What if someday Bitcoin Foundation votes to remove 21M limitation?

[beetcoin]

if this happened, i'd invest in other alt currencies because it would totally crash the price of BTC, and people would look elsewhere. since i'd guess that people who are involved with bitcoin own them, i don't think they'd do this.. unless they dumped their coins beforehand.

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[jc01480]

A lot of great responses and points of view.  Thank you to all who are contributing.

[lemfuture]

riot

[groll]

when economics of mining becomes not profitable for many hardware (around some halfing 12.5 not likely but 6.25 is possible, but 3.125 and after are sure dangerous points). some will be tempted at that point to use not enough energy efficient mining equipment that would be stop to do 51%. This equipment can be bought at big rebate or even for free to switch on to attack.


transaction fee will never be enough to compensate with the current size (higher fee will just make it more expensive then cash to transfer so useless no one will pay 0.01 BTC to buy it's grocery at 0.1 BTC ) the only option is bitcoin becoming very very expensive so reward is enough to not turn most mining equipment off and pay for maintenance and electrical cost. this would in fact only delay it until a next halfing makes it unprofitable. the only way out is to get xTH/s asics at >0.05w for 5$ so everyone would have one in his pc or cell phone and tx fee becomes enough to keep them running(tx fee not likely to be enough if BTC is to be used in day to day by user). But this has a big chance to have something wrong that prevent this from happening


the first step will be when buying/producing new mining equipement is for 90% guanrantiy to be unprofitable. the next is when the problem will come the equipment becomes obsolete so mining becomes unprofitable(this can also happen with BTC to 30$, that would be another problem and increase coin supply would not be helpful in that case).


the mining business at some point will ask for block reward that cover cost and this will be the turning point to increase supply. and since they are the concensus they will have the power to dictate it. (most miner don't keep most BTC mine, but sell to pay cost so 20% drop in price for xM coins/Year supply will be acceptable for them)


P.S. I don't like it. I don't want it to happen but the tx fee will never be enough to keep the mining running. so other solution can complement it and not touch supply, but the actual reality point to that

[Bit_Happy]

... it would require agreement of more than the 51% of those nodes so the network....

Isn't it 51% of the hashing power can create a "real" fork in the blockchain, not a simple 51% of the nodes?
Otherwise people would create cheap "spam nodes" and take over the network.

[Ron~Popeil]

... it would require agreement of more than the 51% of those nodes so the network....

Isn't it 51% of the hashing power can create a "real" fork in the blockchain, not a simple 51% of the nodes?
Otherwise people would create cheap "spam nodes" and take over the network.

That is the way I understand it. Not sure what happens after the last reward block is mined.

[groll]

... it would require agreement of more than the 51% of those nodes so the network....

Isn't it 51% of the hashing power can create a "real" fork in the blockchain, not a simple 51% of the nodes?
Otherwise people would create cheap "spam nodes" and take over the network.

That is the way I understand it. Not sure what happens after the last reward block is mined.

yes it's 51% of the block founds so usually from more then 51% of the hash power as you require to find block faster then the rest to make your fork longer.

After the last block reward, the network is supposed to live on tx fee as reward for mining (so mining never end)

[mmortal03]

Then the world would laugh and quietly ignore such nonsense.

But worry not, such craziness won't occur. It's not under anyone's control except consensus of the community.

Even if the core devs vote to remove the 21M limit, it still won't make it so.

But big investors already articulated their interest: they want BTC to be inflatable. Reasonable, but inflatable. Something like: yes, BTC is great, innovative technology, but in order to make it useful international currency, it needs to be inflatable. Say, 1-5M bitcoins a year. The general population ("the community") will eat this no problem. Early adopters will be pissed off for sure, but they are in minority.

Tell them to support Peercoin, then.

