Zcash Co-Inventor: ''Capping the supply of Bitcoin at 21M doesn't make sense"

[Alphakilo]

That statement was his opinion, and everyone is entitled to their own.  If we do not like such a personal opinion, we can just skip it and ignore it. I believe  Zcash Co-inventor's opinion has little to no chance of being acknowledged by the Bitcoin developers.

I wonder why he is meddling with the Bitcoin business when he has a lot of things to attend to on fixing present and future glitches of his Zcash.  Rather than poking his nose to Bitcoin business, I think it is wiser for him to focus his energy and ideals on his coins.

Perhaps he thinks poking his nose in Bitcoin business will make his own business get the attention and adoption he craves, otherwise it's just pointless.
He must be so fascinated or maybe obsessed with the institutional VC loop to have his thoughts focused more on liquidity while foregoing the main principles and Bitcoin protocols of being immutable and self sovereign.
Bitcoin isn't a bank that can adjust interest rates or cause a 4% inflation target just for those who lost their keys.
That's a hard lesson that stresses on the importance of personal responsibility and adherence to safety tips and risk management practices.

[macson]

If Bitcoin were like that, it wouldn't be any different from the fiat system, which has an unlimited supply that can be expanded through the decisions of central authorities.

One of the things that makes Bitcoin unique is its fixed supply. It will remain that way forever.

Besides, if he's so concerned about it, why doesn't he care more about his shitcoin? Instead of being preoccupied with things he shouldn't be concerned with.

[Dogedegen]

StarkWare (ZK L2 blockchain developer. Total fundraising: $287 Million Dollars. [1]

Its token STARK's performance: down 99.3% from the ATH. [2]


Gee, a multi-millionaire wants people to stay poor.... That has never happened before!

Pretty much every person from the shitcoin world that is saying anything about Bitcoin is a scammer, as you see they keep founding useless projects and extracting money from people. Then he comes back to teach Bitcoin a lesson when he is running a shitcoin that is down 99.3% from the ATH.

This is one of the stupidest post that I have seen on X if he wants bitcoin supply to be increasing. If 20 million BTC was lost in the past, the remaining 1 million BTC is enough. It will be in a way that bitcoin will be more scarce, its price will increase and sats the smallest unit of bitcoin will worth more than what it is today.  21 million BTC is enough.

Actually we could even work with even less if we really needed to, anyone who understands basic way of how units work understands this. So the core argument falls apart completely based on that, he does not sound as smart as people think that he is. There is nothing to seriously consider here, only founders that have proven themselves to be able to create something successful should be given a voice. People online listen to too many others that have some form of authority, but often it turns out to be a big mistake..

Time will surely be lost but not your private keys, unless you don't have a offspring that can operate your Bitcoin wallet after you died, we have children for a reason, to continue where we stopped.

All keys will be lost only if Bitcoin holders stop giving birth, LMao
What a big idiot indeed.

This is not true, with time the number of Bitcoin keys lost is always increasing so in this case your argument to counter him does not work. People lose keys even if they have children, children have nothing to do with this.

[d5000]

I have a bit of a different opinion on that than most forum members.

My take is that in general he's not completely incorrect. If Bitcoin was conceived from the start with a tail emission defined in the code, then I think this strategy would have been at least as good as the 21 million limit.

We would have one discussion less, the fee market issue, and we would have more margin to play around with block sizes as the fee market wouldn't be that important.

However, I oppose a change, at least if the security budget doesn't get dramatically lower. We don't know how the fee dynamics will play out. And the cost and risk of a hard fork would be probably huge.

The current Bitcoin Dominance also seems to confirm that people believe in Bitcoin's model more than in Monero's or Dogecoin's (to mention only decentralized altcoins). We can say: The market has decided, 21 millions and halving until 2140 are fine.

And of course any statement from a guy who created a premined coin who has his own business goals has to be taken with a huge rock of salt

PS: 4% per year is too much, imo. I would go for 1-2%.

[avp2306]

I have a bit of a different opinion on that than most forum members.

My take is that in general he's not completely incorrect. If Bitcoin was conceived from the start with a tail emission defined in the code, then I think this strategy would have been at least as good as the 21 million limit.

We would have one discussion less, the fee market issue, and we would have more margin to play around with block sizes as the fee market wouldn't be that important.

