distinct and unrelated things. Why do you conflate them?

In any case, I'm not sure we actually need more divisibility. Even if 1 BTC = $1M, a satoshi is worth $0.01. Do we really need sub-penny value transactions?

So after all, the conceptual problem of the entire cryptocurrency in general is that people want these transactions in the amount of a penny - the main thing is that it would not be a pure dollar but money in the form of BTC/ETH/whatever that tied to dollar.
You can divide BTC at least as much as you want and let it grow to the most cosmic prices but as long as you yourself tie it to the dollar and do not want to untie it, then you are just hostages of the most hated fiat currency.
Very simple math - the more BTC is worth and the more people use it, the greater the divisibility of BTC and the more dollars will be printed to crypto - fiat exchange. Why more dollars? Because in addition to the ever-growing crypto community, there are also ordinary people who do not want to know about all this and just dollars will be enough for them. And to all of you-they-we need those dollars to print.

[jrrsparkles]

I'm seeing this particular topic on twitter today and it's got me a bit stumped. So I would like to ask my hero bitcoiners here for their advice:

If bitcoin's price and market cap continue to increase, and if a 2nd layer or off-network protocol allows people to subdivide their satoshis into smaller and smaller units, does the whole 21 million BTC supply cap even matter anymore?

You can divide bitcoin into any figures you want and the smallest possible divide is 1 sat which is equals to 0.00000001 BTC so it is nether going to increase nor decrease the total maximum supply of bitcoin.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

This has been a pretty hot topic on Twitter quite recently
<snip>
I mean holy crap that Frances Coppola woman on Twitter is totally bollocks.

Another reason I don't use Twitter--the idiots and overall idiocy that seems to abound there.  Not sure what the Coppola woman thing is all about, but now I'm curious.

And no, it doesn't matter if you can split a satoshi.  Another analogy would be like splitting an atom.  The total weight of the atom does not change, no matter how many subatomic particles it's split into (and dammit if I'm wrong, let some physicist correct me but I think you get the idea). 

But actually what this sounds like is that a lot of otherwise bitcoin-ignorant people are starting to think about bitcoin, and I don't see that as a bad thing necessarily.

[Dabs]

When BTC > $100 million USD, then we might start using the other altcoins or a sidechain. Or maybe BCH and BSV are still alive and they are orders of magnitude less valuable and can be used because they are only $10k USD or something. Or LTC. Or someone will make a "stablecoin" pegged to BTC.

[Argoo]

I'm seeing this particular topic on twitter today and it's got me a bit stumped. So I would like to ask my hero bitcoiners here for their advice:

If bitcoin's price and market cap continue to increase, and if a 2nd layer or off-network protocol allows people to subdivide their satoshis into smaller and smaller units, does the whole 21 million BTC supply cap even matter anymore?

Overall, you are right. Although the maximum number of bitcoins is limited to 21 million, there are one hundred million Satoshi in each bitcoin, which already have a decent value. That is, in fact, bitcoin monetary units are one hundred million times larger. After all, now, given the increasing cost of bitcoin, people will buy and are already buying not whole bitcoins, but a certain amount of satosh.

[exstasie]

One process debases the currency by increasing the money supply, the other process makes lower value transactions possible by increasing unit divisibility. These are two very distinct and unrelated things. Why do you conflate them?

In any case, I'm not sure we actually need more divisibility. Even if 1 BTC = $1M, a satoshi is worth $0.01. Do we really need sub-penny value transactions?

So after all, the conceptual problem of the entire cryptocurrency in general is that people want these transactions in the amount of a penny - the main thing is that it would not be a pure dollar but money in the form of BTC/ETH/whatever that tied to dollar.

You can divide BTC at least as much as you want and let it grow to the most cosmic prices but as long as you yourself tie it to the dollar and do not want to untie it, then you are just hostages of the most hated fiat currency.

That was just a reference to the value of everyday transactions, not a suggestion that anything be "tied" to the dollar. The dollar is the most relevant unit of account today, so it's useful to convey actual value. Much more useful than BTC, which is exponentially rising in price vs. all assets in existence.

All I'm saying is the whole idea of needing sub-satoshi units implies that we will need unrealistically low value transactions in the future, much lower value transactions than exist today. I just don't see the point.