[twiifm]

when economics of mining becomes not profitable for many hardware (around some halfing 12.5 not likely but 6.25 is possible, but 3.125 and after are sure dangerous points). some will be tempted at that point to use not enough energy efficient mining equipment that would be stop to do 51%. This equipment can be bought at big rebate or even for free to switch on to attack.


transaction fee will never be enough to compensate with the current size (higher fee will just make it more expensive then cash to transfer so useless no one will pay 0.01 BTC to buy it's grocery at 0.1 BTC ) the only option is bitcoin becoming very very expensive so reward is enough to not turn most mining equipment off and pay for maintenance and electrical cost. this would in fact only delay it until a next halfing makes it unprofitable. the only way out is to get xTH/s asics at >0.05w for 5$ so everyone would have one in his pc or cell phone and tx fee becomes enough to keep them running(tx fee not likely to be enough if BTC is to be used in day to day by user). But this has a big chance to have something wrong that prevent this from happening


the first step will be when buying/producing new mining equipement is for 90% guanrantiy to be unprofitable. the next is when the problem will come the equipment becomes obsolete so mining becomes unprofitable(this can also happen with BTC to 30$, that would be another problem and increase coin supply would not be helpful in that case).


the mining business at some point will ask for block reward that cover cost and this will be the turning point to increase supply. and since they are the concensus they will have the power to dictate it. (most miner don't keep most BTC mine, but sell to pay cost so 20% drop in price for xM coins/Year supply will be acceptable for them)


P.S. I don't like it. I don't want it to happen but the tx fee will never be enough to keep the mining running. so other solution can complement it and not touch supply, but the actual reality point to that

Heres an good article similar to what you are saying


http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-is-facing-a-potentially-fatal-paradox-2014-5

[Nathonas]

The government (or the Bitcoin Foundation) can't really attack Bitcoin from a technological standpoint. All they CAN do is influence/control the market.

[jc01480]

when economics of mining becomes not profitable for many hardware (around some halfing 12.5 not likely but 6.25 is possible, but 3.125 and after are sure dangerous points). some will be tempted at that point to use not enough energy efficient mining equipment that would be stop to do 51%. This equipment can be bought at big rebate or even for free to switch on to attack.


transaction fee will never be enough to compensate with the current size (higher fee will just make it more expensive then cash to transfer so useless no one will pay 0.01 BTC to buy it's grocery at 0.1 BTC ) the only option is bitcoin becoming very very expensive so reward is enough to not turn most mining equipment off and pay for maintenance and electrical cost. this would in fact only delay it until a next halfing makes it unprofitable. the only way out is to get xTH/s asics at >0.05w for 5$ so everyone would have one in his pc or cell phone and tx fee becomes enough to keep them running(tx fee not likely to be enough if BTC is to be used in day to day by user). But this has a big chance to have something wrong that prevent this from happening


the first step will be when buying/producing new mining equipement is for 90% guanrantiy to be unprofitable. the next is when the problem will come the equipment becomes obsolete so mining becomes unprofitable(this can also happen with BTC to 30$, that would be another problem and increase coin supply would not be helpful in that case).


the mining business at some point will ask for block reward that cover cost and this will be the turning point to increase supply. and since they are the concensus they will have the power to dictate it. (most miner don't keep most BTC mine, but sell to pay cost so 20% drop in price for xM coins/Year supply will be acceptable for them)


P.S. I don't like it. I don't want it to happen but the tx fee will never be enough to keep the mining running. so other solution can complement it and not touch supply, but the actual reality point to that

Heres an good article similar to what you are saying


http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-is-facing-a-potentially-fatal-paradox-2014-5

+1 Good article.  One of the commenters intelligently refuted the author's claims, however.  With the rise in difficulty, comes not the rise in number of bitcoins (actually lower) rewarded, but the value of these bitcoins rewarded will significantly increase offsetting the reduced rewards.

Bah, I'm tired.

[Ron~Popeil]

... it would require agreement of more than the 51% of those nodes so the network....

Isn't it 51% of the hashing power can create a "real" fork in the blockchain, not a simple 51% of the nodes?
Otherwise people would create cheap "spam nodes" and take over the network.

