what happens to bitcoin

[JohnnySit]

Hi there!
BTC price keeps getting higher but that's just because the number or circulating bitcoins decreasing
I don't know what that mean?
if I buy 1 BTC now what guarantee do I have that that circulating supply goes down I wont have less than 1 BTC?
can anyone explain the circulating supply?
thanks!

[Charles-Tim]

BTC price keeps getting higher but that's just because the number or circulating bitcoins decreasing
I don't know what that mean?

No. Decreasing supply is one of the reasons but marketcap is the main reason now.

if I buy 1 BTC now what guarantee do I have that that circulating supply goes down I wont have less than 1 BTC?

The supply of bitcoin in total can not decrease. In every 10 minutes in avarage, 6.25 Bitcoin are supplyed which can not be burned and making the total supply in circulation to be increasing.

To know more about how decreasing supply has been the main factor that increased the price of bitcoin and later shifting more to marketcap, you can click on the link below.

The bitcoin halving, whales manipulations and its 2020 price valuation
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5232054.msg54008321#msg54008321

[stompix]

Marketcap:- this is the total worth of bitcoin. Like in US dollar, the total funds of people that bought bitcoin in USD which is currently around $580 billion. The more people that buy bitcoin, thearketcap will increase. The more peoe sell Bitcoin, the marketcap will be decreasing. The marketcap is proportionate to bitcoin price.

No, it's not like that, the market cap is just the current price of bitcoin multiplied by the number of coins in circulation.
Yesterday there was a dump of around $4k dropping the market cap by close to around 100 billion, did it mean that 100 billion were pulled out of exchanges in those hours? Nope! If nobody but one person sells one BTC and somebody buys it at 100k it will triple the market cap without putting in 600billions, that's why the market cap is quite an irrelevant metric, especially for altcoins.

Think for a moment, you bought one BTC at 10k and it is now worth $30k, how much did you put in, 10k or 30k?  

BTC price keeps getting higher but that's just because the number or circulating bitcoins decreasing
I don't know what that mean?

It means that you've started with the wrong assumption, bitcoin price going up it's not because of that, and so accordingly, if you buy one BTC now, nobody is going to take it from you you will still own BTC no matter the price or marketcap.

[DdmrDdmr]

<…>

1 bitcoin is 1 bitcoin, now and always. You won’t have less or more as time goes by as a side effect of the circulating supply. What will vary is its countervalue against fiat. In what direction? Nobody knows, and it will depend on many factors (demand, offer, legislation, reputation, usage, ease of use, etc.).

The circulating supply is simply the amount of bitcoins that are potentially out there, and that can be sold/bought/used at a given moment in time.
Taken to the extreme, if nobody sold their bitcoins, you’d only be able to purchase the newly mined ones, and those are reduced with around 900 new bitcoins currently mined every day, the following halving (nearly 4 years down the road) will bring that amount to roughly 450 new bitcoins per day. The overall supply will be larger as time goes by, but the effective daily circulating supply smaller. A small amount on offer, and a large demand, would rise the price like mad.
 
Of course, going to the opposite extreme, everybody could decide to sell tomorrow, and there would be a hell of a lot of circulating supply. A lot of offer, and few purchasers would drive the price down like hell.

Really, we’re in a middle ground in terms of effective circulating supply (not theoretical max. supply), and then offer and demand drive the price.

[mk4]

The total bitcoin in circulation is actually growing, not decreasing. It's the bitcoin being mined that's decreasing due to the halving(a.k.a. halvening) events every 4 years.

Today, 900 bitcoin are being mined per day(6.25 every block), adding up to the total circulating supply. After the next halving, this will be cut down in half, once again slowing down the bitcoin being added into circulation.

https://www.blockchain.com/charts/total-bitcoins
https://www.thehalvening.com/

[witcher_sense]

Market capitalization is supposed to be equal to circulating supply multiplied by the price of one bitcoin. The problem is we don't know how many bitcoins are currently in circulation, we don't know how many bitcoins available for sale, we don't know the exact number of hodlers who never will sell their coins, we don't know exactly how many bitcoins were lost and stolen. We don't know nothing and this is why neither circulating supply nor market capitalization can be correctly estimated. The current formula for market cap estimation is total supply (the number of coins mined into existence) * BTC price, which is an obviously wrong estimation. Actually, I hate the definition of circulating supply - the number of bitcoins that are publicly available. Sorry, but my bitcoins aren't part of the circulating supply because they are not available for sale. So, don't count me.

[akirasendo17]

I think one of the reason is that people are now what they called FOMO meaning fear of missing out, because as we know lots of people ignore bitcoin before but now, they realize they have made a huge mistake and trying to have some piece or part of it before it goes up, also there are lots of company now that is trying to use bitcoin, banks are now having an interest in bitcoin, there are lots of reasons but I think this is some of it.

[20kevin20]

Circulating supply does not decrease. It only increases the more blocks are mined. It is guaranteed that your wallet balance never changes by itself. Do the banknotes in your fiat physical wallet vanish or appear randomly? They don't; your Bitcoins don't either.

If the total supply is ever going to be changed (which is almost certainly not gonna happen), it's going to change for everyone. It might become one of the options on the table if Bitcoin ever touches a hundred thousand to a million bucks per coin, as fees will start to become expensive without a 2nd layer solution such as LN. But if supply ever changes from 21M to 21B, the price will also change proportionally.