[Leviathan.007]

There is not any problem about the total supply. Because this limitation made bitcoin famous none can print fake bitcoin in basement and no government or organization can print bitcoin for no reason. That's why the inflation rate will effect the fiat currency because they print tons of money and according to supply and demand theory they will lose the price over time but bitcoin not. There is no chance to increase the totally supply, but IF somehow it changes, the price will fall rapidly. So, there will be only 21m bitcoins for all the people around the world and if you do own one signal bitcoin you are lucky.

[fullhdpixel]

Well I guess that's one of the questions being raised here: what happens if/when satoshis become too large of a unit and there are no more zeros to the right? The obvious answer is to sub-divide into smaller units.

But if you think about it, that situation seems rather unlikely: $1 satoshis implies $100M BTC. I'm insanely bullish, more than most, but even I can't conceive of that, assuming USD hasn't hyperinflated.

That's why this whole discussion is sort of a joke. A very unrealistic hypothetical (like $100M BTC) is being used to arbitrarily shake faith in Bitcoin's supply dynamics.

I wonder why?

I guess there is a certain problem when that happens but it also looks like it is not going to be any time soon neither. Bitcoin needs to figure out a way to make it a lot faster and cheaper before it can deal with anything else, without us having that under 10 cent and under 1 minute payment situation, we are not going to really have any problem that will be bigger.

People are not really caring about the transaction fee and timing problems right now, and being as expensive as it is right now, we still managed to hit $32.5k+ price in bitcoin, however one thing is for sure, we are not really having these superb increases because people see bitcoin as a currency, they see it as a way to make money and that's it, which destroys the whole idea of why bitcoin was created to begin with. I am not sure if we should feel good or bad about this at all.

[bits4books]

One process debases the currency by increasing the money supply, the other process makes lower value transactions possible by increasing unit divisibility. These are two very distinct and unrelated things. Why do you conflate them?

In any case, I'm not sure we actually need more divisibility. Even if 1 BTC = $1M, a satoshi is worth $0.01. Do we really need sub-penny value transactions?

So after all, the conceptual problem of the entire cryptocurrency in general is that people want these transactions in the amount of a penny - the main thing is that it would not be a pure dollar but money in the form of BTC/ETH/whatever that tied to dollar.

You can divide BTC at least as much as you want and let it grow to the most cosmic prices but as long as you yourself tie it to the dollar and do not want to untie it, then you are just hostages of the most hated fiat currency.

That was just a reference to the value of everyday transactions, not a suggestion that anything be "tied" to the dollar. The dollar is the most relevant unit of account today, so it's useful to convey actual value. Much more useful than BTC, which is exponentially rising in price vs. all assets in existence.

All I'm saying is the whole idea of needing sub-satoshi units implies that we will need unrealistically low value transactions in the future, much lower value transactions than exist today. I just don't see the point.

So why do you need to divide BTC if there are much more convenient and fast cryptocurrencies for this?, nothing will help If it's duckling syndrome . Nothing will grow forever. And it's time for me to start using cryptocurrencies, not because they can sharply rise in price by 10 times, but because they can easily (hello, ETH 2.0) start competing with Visa/MC. Do you need securities or means of payment? In second case, BTC is already very morally and technically outdated and it's time to accept it.

[exstasie]

All I'm saying is the whole idea of needing sub-satoshi units implies that we will need unrealistically low value transactions in the future, much lower value transactions than exist today. I just don't see the point.

So why do you need to divide BTC if there are much more convenient and fast cryptocurrencies for this?

There is no need. Both the "we need more zeros" camp (Bitcoin permabulls) and the "BTC is unlimited because division" camp (No-coiners) are misguided. Neither claim is true. It's all just posturing.

[bits4books]

All I'm saying is the whole idea of needing sub-satoshi units implies that we will need unrealistically low value transactions in the future, much lower value transactions than exist today. I just don't see the point.

So why do you need to divide BTC if there are much more convenient and fast cryptocurrencies for this?

There is no need. Both the "we need more zeros" camp (Bitcoin permabulls) and the "BTC is unlimited because division" camp (No-coiners) are misguided. Neither claim is true. It's all just posturing.

