If bitcoin becomes generally adopted, will 21million btc be enough for everyone?

[Fivestar4everMVP]

21 million bitcoins for the entire world is more than enough,  even if bitcoin was just 100,000 units,  it is still enough since bitcoin can also be spent in smaller units which we refer to as satoshi.
It is not mandatory that one must own one full bitcoin to be able to carry out transactions in bitcoin,  even with as little as 0.00001 btc,  one can carry out transactions bitcoin transaction easily.

So personally,  I see no problem at all with bitcoins low supply for 21 million for over 7 billion people,  but rather, I see the low supply as a good opportunity as this creates scarcity and as demand increases,  so will the price increase too.

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[Marvell1]

Do you think the world population was considered during the creation of bitcoins? Was the intention to create enough bitcoins that could serve the entire world population should it be generally adopted, since it is what we all hope for, can the 21 million bitcoins be enough for the entire world population if it is generally adopted? As at 2009 when cryptocurrency began use, the estimated world population was 6,898,305,908, Currently 2022, the estimated world population is now  7,975,105,156. That an estimated additional 1,076,799,248 persons in a space of 13 years. We know this number will not become smaller as the population will continue to increase regardless of setbacks in forms of the pandemic, war etc Will general adoption really work?

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/WLD/world/population

It is not necessary that when a person wants to own bitcoin it should be 1BTC, when you own 0.00001BTC it is also bitcoin. So I think no matter how much supply there is, there will be enough for everyone worldwide. Not to mention everyone will need bitcoin, there will be people who work hard to accumulate and there will also be people who don't bother about it.

Since bitcoin has a limited supply and cannot generate more than 21 million BTC when bitcoin adoption is widespread, the increased demand for bitcoin will drive the bitcoin price higher, so accumulating bitcoin from here is what we need do.

[dezoel]

No, the world population is not considered by the time Satoshi created bitcoins because why would he only create 21 millions of it? When the number of population is much higher than that. He is too smart not noticed it but even if the supply is equal to the number of population, there is still no guarantee that every single person will use a bitcoin because not all are educated and not all have the gadgets to be able to start using a bitcoin.

Maybe satoshi didn't increase the supply because he already know that 1 btc can be divided in so many parts and it is hard for a common individual to obtain a whole bitcoin due to its expensive price.

[tranthidung]

No, the world population is not considered by the time Satoshi created bitcoins because why would he only create 21 millions of it? When the number of population is much higher than that.

Many possible explanations for that but only satoshi knows.

In email to Mike Hearn, it's what satoshi wrote and you are free to interpret it but it can be a full explanation or just a partial one. Who knows?

My choice for the number of coins and distribution schedule was an educated guess.  It was a difficult choice, because once the network is going it's locked in and we're stuck with it.  I wanted to pick something that would make prices similar to existing currencies, but without knowing the future, that's very hard.  I ended up picking something in the middle.  If Bitcoin remains a small niche, it'll be worth less per unit than existing currencies.  If you imagine it being used for some fraction of world commerce, then there's only going to be 21 million coins for the whole world, so it would be worth much more per unit.  Values are 64-bit integers with 8 decimal places, so 1 coin is represented internally as 100000000.  There's plenty of granularity if typical prices become small.  For example, if 0.001 is worth 1 Euro, then it might be easier to change where the decimal point is displayed, so if you had 1 Bitcoin it's now displayed as 1000, and 0.001 is displayed as 1.

Anyway, it was set and can not be changed. I don't think of reasons to waste our time to figure out why it was set like that.

Furthermore, having more Bitcoin in total supply is not good for its value. Having less Bitcoin in total supply will make no sense because it will result in non-timing scarcity when the adoption for Bitcoin is not big enough. I think satoshi just did a magical timing set-up for Bitcoin total supply.

[cryptoaddictchie]

I think the quantity isnt matter even 20billion people or more shares it.  The important is its value in thr future even a 0.01 could be a 10k usd each and there would still be enough divisible by the users.  Supply and demand affects the price and utility so a fraction of btc could be worth alot even not 1 whole piece of btc.