However, I oppose a change, at least if the security budget doesn't get dramatically lower. We don't know how the fee dynamics will play out. And the cost and risk of a hard fork would be probably huge.

The current Bitcoin Dominance also seems to confirm that people believe in Bitcoin's model more than in Monero's or Dogecoin's (to mention only decentralized altcoins). We can say: The market has decided, 21 millions and halving until 2140 are fine.

And of course any statement from a guy who created a premined coin who has his own business goals has to be taken with a huge rock of salt

PS: 4% per year is too much, imo. I would go for 1-2%.

Really got your point out there and if it didn't have on which it had tail emission since the first day of its existence, this will not going to be as controversial nowadays. If it happens that those people tried to change those things now, maybe we might deal with different situation now. Then those hard fork will provably just create confusion then maybe the reason for possible division, then yet it will not solve anything or even fix the fees.

Also the fact that we already have 21 millions supply those changes what other people think is unnecessary. The dominance of Bitcoin shows how people trust its traditional set up. Also people need to be careful on the arguments came from those people who benefited from those pre mined coins. Also yeah 4% is to much and provably people would choose much lesser same as the percentage you have stated here.

[Alpha Marine]

How doesn't he see that asking for a 4% increase yearly and a halving every 4 years is counterproductive?

I'm tired of people acting like 21 million Bitcoin can't go around to everybody on earth. If everybody on earth wanted to own Bitcoin, they would. The only thing that would happen is that 1btc might be worth hundreds of millions. When that happens, $1 million dollars won't be able to buy even 0.05btc.

This is the idea behind most altcoins. That is why they struggle to be profitable. The launch coins with hundreds of millions or billions of coins in circulation. At first, there may be demand for those coins, but with time, the coins in circulation will be so much more than the demand and the prices of those coins fall and don't go up again.
Then they will keep deceiving people with a high market cap. Why won't the market cap be high when they have billions of coins in circulation?

The only thing I can say about the hard cap of Bitcoin is that it can be increased after the current blocks have been mined. If the hard cap is increased every 100-150 years, then it might be more reasonable than increasing it by 4% every year. But this is if it must be increased. Increasing it regularly defeats the purpose.

[montaga]

There is already unlimited number of Satoshis.
What the master has to say about it:

Lost coins only make everyone else's coins worth slightly more.  Think of it as a donation to everyone.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=198.msg1647#msg1647

4% value loss per year is even worse than fiat
Better he stays with his Zcash junk, than try to sabotage the original.

[sergiorus]

Better he stays with his Zcash junk, than try to sabotage the original.

He doesn't even work on Zcash anymore. His latest project is a VC-funded vapourware L2 blockchain called Starknet.

The token was launched 2 years ago and is down more than 99% at the moment.
So yeah, he sure knows what has to be done for an asset to maintain value, LOL.

[Fivestar4everMVP]

A screenshot in case it gets deleteted later.

Original link: https://x.com/EliBenSasson/status/2074434340478468320


So, this is the reality of Web3 nowadays. Even big and respected founders are too busy spending their hundreds of millions dollars they extracted from VCs and the market, they get absolutely detached from why people got interested in what they were building to begin with.

I don't know what had to happen inside the brain of one of the main crypto pioneers to propose 4% yearly inflation for BTC's supply.

IDK, maybe when all your worries are how to spend the 9 figures venture capital funds gave to you and how to sell all your tokens before they go to zero you lose the capability to hold on for a moment and think about what was all that initially created for...

Gee, a multi-millionaire wants people to stay poor.... That has never happened before!

Lol, I believe every one is entitled to their own opinion and this is his own opinion concerning bitcoin having a hard cap of 21m, I believe this is all because no one knows who the legendary Satoshi is, I believe that if Satoshi was present in a form that we all can chat with him, read his posts and replies to some of this people who claim to know it all, most wouldnt have had the balls to comment trash about Bitcoin in the name of freedom of speech.

But I am not going to cook him though because like I said before, we all have opinions concerning something and sometimes, that opinion may not be unline with what is generally accepted or acceptable, and after all, it's just and opinion and opinions changes nothing without actions, so that his take, and I am glad he is not the inventor of bitcoin.

[Ucy]

Well, it's a contradiction to suggest a change in Bitcoin supply and still make things look like it's permanently fixed at 21, as if nothing can be done if all keys are lost.

If what he's suggesting is possible then there is no cause for alarm because when it becomes absolutely necessary in that very long time (assuming this world still exists) the supply will be increase with another limit, maybe just 100,000 bitcoins.