So BTC as a cryptocurrency-let's be honest - did not take place in the direct sense. Now BTC is just a financial tool for speculating on the course and nothing more. It is disgustingly inconvenient to use in everyday life - it is long, slow, clumsy and too unstable.

[wxa7115]

I'm seeing this particular topic on twitter today and it's got me a bit stumped. So I would like to ask my hero bitcoiners here for their advice:

If bitcoin's price and market cap continue to increase, and if a 2nd layer or off-network protocol allows people to subdivide their satoshis into smaller and smaller units, does the whole 21 million BTC supply cap even matter anymore?

Yes the cap will still matter because the overall number of coins is still the same, you just were able to divide it in smaller units, think of the whole supply of bitcoin as a cake, if you divided it by 4 then you have four big chunks of cake right? Now lets suppose that you are able to divide that cake 1000 times, now the slices are going to be very small but the size of the cake did not change, this shows that the limit in the supply of the coins will still be there.

Also it is important to say that for some time there have been arguments about changing what we consider a bitcoin as its price is very high, some think that maybe we should begin to use mBTC as the main unit of bitcoin as right now it is the equivalent of 40 dollars which is a sum that is easier to understand than 40k.

[jaysabi]

So BTC as a cryptocurrency-let's be honest - did not take place in the direct sense. Now BTC is just a financial tool for speculating on the course and nothing more. It is disgustingly inconvenient to use in everyday life - it is long, slow, clumsy and too unstable.

Saying anything bad about bitcoin around here doesn't get you much agreement, but what you've said is true. Bitcoin is a horrible currency and people need to stop pretending like it's ever going to be better. It's a store of value and a speculative vehicle, not a useful currency.

[Princejebs]

Why bitcoin is more flexible is because of it's division, it can be subdivided into small bits but will that be of value even at lower Satoshi? That will depend on the amount of money injected into bitcoin or flow of money into bitcoin market cap.
In my opinion, subdivision of bitcoin doesn't really matters because most percentage of bitcoin circulating the market is very small, others are kept by whales and they aren't going to give out any time soon.

[exstasie]

So why do you need to divide BTC if there are much more convenient and fast cryptocurrencies for this?

There is no need. Both the "we need more zeros" camp (Bitcoin permabulls) and the "BTC is unlimited because division" camp (No-coiners) are misguided. Neither claim is true. It's all just posturing.

So BTC as a cryptocurrency-let's be honest - did not take place in the direct sense. Now BTC is just a financial tool for speculating on the course and nothing more. It is disgustingly inconvenient to use in everyday life - it is long, slow, clumsy and too unstable.

Is it really that inconvenient? It's the price we pay for transaction finality. I feel incredibly secure when I receive a BTC payment and it has 1 confirmation.

I also hate how debit cards give merchants the power to pull unauthorized amounts out of my account, and you have to fight to claw it back through a timely dispute procedure. That's the other side of transaction finality: with Bitcoin, you broadcast what you want to pay. The rest of your money is not at risk.

Lightning is also emerging as a way to provide instant transaction finality (for fiat-to-fiat transactions if needed): https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5307991.0

So there's that too.

[arwin100]

So BTC as a cryptocurrency-let's be honest - did not take place in the direct sense. Now BTC is just a financial tool for speculating on the course and nothing more. It is disgustingly inconvenient to use in everyday life - it is long, slow, clumsy and too unstable.

Saying anything bad about bitcoin around here doesn't get you much agreement, but what you've said is true. Bitcoin is a horrible currency and people need to stop pretending like it's ever going to be better. It's a store of value and a speculative vehicle, not a useful currency.

only whales who have a lot of money will try to profit from bitcoin by taking advantage of its price movements, all digital currency trading cannot provide guarantees, therefore it can be said that bitcoin has a very high risk because it can make you loss instantly and it can also make you profit instantly. No one knows for sure what price bitcoin will be in the future.

Why do you think about that? Even low ballers or small time traders can earn and take advantage to the price movements of bitcoin, but they need to be careful on their movement and always act without putting some greediness in their trades since if they wish for more and don't settle for little result then their efforts to gain will became useless.

Although whales have advantage but they still cannot guarantee if they can earn since it all depends on how the market flow and it's still unpredictable that's why we cannot assure that they always have the advantage.