[Leviathan.007]

Even if bitcoin is generally adopted or not there will enough bitcoins for everyone the only thing here is the number of bitcoins for each person in the world because if the adoption happens and more people will be attracted to bitcoin and more countries will accept and use bitcoin there will be more demand and more buys and investors which means with the same amount of bitcoin we will have more demand this will make bitcoin very expensive and the people who own more than one bitcoin will be very rare in the world, but still, there will be enough bitcoins for everyone in the world.

[Charles-Tim]

It is not mandatory that one must own one full bitcoin to be able to carry out transactions in bitcoin,  even with as little as 0.00001 btc,  one can carry out transactions bitcoin transaction easily.

You are right, even on legacy address, the dust limit is 546 sat or so, even lower if using segwit address, which means presently, people can spend as low as 546 sat.

The dust limit is default on nodes, that does not mean that even 1 sat can not be sent successfully because the dust limit can be changed, not a concensus rule. Which means if bitcoin increase more in value and people have no option than to spend it, the default value would have been adjusted in a way spending 1 sat would be possible.

... and the people who own more than one bitcoin will be very rare in the world, but still, there will be enough bitcoins for everyone in the world.

Having 1 BTC is not what that matters if bitcoin keeps increasing in value.

[CryptoHeadlineNews]

The answer to the question is that Bitcoin is divisible, and it can be divided into several basic units/fractions just like Gold and our Fiat currency, but the total number of persons in this world can never be able to acquire a whole one full Bitcoin if it is generally accepted, because one thing about Bitcoin is that the higher the demand, the higher the price will increase, making it impossible for people who aren't financially buoyant to get a whole of it but could acquired some fraction of it as there amount could afford.
So the answer to your question is "Yes" because if bitcoin becomes generally adopted, 21million btc will definitely be enough for everyone

[Danydee]

there are only 190,000 tonnes of gold
is that enough for everyone

answer of course yes. no one needs or wants a whole tonne.
no one needs a whole BTC

each btc can be divided into 100,000,000 parts (a sat)

same as how if 1btc is considered "a tonne" 1btc can be considered as 1000x of 0.001btc
where that 0.001btc is like 1kg
where 0.000,001btc is like 1gram

so if most people have devices or tooth filings to have a gram of gold.
with alot more to spare

each person can have 100sat
with alot to spare

 And meanwhile everybody keep getting rich just by holding ??

 What is the morale behind that ?!
 

[Lucius]

People do not understand that 21 million Bitcoins is actually a lot of coins, not only today when globally a very small percentage of people use Bitcoin, but it will be similar in the next 5-10 years, considering that there will always be many more who will want to sell, but those who will want to buy. Furthermore, it is wrong to think that in the near future (even in the distant future) the majority of people will use Bitcoin as a currency or a store of value, because Bitcoin has existed since 2009 and it turned out that the majority of people are not interested in such a thing, and even more that they do not understand what Bitcoin represents.

Apart from that, who says that one day in the future a consensus will not be reached to increase the max supply? People did much more stupid things than that...

[yazher]

We won't really need them all to make transactions, we already found a way to fix that problem because as of now, there are lots of cryptocurrencies that are close to bitcoin and they can be added as the main crypto adopted as well. But unfortunately, most of them are centralized and don't have the bitcoin traits which make it unique to become a candidate for total adoption all around the world to be one of their official currencies.

[romero121]

We won't really need them all to make transactions, we already found a way to fix that problem because as of now, there are lots of cryptocurrencies that are close to bitcoin and they can be added as the main crypto adopted as well. But unfortunately, most of them are centralized and don't have the bitcoin traits which make it unique to become a candidate for total adoption all around the world to be one of their official currencies.

Anything can happen. With technology it is possible to make changes. When the World is ready to get adopted to technology, even if the limited supply of bitcoin isn't enough then something new can take the place of bitcoin and fulfill the needs. However no technology will be able to provide the effective functionality same as what we're experiencing with bitcoin