Still prefer keeping the supply deflationary than keeping it constant. The deflationary model makes more sense because it considers the fact that as you mine your resource the reserve keeps reducing in quantity until it gets depleted. And as the quantity reduces while demand increases, the price goes up and people become more conservative. So rather than a million people buying a million bitcoins, they buy a thousand as price shoots up, and there will more than enough to go around.
It's only in a "fantasy world" that you keep churning out very valuable resource at a consistent rate without it ever getting exhausted.




More on the keys issue he raised, if that becomes a serious problem I believe there will be demand for solution that helps for recovery and saving keys as long as possible.

[Cookdata]

This same guy that created these two coins?

Is this not the same cofounder who launched these two projects that have been lying flat for years now? I see where he is heading to; he is no longer relevant, so he is bored and wants to belong to where elders are sitting. Anytime I see this kind of opinion from founders that has dedicated half of their life to people wasting their time, effort and investments, I just think they enjoy the attention they get else such kind of comments isn't supposed to be coming from him because even people that has fork Bitcoin for other millions of reasons has never for once thought about increasing Bitcoin supply because of some useless excuses.

The most important people who should have an opinion on this topic, who are the miners, are not even saying anything, but he thinks this is the best, like the reasons aren't even adding up. Again, just because a coin has not been moved in years does not mean the keys are lost. I have seen 15 years' coins moved since they were last received in their wallet address, and the network is still working fine. There are plenty of other wallet addresses that people assumed are dead or loss but they are still there. Funny how such a shallow comment is coming from a person who values privacy but doesn't know much about private keys and dormant addresses.

[d5000]

This is the idea behind most altcoins. That is why they struggle to be profitable. The launch coins with hundreds of millions or billions of coins in circulation.

The point of "scarcity" (at least for the supply side) is not to have a low number of coins. There were also altcoins like BitBar in the past with intentionally low supply, I don't know if the maximum was capped at a few thousands or so. They got forgotten and I don't know if the blockchain is still running

The point is instead to find a good middle point between a block subsidy which attracts enough miners (if there's still no fee market) and a limited increase of the supply which isn't higher than the inflation rate in the fiat world.

In the fiat world most central banks go for about 2% inflation yearly. A coin with 2% inflation would have in reality a lower inflation due to the lost coins, so it would be still "better than fiat". My ideal tail emission, however, would lie more close to 1%. There are some statistics saying that say that up to 500,000 coins are lost per year, but I don't believe that to be that high, or that number still takes into account Satoshi's coins .

A number of around 100,000 lost coins per year (the lower bound of the estimations) is more realistic and that's around 0.5% of the supply. This means a 1% or 1.5% supply inflation / tail emission would be enough to cover them and even allow a little bit of adjustment for economic growth. I'd not go for more than that, because the world population will probably be stagnating in a few decades according to current projections.

A linear tail emission is probably even better than a percentage, the percentage would decrease over time, just like population growth. For example in Monero we have ~150k tail emission per year for ~18 million coins, which is around 0.83%. But in 30 years, it will have decreased to 0.66%.

[retreat]

He doesn't even work on Zcash anymore. His latest project is a VC-funded vapourware L2 blockchain called Starknet.

The token was launched 2 years ago and is down more than 99% at the moment.
So yeah, he sure knows what has to be done for an asset to maintain value, LOL.

So this is a guy who created two shitcoins that have now plummeted in value, and here he is talking as if he knows better what's best for Bitcoin? I think he’s a total joke. If he thinks his idea is good enough, why doesn’t he implement it in his own shitcoins, instead of meddling with what’s already been built around Bitcoin. I think statements from people like this should just be ignored because they’re nothing but BS.

[Dogedegen]

And of course any statement from a guy who created a premined coin who has his own business goals has to be taken with a huge rock of salt

Rock, I have not heard it put like that before but I am glad you emphasized that it is a huge rock.  

PS: 4% per year is too much, imo. I would go for 1-2%.

Usually people who have premined or have hidden ways of benefiting from inflation more than the average user are the ones who suggest inflationary ideas. Isn't Zcash the one that had a built in tax into all the mining rewards which creates a bad incentive where there is always money for development even if the development is going in the wrong direction? Such proposals of a fixed tax always wrong even if they were done from the very beginning since the incentives are messed up, this is also one reason why many shitcoins failed besides having no utility. The founders and the team simply got a huge amount of tokens for free, creating a value extracting incentive. The lie that was promised was that this gives them an incentive to work hard and make it a success, but this was never true. Almost nobody would behave that way with money that is too easily gotten and we have market data that proves it, most just extracted money until the shitcoin chain died.

