If Bitcoin had a Billion Max supply instead of 21 million....

[Charles-Tim]

Lets look at a popular Altcoin right now that is Chainklink LINK.

Its price now is $24 and a max supply of 1 billion.

So if Chainlink were to pass $33 price today then as of today then you are saying Chainlink is better than Bitcoin for example?

You can not use chainlink as an example in this case, it has different price, different demand and different supply, it is another coin entirely and not bitcoin. Only bitcoin is used as an example if its circulatory supply is assumed to 18.6 billion instead of 18.6 million while other factors are assumed to be as it is now. Also know that the value of a coin is in its demand which will reflect in its marketcap, the value of a coins is in its marketcap.

I think the marketcap would be lower than the current one, because a billion of coins would be perceived as less scarce than the current max supply, even if in both cases the supply is limited. On the other hand, having lower total supply could also have negative effects, if it was too scarce, like let's say 10,000 bitcoins, it would be viewed more as a collectible rather than a currency or a store of value.

If people embrace bitcoin the way it is now at reduced supply or increased supply, not the marketcap that will be affected, it is the price that will be affected, the lower the supply the higher the price, the higher the higher the supply the lower the marketcap. But anything that will affect the demand will affect the price also, the higher the demand the high the price, a coin with no demand will not have price increase and will be a dead coin.

if it was too scarce, like let's say 10,000 bitcoins, it would be viewed more as a collectible rather than a currency or a store of value.

Yes, if not demanded for. The 21 million max supply just make bitcoin perfect.

XRP prices are still too expensive, because if the supply of bitcoin is more than 21 million pieces then the price might be the same as Doge coin, because the high price of bitcoin depends on the existing supply and demand from exchanges or other platforms, basically the more difficult it is for us to get goods it will be more expensive.

Never compare doge with bitcoin, bitcoin is more demanded for, have more marketcap, even if assumed bitcoin having the same supply as doge, the price will be higher than doge price.

The total supply number of Bitcoins has no impact on the price. Even if the total supply was a trillion, one bitcoin will still cost $32k at the moment.

You are wrong, the price will reduce if the supply increase, with the same demand.

[Wenbing]

Then how much you think the price of 1 btc be today? Is it just doing some simple math to work out the price or is it more to it?

If 1/8th of the world population had 1 btc each then what you guys think the price will be?

There's a 1000 million in 1 billion.

From economics, one of the core philosophy of money is that it is relatively scarce. When the volume of money in circulation is very high, it'll reduce the value and on the other hand when the volume of money in circulation is low it'll increase its value.

Hence, increasing the MS of btc will reduce its value...

[bryant.coleman]

I think the marketcap would be lower than the current one, because a billion of coins would be perceived as less scarce than the current max supply, even if in both cases the supply is limited. On the other hand, having lower total supply could also have negative effects, if it was too scarce, like let's say 10,000 bitcoins, it would be viewed more as a collectible rather than a currency or a store of value.

I don't think that it is going to make much of a difference. Bitcoin is infinitely divisible, and therefore the total supply doesn't matter much. Whether the total supply is 21 million or 1 billion, the market cap is going to be the same. You can argue that Bitcoin may be regarded as less scarce and therefore the demand will go down. But there is a counter argument as well. Right now the unit price is quite high compared to other cryptos and a lot of noobs are reluctant to invest in Bitcoin as a result. IMO, both the factors should neutralize each other.

[Wenbing]

That would make Bitcoin price in cents or double digits just like in XRP. It would make a lot of difference if the supply is changeable to Billion, investors think that Bitcoin is scarce same as Gold that's why companies, institutional and retail investors hold it, thinking it could be a hedge against massive quantitative easing to safeguard their wealth from inflation. Alhough Gold has an unknown supply it could be more or unlimited.

The supply of gold is neither pegged nor unfixed because new gold deposit could be found somewhere in the future. What if the gold deposit is so huge that it multiplies the supply of gold by a factor of 10, the price of gold will start to decline.

But, with btc the supply is capped at 21m, that means it can't increase nor decrease. This make btc better than gold.

[legendster]

All I can say is thankfully bitcoin has a capped supply. Most of the coins with close to infinite supply are trash. Bitcoin is scarce & that’s one of the main things that makes it so valuable.

Anything that's capped is scarce, true, but anything that isn't capped, is trash? untrue.