[wxa7115]

So BTC as a cryptocurrency-let's be honest - did not take place in the direct sense. Now BTC is just a financial tool for speculating on the course and nothing more. It is disgustingly inconvenient to use in everyday life - it is long, slow, clumsy and too unstable.

Saying anything bad about bitcoin around here doesn't get you much agreement, but what you've said is true. Bitcoin is a horrible currency and people need to stop pretending like it's ever going to be better. It's a store of value and a speculative vehicle, not a useful currency.

I think that most people that are reasonable about bitcoin understand that at the moment bitcoin is actually not the best form of money when it comes to using it to buy stuff, it is slow to confirm and it takes too much money in fees if you are buying something small, I think most people can see that, however it has all the characteristics of money including one of the most important characteristics that fiat currencies will never have which is to be a store of value.

This is what has made bitcoin subject of speculation, but this was unavoidable and if the developers keep working in bitcoin I think we will come to the point in which bitcoin will become a good currency to use in our everyday lives.

[AndySt]

I think that most people that are reasonable about bitcoin understand that at the moment bitcoin is actually not the best form of money when it comes to using it to buy stuff, it is slow to confirm and it takes too much money in fees if you are buying something small, I think most people can see that, however it has all the characteristics of money including one of the most important characteristics that fiat currencies will never have which is to be a store of value.
This is what has made bitcoin subject of speculation, but this was unavoidable and if the developers keep working in bitcoin I think we will come to the point in which bitcoin will become a good currency to use in our everyday lives.

I think that about all the characteristics of money, this is quite a bold argument, because if these characteristics can be found with great desire in bitcoin, but purely nominally. I have great sympathy for bitcoin and high hopes for its future prospects, but all these characteristics are not yet in demand in real life and it is not at all known whether these characteristics will be in demand in the future, except as a means of accumulation and a speculative asset.

[erikoy]

As what others had told the supply will matter because it will dictates the bitcoin market price and if there are demands bitcoin market will becoming more expensive and this is what happening to bitcoin right now. Bitcoin experience shortage of supply already and this is the reason why bitcoin market price is so high. This is how the economics demand and supply work way back in the secondary school subjects. This is also what happen when there is a shortage of food supply. Food will becoming more expensive.

[so98nn]

Dividing the satoshi into smaller bits only means that you can afford to buy any small amount of bitcoin with the usd that you have in your pockets. But imagine if this function would have not been there then at the current rate will you be able to buy bitcoin at all? This would have filtered out investors who only spend 100-200 bucks on bitcoin in single purchase order. In the aftermath bitcoin would have become the thing of richer people and not the Genral public. It’s division is important and it’s supply mathematically remains 21 million only. We are making subdivisions of 21 million, we are not making equal parts really.

[shoreno]

Dividing the satoshi into smaller bits only means that you can afford to buy any small amount of bitcoin with the usd that you have in your pockets. But imagine if this function would have not been there then at the current rate will you be able to buy bitcoin at all? This would have filtered out investors who only spend 100-200 bucks on bitcoin in single purchase order. In the aftermath bitcoin would have become the thing of richer people and not the Genral public. It’s division is important and it’s supply mathematically remains 21 million only. We are making subdivisions of 21 million, we are not making equal parts really.

there are small investors that invest under 100-200 bucks , they can still invest now on the current btc system  but if btc price soar really high that it leads for 1 satoshi to be hundred dollar ,

 i think they are screwed but i think btc devs are going to fix this problem and will probably extend or add another decimals for the poor investors to continue participating and i think you are right that this wont screw the supply . supply will still be 21m and the growth of the price of btc are going to be unefected .

[Vishnu.Reang]

I'm seeing this particular topic on twitter today and it's got me a bit stumped. So I would like to ask my hero bitcoiners here for their advice:

If bitcoin's price and market cap continue to increase, and if a 2nd layer or off-network protocol allows people to subdivide their satoshis into smaller and smaller units, does the whole 21 million BTC supply cap even matter anymore?

How many times you have seen the price denominated in Satoshi? Sat and mBTC are used very rarely in the market. I have visited dozens of online market places, and all of them use BTC instead of mBTC and Sat. I have seen price-tags such as BTC0.0002 or BTC0.00005, but I have never seen the prices being shown as 0.2 mBTC or 20,000 Satoshi.