In the fiat world most central banks go for about 2% inflation yearly. A coin with 2% inflation would have in reality a lower inflation due to the lost coins, so it would be still "better than fiat". My ideal tail emission, however, would lie more close to 1%. There are some statistics saying that say that up to 500,000 coins are lost per year, but I don't believe that to be that high, or that number still takes into account Satoshi's coins .

A number of around 100,000 lost coins per year (the lower bound of the estimations) is more realistic and that's around 0.5% of the supply. This means a 1% or 1.5% supply inflation / tail emission would be enough to cover them and even allow a little bit of adjustment for economic growth. I'd not go for more than that, because the world population will probably be stagnating in a few decades according to current projections.

500,000 per year? I would not believe that at all, I find it even 100,000 per year to be high if you ignore the early days and satoshi.

[d5000]

Isn't Zcash the one that had a built in tax into all the mining rewards which creates a bad incentive where there is always money for development even if the development is going in the wrong direction?

Yes, Zcash has such a tax, and I think this is the worst type of distribution, a premine at least is somewhat predictable.

I disgree however a (little) bit about the development incentives. The opposing fraction has always the threat to hard fork away. So if the development goes so wrong that the majority of hodlers oppose a certain change, they can take away the dev tax.

500,000 per year? I would not believe that at all, I find it even 100,000 per year to be high if you ignore the early days and satoshi.

You may be correct. I checked the sources and the ones that gave high five-fold or sixfold numbers either take into account much earlier years (not always Satoshi-era, but mid-2010s) or seem outright speculative.

For example BitGo estimates that "if only 0,5% lose their coins, then we have >90,000", but 0.5% of hodlers aren't the same as 0.5% of the supply. Big holders tend to have excellent security practices and thus are much less likely to lose the coins. And a lot of the coins are in ETFs, treasuries and other big wallets very unlikely to get lost. River Financial estimates a total of 1.4 million plus Satoshi's coins, that would roughly amount to 100k per year but also very likely most of them were lost in early years.

A source that claims 500,000 or more are lost is this one at Binance Square citing Cane Island (3-4% per year). There's a terrible lack of details and thus I consider it untrustworthy. Perhaps this was used as the source for that Zcash X comment ...

In contrast there is this report that claims that "experts" in 2025 estimated the number to be only 1,500 to 2,000 per year. I think this could still be true, and it would prove my point of course that 4% is way too high for a tail emission. With these numbers I would strongly argue for a emission like Monero's under 1% per year. (But as written above, only as an emergency measure, or as a "guideline value" for new altcoins.)

[LFC_Bitcoin]

A huge part of why Bitcoin is so valuable is it’s cap of 21M coins. I can’t deal with these kind of people, it’s why he’s a massive shitcoiner.

People have suggested moronic stuff like this for years. It’s why decentralisation is so important. We need to keep dangerous would be devs as far away from Bitcoin as possible.

[JeffBrad12]

Bro really said that after the Zcash mint exploit found by Claude, https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/crypto/articles/morning-minute-massive-zcash-exploit-124904107.html
The 21 M cap is the best feature in BTC and saying otherwise is a bullshit. I like seeing my BTC appreciating in value because it's rare.

[Karl_3000]

A huge part of why Bitcoin is so valuable is it’s cap of 21M coins. I can’t deal with these kind of people, it’s why he’s a massive shitcoiner.

I wanted to buy zcash before until I read this.

I think zcash can be like what he has said about bitcoin. No wonder zcash all time high is still far away. They could have gotten the lion share, sell most and make its supply inflationary. It is highly unfortunate that some people that we thought can be good will make this kind of poor post on X.

I will not buy zcash.

[NotATether]

Maybe he should worry about how to roll out security patches without halting his network instead of Bitcoin's total supply.

[nikola22]

there's no need to turn Bitcoin into one of many other cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin's unique advantage lies in its strictly limited supply. anyone who wants Bitcoin without a 21 million coin limit and with 4% annual inflation should create a fork. although we've already seen the poor fate of virtually all Bitcoin forks.