Something that is uncapped means 100% (or majority) of it can never be controlled by a single entity or a small group. It also makes it transaction friendly which a scarce commodity like Bitcoin fails to become.

We're all pro bitcoiners here but we can be pro bitcoiners and at the same time acknowledge the shortcomings of it w/o any conflict of interest in my opinion.

[pooya87]

Lets look at a popular Altcoin right now that is Chainklink LINK.

Its price now is $24 and a max supply of 1 billion.

So if Chainlink were to pass $33 price today then as of today then you are saying Chainlink is better than Bitcoin for example?

You can't even begin to compare bitcoin with some random low quality altcoin that is only getting pumped and dumped. The only reason why any altcoin specially these new ones have any value is because they were manipulated and pumped while bitcoin price comes from its realistic adoption. Even if bitcoin had 1 billion supply it would still be worth at least 100 times higher than any shitcoin.

[Keila Faith Villanueva]

So essentially 5 50 times more Bitcoin, off the cuff response - it would still be limited supply!
The same reward structure would remain I guess so it would take
longer to mine 1,000,000,000.

What is appealing to investors at the moment is the fact that Bitcoin is a deflationary
asset compared to FIAT which is inflationary, Gold is the closest to Bitcoin but still is
or isnt limited [thats a different discussion] and is controlled.

If Satoshi had set the limit at 1Billion I dont think it would make a difference to the
way we think or the appeal of Bitcoin,

On the other hand if there was a consensus to change the limit from 21Million to 1Billion,
Well thats a different matter.

yeah, things will become totally different

[Keila Faith Villanueva]

That would make Bitcoin price in cents or double digits just like in XRP. It would make a lot of difference if the supply is changeable to Billion, investors think that Bitcoin is scarce same as Gold that's why companies, institutional and retail investors hold it, thinking it could be a hedge against massive quantitative easing to safeguard their wealth from inflation. Alhough Gold has an unknown supply it could be more or unlimited.

XRP prices are still too expensive, because if the supply of bitcoin is more than 21 million pieces then the price might be the same as Doge coin, because the high price of bitcoin depends on the existing supply and demand from exchanges or other platforms, basically the more difficult it is for us to get goods it will be more expensive.

supply and demand is the key to price flunctuation

[Lorence.xD]

~
Bitcoin at $33000 with the current supply at 18.6 million will have a price of $33 if the current supply is at 18.6 billion if having max supply of 21 billion.

That is just an estimate which can make you to understand how increasing supply can reduce price, the value is not exactly accurate. Some coins with low price and too much supply can be burned in order to increase the price.

That is a pretty good estimate but OP's what if number is just 1 billion. The prices will be affected in a way but the left over bitcoin that hasn't been mined yet will be inconclusive, if bitcoin still follows the same principle then mining the 21,000,001th bitcoin will take more time than 21,000,000th bitcoin which could mean that going past that point would be fruitless for miners and could mean that the market will decide that the left overs will not be of use as the mining gets more difficult so they made a pseudo supply cap that will be followed.

[very_452001]

Then how much you think the price of 1 btc be today? Is it just doing some simple math to work out the price or is it more to it?

If 1/8th of the world population had 1 btc each then what you guys think the price will be?

There's a 1000 million in 1 billion.

The total supply number of Bitcoins has no impact on the price. Even if the total supply was a trillion, one bitcoin will still cost $32k at the moment. The price of bitcoin is influence by the rate at which people are buying, selling and using it.  So far as there is a high demand for a particular commodity in the financial market, the value of the commodity increases regardless of the total supply of it.

The main number 1 reason causing demand for Bitcoin is scarcity.

So you saying if there was a trillion btc supply then people would still want (demand) btc at $30k at the moment 


Number 1 reason for Ethereum demand is usage and utility.

Eth is being used like a foundation for all these De-Fi coins and for 1000s of altcoins that are dependant on Eth. So Eth is like a blood supply to these alts hence its $1200 price now per Eth is high now even though there's a infinity supply to it but it has that demand.

But then again Water is a highly used liquid in the world that still takes resources to clean/filter it before use, it is always in demand 24/7 because without it we die. I can say water is unlimited no fixed supply in gallons hence Water is cheap now. So how Eth is expensive now 

[moderator's note: consecutive posts merged]

[BrewMaster]

The main number 1 reason causing demand for Bitcoin is scarcity.

wrong.
the number 1 reason for bitcoin demand is its utility and features. people who buy bitcoin (apart from those who are with us for a short amount of time) are buying it because it is a decentralized currency that doesn't need the corrupt banks.
then the fact that it has a limited supply is like a bonus to them.

