Can Bitcoin Supply Be Manipulated?

[BChydro]

Yes, it is very possible to increase the supply of the bitcoin or make it more or even make it infinite but the thing is that it is very hard to crack the code because you will also do the re-arranging of the blocks which is even the smartest people can't do that thing. So if you are asking if it is really possible to increase the supply then probably the answer would be "Yes" but it is kind of a hard job to that thing. Just think why the government didn't print so much paper money? it is because there is only fix money that we need to be circulated.

You really do not need to crack anything if you want to increase the number of coins in bitcoin, all you need is a consensus between all the parties involved but the fact remains that there is no need for the increase in the number of coins and if the developers does anything then it will affect the entire market.

When you are talking about government printing money, it was done and there are countries struggling with inflation because the government printed too much money and flooded the market.

[Shasha80]

In theory it is possible to manipulate the Bitcoin supply, but in practice it is very difficult to do. Even the percentage of success is very small,
the proof is that until now it has been more than 11 years that no one has succeeded in manipulating the Bitcoin supply. I think Bitcoin will still
have a supply of 21 million, as determined by Satoshi Nakamoto. And we don't need to worry about the total Bitcoin supply being manipulated,
because I believe it will never happen.

[shahzadafzal]

After reading the above post, it’s pretty clear that remembering 21M is easier than going into details about why the real effective max. generated bitcoin figure is really going to be slightly shy of 21M …

Interesting indeed, thank you for bring this up.. but I guess the Bitcoin final figure will be far less than the 21M. One estimate suggested there could be 20% of all Bitcoins is lost or simply unrecoverable.

Keeping this in mind that would leave us just ~16.8M bitcoins only.

But of course we don’t need to worry because we have satoshi after all....
1BTC = 100,000,000 satoshi

And how many satoshis we have

1,680,000,000,000,000 = one quadrillion six hundred eighty trillion

That’s enough for the whole world, remember as of 2021 there’s approximately US $37 trillion in circulation.

[SaShiRaJaVu]

Bitcoin supply has been determined by the developer, it is impossible to manipulate, unless initially there is wrong information about the amount of supply that exists. I don't think anyone can manipulate the Bitcoin supply, if that happens then the value will go down, as we know the less the number of bitcoins there is, the more valuable it will be.

It is a few lines of code if you want to edit the number of coins in existence you can do so if you have control over the keys and there is no need for the increase in supply and no one will be willing to abide by that if anyone proposes to increase the number of coins. Since this runs through consensus there is nothing to worry and no one is going to manipulate anything.

[izsara]

In fact, I think someone has thought about it before you even much earlier, it could be a few days, months or the previous year, but things like this, of course, the developer has prepared and anticipated from the start. of course the developer also does not want to experience this kind of thing so that they get a loss.
but it does not rule out the theoretical possibility that this could happen and could just be done but what after impact? surely they do something, of course, think about the impact first

[BrewMaster]

Bitcoin supply has been determined by the developer, it is impossible to manipulate, unless initially there is wrong information about the amount of supply that exists. I don't think anyone can manipulate the Bitcoin supply, if that happens then the value will go down, as we know the less the number of bitcoins there is, the more valuable it will be.

It is a few lines of code if you want to edit the number of coins in existence you can do so if you have control over the keys and there is no need for the increase in supply and no one will be willing to abide by that if anyone proposes to increase the number of coins. Since this runs through consensus there is nothing to worry and no one is going to manipulate anything.

it is more than a few lines of code because the maximum supply is not hard coded in bitcoin's code. the way supply works is based on mathematics where the first block had a 50 bitcoin reward and it halves every 2016 blocks. so the supply also involves the POW and difficulty adjustment. that is why the newbie altcoin forkers always have problem making changes to bitcoin core when they make a copy of it.

[Bitstar_coin]

So there are 21 million total because that is how it was coded. Will it be possible to increase the supply or even make it infinite if someone was able to crack the code?

Supply is know to all how can it be manipulated again! That is no longer possible except that will mean that Satoshi Nakamoto has come back to temper with the Supply, I don't think any other devs can do anything with the Supply,
Bitcoin total supply will always remain 21 million and nothing more.

[DarkDays]

So there are 21 million total because that is how it was coded. Will it be possible to increase the supply or even make it infinite if someone was able to crack the code?

Isn't about a user cracking the code, to apply a change on the network then more than 50% of the nodes should run with that change. In theory, this could be possible, but more than 50% of the people should be agreed with this idea and that's the complex part.

When governments print more money the coins lose their value, that could happen to bitcoin if a fork like that comes.

So, my answer is, yes, it can be manipulated but it will never happen.

Precisely, if competent enough the closest you can get is to create a fork and hope other people will see value in that newly created fork and use those coins to derive value from but since this is a commonly known idea among the crypto geeks and community in general nobody is going to fall for that. At least not enough people for the fork to become mainstream.

So, you need not to worry about BTC having an increased supply than its cap already!

[BitcoinPanther]

So there are 21 million total because that is how it was coded. Will it be possible to increase the supply or even make it infinite if someone was able to crack the code?

Supply is know to all how can it be manipulated again! That is no longer possible except that will mean that Satoshi Nakamoto has come back to temper with the Supply, I don't think any other devs can do anything with the Supply,
Bitcoin total supply will always remain 21 million and nothing more.

No, even Satoshi has no power to tamper the supply of Bitcoin.  It is all about the consensus of miners.  Satoshi had been long gone on the scene and even if he come back,  I don't think he has that great influence to affect miners into agreeing to anything he wanted to do with Bitcoin development.  And if he do, he will more likely create a Bitcoin fork and that is not Bitcoin itself.