I had proposed this a long time back. The core developers need to consider re-denominating Bitcoin. Every existing, and yet to be mined Bitcoins should be redenominated by a factor of 10,000 or 100,000. That means that 1 old BTC would become 10,000 or 100,000 new BTC. It will be very helpful in increasing the adoption and acceptability of Bitcoin.

[bits4books]

So BTC as a cryptocurrency-let's be honest - did not take place in the direct sense. Now BTC is just a financial tool for speculating on the course and nothing more. It is disgustingly inconvenient to use in everyday life - it is long, slow, clumsy and too unstable.

Saying anything bad about bitcoin around here doesn't get you much agreement, but what you've said is true. Bitcoin is a horrible currency and people need to stop pretending like it's ever going to be better. It's a store of value and a speculative vehicle, not a useful currency.

I think that most people that are reasonable about bitcoin understand that at the moment bitcoin is actually not the best form of money when it comes to using it to buy stuff, it is slow to confirm and it takes too much money in fees if you are buying something small, I think most people can see that, however it has all the characteristics of money including one of the most important characteristics that fiat currencies will never have which is to be a store of value.

This is what has made bitcoin subject of speculation, but this was unavoidable and if the developers keep working in bitcoin I think we will come to the point in which bitcoin will become a good currency to use in our everyday lives.

Let me remind you that fiat currencies have quite a successful opportunity to invest in stocks and other classic fin tools - which also show growth at a distance. Yes, not as crazy as BTC, but much more stable.
And about the fact that BTC can become a convenient and normal currency, this is certainly unlikely because it is already too monstrous and clumsy. And the next fork of BTC will not lead to good because it will no longer be BTC as such, but another ship of Theseus.

[qwertyup23]

I think that's really a big deal.  although bitcoin is infinitely divisible, it is limited to 21 million.  This leads to a far future where bitcoin's transaction fees will be huge

This really goes to show that the price of bitcoin definitely has the potential to increase years from now. The problem, though, will be the transaction fees for miners as that is the only way they get compensation from confirming the transactions in the blockchain.

Like what others have mentioned, by the time that happens, maybe other altcoins in the market would become more valuable and flexible in investing. I am actually curious and I hope I am still alive by the time we get closer to the supply of 21 million bitcoins.

[wxa7115]

there are small investors that invest under 100-200 bucks , they can still invest now on the current btc system  but if btc price soar really high that it leads for 1 satoshi to be hundred dollar ,

 i think they are screwed but i think btc devs are going to fix this problem and will probably extend or add another decimals for the poor investors to continue participating and i think you are right that this wont screw the supply . supply will still be 21m and the growth of the price of btc are going to be unefected .

I think that eventually we are going to need to add smaller denominations than the satoshi because if you think about it if all the people in the world bought bitcoin then the amount of bitcoin that we could get is incredibly low and when you add that there are millions of coins that have been lost and there are millions of coins in the wallets of whales that are never going to leave their wallets then that amount becomes even lower.

Which means that sooner or later we will have to add a smaller denomination than the satoshi, fortunately for us since bitcoin is an electronic form of money that should be relatively easy for the developers so I do not see it as a big deal.

[teosanru]

I'm seeing this particular topic on twitter today and it's got me a bit stumped. So I would like to ask my hero bitcoiners here for their advice:

If bitcoin's price and market cap continue to increase, and if a 2nd layer or off-network protocol allows people to subdivide their satoshis into smaller and smaller units, does the whole 21 million BTC supply cap even matter anymore?

Yes it does. It's because we are just splitting up the numbers. Increasing supply means that we are able to increase the total value of Supply when we subdivide the satoshis what we are doing is adding more decimal points. For example, if we have a total of 1000$ in circulation subdividing satoshi is like introducing cents. Now, this does not increases the supply obviously. But it's kind of a boon to bitcoin because if merely subdividing would increase the supply the price would pretty easily come down with every new decimal we create after satoshi. But I feel 2nd layer or off-network protocol is still too wild to imagine dreams. If people are willing to go on an off-network protocol then why don't we just switch over to some other currency other than bitcoin? I think there are a lot of questions to be answered which obviously will be answered with time.