That is the way I understand it. Not sure what happens after the last reward block is mined.

yes it's 51% of the block founds so usually from more then 51% of the hash power as you require to find block faster then the rest to make your fork longer.

After the last block reward, the network is supposed to live on tx fee as reward for mining (so mining never end)

That is what I was thinking but i wasn't certain. If any of us are around in 140 years we might see a real fight between users and miners over fees.

[alani123]

... it would require agreement of more than the 51% of those nodes so the network....

Isn't it 51% of the hashing power can create a "real" fork in the blockchain, not a simple 51% of the nodes?
Otherwise people would create cheap "spam nodes" and take over the network.

There's also the Sybil attack. I'll admit, I described it poorly in my fisr post here. Link to the wiki for reference.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Weaknesses#Sybil_attack

[Ron~Popeil]

... it would require agreement of more than the 51% of those nodes so the network....

Isn't it 51% of the hashing power can create a "real" fork in the blockchain, not a simple 51% of the nodes?
Otherwise people would create cheap "spam nodes" and take over the network.

There's also the Sybil attack. I'll admit, I described it poorly in my fisr post here. Link to the wiki for reference.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Weaknesses#Sybil_attack

That is a really interesting page. I had only ever heard of the potential 51 % attack.

[Kluge]

I think it's a serious threat worth considering, and why we absolutely need to sever the ties between the Core devs and any single entity. If the majority of devs get behind this and are vocal, I think there's a legitimate chance we won't be able to beat it. If you put a Core alert (I think this still exists -- correct me if wrong, please) out telling people to update, I'd be willing to bet the majority of users would without doing in-depth research on it. Being paid by a central entity is an extraordinary conflict of interest. I would never suggest devs shouldn't be paid, but we have to figure out how to get them the funds to work on this full time without being some kind of employee.

Seriously, even having the devs agree on a % and using Coinsplit, where the donation address is put in the "About" page and on bitcoin.org would be a massive improvement and maybe even result in higher pay for those who enable a $multi-billion currency/commodity/whatever.

[Swordsoffreedom]

Say, at some point big banks and hedge funds make an agreement with core developers to remove the limitation of 21M and have the foundation vote for this?
Is it possible in theory and on practice?

It is possible but only with the consensus of the network this would then result in a Fork
However I do not believe it will work in practice although Bitcoin has been forked once before by accident
https://bitcoin.org/en/alert/2013-03-11-chain-fork

Simply put it would be very complex to do so without consensus since it requires all users to create a single block chain compatible with all bitcoin software.

[Ron~Popeil]

I think it's a serious threat worth considering, and why we absolutely need to sever the ties between the Core devs and any single entity. If the majority of devs get behind this and are vocal, I think there's a legitimate chance we won't be able to beat it. If you put a Core alert out telling people to update, I'd be willing to bet the majority of users would without doing in-depth research on it. Being paid by a central entity is an extraordinary conflict of interest. I would never suggest devs shouldn't be paid, but we have to figure out how to get them the funds to work on this full time without being some kind of employee.

Seriously, even having the devs agree on a % and using Coinsplit, where the donation address is put in the "About" page and on bitcoin.org would be a massive improvement and maybe even result in higher pay for those who enable a $multi-billion currency/commodity/whatever.

The conflict of interest thing is a concern for sure. With all the distrust of the bit coin foundation right now they would do well to address the issue openly.

[Jasun7211]

This will never happen.  The amount of btc will mimic about the amount of currency the world has now.  If anythijg they will extend the decimal places out further if a btc hits say 100 million

[Parazyd]

There's already satoshis and uBTC.

[keithers]

TBF holds a sizable amout of bitcoin. Its board members and corporate members have hugh vested interests in bitcoin. They know that raising the 21M limit will devalue their bitcoin holdings. TBF will not be stupid enough to vote for an increase in bitcoin supply.

I agree here.. They will not want to diminish their own wealth. Personally they may not care about anyone else's holdings, but intentionally devaluing their own investment is not something I see them doing..