Number 1 reason for Ethereum demand is usage and utility.

wrong.
the number 1 reason for ethereum price is its hype and the fact that there are a large number of scammers who keep creating tokens and an even larger number of newbies who want to gamble and buy those tokens. that is the only utility that ethereum offers! otherwise it is useless in real world.
the day this hype stops ethereum price drops to below $1

[adzino]

I doubt "doing some simple" math is going to help you find out the true value of the coins. The value of the coins doesn't depend on "numbers" only. Maybe if the max supply was a billion, people probably wouldn't have faith in bitcoin and the price might be much lower than expected. Or maybe the price might be much higher than today. More supply, more people owning bitcoin, more scattering of the coins, more trading and I guess with this, comes more stability?
Curious, what's the use of discussing about something that will never happen?

[gurunanakji777]

If its like that we can not predict the even lumsum value of Btc but it should not be the same as current value of bitcoin. The high value of Btc is just because of limited supply if the supply is in billions then value of Btc would be very less than our expectations.

[wxa7115]

Then how much you think the price of 1 btc be today? Is it just doing some simple math to work out the price or is it more to it?

If 1/8th of the world population had 1 btc each then what you guys think the price will be?

There's a 1000 million in 1 billion.

At least to me the size of the supply is irrelevant what matters is if the supply is limited or not, if it is then bitcoin will just have the same demand and you will have to divide its market cap and the number of coins to get its price.

However that is unnecessary for a long time I have thought that it is probably a better idea to display the value of bitcoin in terms of mBTC as a price of 32 dollars per mBTC is more relatable for people than a price of 32k for one bitcoin and if you think of bitcoin that way then we will have a supply of 21 billions mBTC.

[paybtc.com.au]

Nothing would change, everything would be the same as it is now, it'd just be a lot longer timeframe until all were mined. And why are you pondering such things OP, you wouldn't want there to be a billion ;P

[bspus]

This obsession with the unit price makes me wonder sometimes.

bitcoin has 100 million satoshis each. In fact, at the protocol level there are only satoshis. The bitcoin software does not care about whole bitcoins. It only cares about satoshis.

The bitcoin "unit" is actually just a convention!

Still, there are valid questions to be asked

1) Would it have been different (for better or worse) if the decimal point was chosen to be further to the right? Really even now it's little more that changing what the client shows as "one" bitcoin.
  Back when the price of one unit was just cents this would have been a moot point. Now I'm not so sure. Unit bias is a real thing.

2) Should it be considered in the future to increase the decimal points to the right? Effectively 10x all the satoshi in existence (the equivalent of 1 decimal point increase)
  This is not really an increase in supply as all balances AND past transactions would see that increase. What it would do is add precision to allow for even smaller transfers of value and maybe more granularity in fees

[Oshosondy]

Nothing would change, everything would be the same as it is now, it'd just be a lot longer timeframe until all were mined. And why are you pondering such things OP, you wouldn't want there to be a billion ;P

There will be many chances, the price will be low but the gain will be the same. It can happen in another way because if the supply is too much and the price is low, when the rise was rising, it may not attack peoples attention, it can also be in a way that price may not like bitcoin and go for the better ones. The 21 million supply is perfect for bitcoin, it is one of the goal-driven achievements that has led to demand for bitcoin to be increasing. I get your point because if the supply increase, the price can reduce but it all depends on the adoption, if adopted like now, the gain will be like now too but only the price will not be like now but reduced.

[LittleBitFunny]

Limited supply makes Bitcoin more demandable and more valuable, If it has unlimited supply People were afraid to invest in it, People were not keen to invest in it, they thought Supply is more than demand so investing in it will not be profitable. You can look at XRP as an example, They have increased their circulating supply, their supply has increased more than the demand, now they are is in crisis with their existence.

[Twentyonepaylots]

Then it wouldn't be as scarce as it is now. The good thing about cryptocurrencies is that supply does not automatically affect the demand, so we can still expect or ses a value at least as high as what we have right now, but mining and other bitcoin fauceting methods will not be as hard or unprofitable as they are right now.

[Phanditha Echevarria]

then institutions will buy a large amount of them and many government will be buried in mining. We ordinary can get some, too coz the price will decline. But will Satoshi allow this?