[seramania]

So there are 21 million total because that is how it was coded. Will it be possible to increase the supply or even make it infinite if someone was able to crack the code?

it will not be easy to manipulate the bitcoin supply, even though you have mastered the block chain or blockchain method it is unlikely that it will easily materialize in the public market, because surely your manipulation will be rejected by the public.

[online73]

Hello everybody. Even if I am not very well versed in this matter, but the total amount of bitcoins determined at the time of creation is constant and cannot be changed, which is tantamount to trying to change the speed of light. It is a constant, not subject to change. It is better to spend more time looking for opportunities to buy more bitcoins than looking for opportunities where there are none.

[robertjack]

So there are 21 million total because that is how it was coded. Will it be possible to increase the supply or even make it infinite if someone was able to crack the code?

“BTC is not a capital asset: it does not produce cash flows resulting from economic returns on capital.” ... The currency's meteoric rise could be motivated by more than frenzied demand: Pickard indicated the price of bitcoin could be “artificially manipulated” by Tether and possibly other stablecoins

[tranthidung]

So there are 21 million total because that is how it was coded. Will it be possible to increase the supply or even make it infinite if someone was able to crack the code?

You can not with Bitcoin total supply that is fixed with the Protocol.

You can with sourced code of Bitcoin. Amazingly, you can find hundreds of clone coins from Bitcoin sourced code. They claim they are forks of Bitcoin but I consider them as clones, not forks. Many of them have nothing to do with mission from their fork. They use available sourced code and modify it for their interests.

• How Many Bitcoin Forks Are There? You will be surprised!!!
• Bitcoin Fork List

[Kittygalore]

I don't think that we can manipulate to increase the supply but if it it counts, I think that purposely losing your bitcoin to lower the supply is technically some form of supply manipulation although it aims to decrease the bitcoins supply though.

[Saltius]

No need to crack the code of bitcoin.

Govs or other big bad asses just need to brainwash the majority of bitcoin users to make them believe paper bitcoin they issue=bitcoin.

How many people will realise bitcoin on paypal or any software you think of is not bitcoin at all but bitcoin IOU instead.

When the majority of users can't distinguish this, the supply could be manipulated.

Yeah, you could shout out bitcoin IOU supply is not bitcoin supply but who cares?

This is exactly the same trick that has been screwing gold since many decades ago.

[kotajikikox]

No need to crack the code of bitcoin.

Govs or other big bad asses just need to brainwash the majority of bitcoin users to make them believe paper bitcoin they issue=bitcoin.

What is this and How will government do such? Paper Bitcoin?

How many people will realise bitcoin on paypal or any software you think of is not bitcoin at all but bitcoin IOU instead.

Sorry where did you get this idea? Some good explanation and proof?

When the majority of users can't distinguish this, the supply could be manipulated.

Here we go again , manipulation issue.

Yeah, you could shout out bitcoin IOU supply is not bitcoin supply but who cares?

This is exactly the same trick that has been screwing gold since many decades ago.

You have a wild imagination mate , why not use that to create a Book ? 

[Andrews193]

So there are 21 million total because that is how it was coded. Will it be possible to increase the supply or even make it infinite if someone was able to crack the code?

Yes this can happen very easily even you can do it but please don’t call it Bitcoin any more.

You can name it like Bitcoin 2,  Bitcoin 3, Bitcoin Pure Gold, Silver, Bronze, Bitcoin Titanium in fact a quick search reveals there are almost 113+ variants of Bitcoin existing. With different supply, block reward, block timing or difficulty.

In short you don’t need to crack the code, code is available online it’s an open source project you just need the community to agree to your change and your proposal and you are good to go.
Here’s the git repository of the Bitcoin source code
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin

yes, I agree that I have to give a name other than bitcoin, because bitcoin is already exclusive to the total supply currently available. and later, if there is manipulation, additional supply will only dump bitcoin prices

Indeed, replenishing the supply is quite difficult for a particular project like bitcoin, which means drastically reducing the value and scarcity of the product, those who possess this opportunity to manipulate certainly will not do such a bad thing but perhaps unlocking this problem is not that simple when bitcoin has been an irreversible chain for many years

[Swordsoffreedom]

So there are 21 million total because that is how it was coded. Will it be possible to increase the supply or even make it infinite if someone was able to crack the code?

Theoretically, it is possible but It will take a hard fork to make this possible. Changing the total supply is not possible unless all miners and payment providers jointly upgrade their current Bitcoin system. This is not possible if the miner and the user do not agree to use the modified Bitcoin Code together. Current Bitcoin's block size is over ~330GB, which makes it even more difficult to change the core blockchain system. So technically it is harder than hard to modify the core system or manipulate the Bitcoin system. Every Hodlers and investors/miner will refuse to accept the newly modified code, everyone will try their best to keep alive the current version cause already they have invested in it.

[Iranus]

supply cannot be manipulated , except its going to be a fork of bitcoin and nothing else. supply manipulation will only lead to poor pricing if it happens then we should be looking at seeing bitcoin dethroned from the top spot.

Supply can be manipulated if the core team, miners and users are accept the changed version of the Bitcoin system, If the majority percent are willing to adopt the modified version then it will be possible but I don't think the economic majority will agree to accept any changes cause Already they have invested a lot of money and holding a worthy part of Bitcoin and any changes will devaluate the holdings of current investors and miners. So, there is nothing to be worried about until the economic majority provides their supports.

[NeverSop]

I think the bitcoin architecture has many layers. and to modify the structure of the addition the code will affect many relevant metrics and block, hash frequency, bitcoin having ,, .. I think no one will be able to access and supplement the supply of bitcoin. Except, Satoshi could step up. Lol