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

[designfail]

Who knows what the poor masses having mBTC ballances decide to vote for in the future. Will be interesting anyway

Sure they will vote against those who have BTC and Kilo-BTC. The voting will be initiated by those who controls Mega-BTC

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[nickenburg]

I think that would not happen at all, because there are enough satoshi's for everyone 
Just not enough Bitcoins, however if that would ever happen.
I think that situation would make Bitcoin decrease in value ofcourse, and that would be a bad message to the public aswell.

[franky1]

My fucking god. The Bitcoin Foundation has no power. Realize that.

Let's say that at some point when big players enter the game, the foundation starts gaining the power. How about that?

simple answer.

if someone bribes the bitcoin developers to remove the 21m limit. this would only happen on a new update. which PEOPLE need to download.
the majority of PEOPLE will ignore the download and stick with the current version until non-bribed developers release a non corrupt update.

the only reason people update the bitcoin client, is if it is better then the old one. if the new update is screwed up, the error will be publicized faster then anything. and those stupid enough to have downloaded it. would simply uninstall, and then go back to the old version.

[acs267]

My fucking god. The Bitcoin Foundation has no power. Realize that.

Let's say that at some point when big players enter the game, the foundation starts gaining the power. How about that?

Do you honestly think they could EVER control Bitcoin? That every Bitcoin user would fall into a synchronized team with them? So many Bitcoiners hate them it's unimaginable. No 'big players' can change that. Unless they 'crash' Bitcoin, which is so unlikely it hurts, they still won't have any power.

The more I buy & mine, the more thoughts like that are coming to my mind. I doubt that big dogs will let lots of people with their "20..50..100 and up" coins to become rich elite overnight.

  If they crash Bitcoin, they're crashing their wealth, too. And the Fiat Elite's won't want to share power with all of the Bitcoin 'Elites'. They can gain something from crashing Bitcoin. Because they're not investing full time. If a large holder for Bitcoin crashed it, they would face the wrath more than someone with 20+ coins.

Think.

[designfail]

How about the following conspiracy theory: US is preparing plan B: US dollar will no longer be trusted in the nearest future, US dept is off control, there is no way in increase the upper limit of it, etc. In other words US dollar "on the verge of collapse" and will go down to tubes in 10 years.
So they decided to come up with cryptocurrency - a Bitcoin. But if US officials introduce BTC to public - they will be laugh out right on site. So they are asking MIT, Stanford teams to come up with the algorithm for BTC. Strict non-disclosure agreement had been signed. So the mysterious Satoshi is just a team of the brightest PhD students under control. Wide public loves something open source and revolutionary? You got it: BTC! Invented by anonymous guy who donated his invention to the public!
Once BTC is adopted internationally, the real "Satoshi" (US) comes to the scene and adjusts the rules of the game.
How about that?

Disclaimer: this is just speculation, I have no fricking idea who Satoshi really is and if US are smart enough to start the thing like BTC

[Beliathon]

By then we'll all be so rich nobody will care. If they tried to sabotage Bitcoin in any way, there will be many, many competing digital currencies to switch over to. And not a single fiat currency.
 

[xdigital]

In theory Bitcoin Foundation can do that if they controls majority of the network.
But if that's the case, all other people will just leave the network.
Bitcoin now becomes worthless, since nobody wants it.

That is the beauty of peer-to-peer network.
Similar thing with the 51% attack, The attacker is the one getting most damage.

[Ron~Popeil]

How about the following conspiracy theory: US is preparing plan B: US dollar will no longer be trusted in the nearest future, US dept is off control, there is no way in increase the upper limit of it, etc. In other words US dollar "on the verge of collapse" and will go down to tubes in 10 years.
So they decided to come up with cryptocurrency - a Bitcoin. But if US officials introduce BTC to public - they will be laugh out right on site. So they are asking MIT, Stanford teams to come up with the algorithm for BTC. Strict non-disclosure agreement had been signed. So the mysterious Satoshi is just a team of the brightest PhD students under control. Wide public loves something open source and revolutionary? You got it: BTC! Invented by anonymous guy who donated his invention to the public!
Once BTC is adopted internationally, the real "Satoshi" (US) comes to the scene and adjusts the rules of the game.
How about that?

Disclaimer: this is just speculation, I have no fricking idea who Satoshi really is and if US are smart enough to start the thing like BTC

It is odd that the US government is so slow to react to bit coin. I don't think they invented it, but maybe they are smart enough to realize that it can almost instantly resolve our existential debt crisis.

[Peter R]

The network consists of nodes. If such a change was decided to be implemented, it would require agreement of more than the 51% of those nodes so the network can fork and implement this change as a valid one.

My technical knowledge on bitcoin is not an expert's one since I'm not familiar with programming. But I'm sure that you can see where this is going. In simple words: if a "central authority" decides to to something like that they wouldn't be able to without the networks permission.

The network consists of everyone running a bitcoin node, you and me could be running a node by having a wallet with the full blockchain in it...

This is not quite correct.  Even if 51% of users actually want to change, they still can't force a change upon the other 49%.  

A highly controversial change to bitcoin would likely result in a blockchain fork such that after the fork two coins would exist: bitcoin and bitcoin++.  Pre-fork coins would be valid on both chains.

Bitcoin++ would trade directly against bitcoin and the market's opinion of bitcoin++ would quickly become clear. For it to become the dominant fork, the economic majority would need to be willing to swap their bitcoins for additional bitcoin++ coins, thereby legitimizing the new chain.  However, it isn't logical for the holders of a currency to voluntarily agree to an increase in the inflation rate unless it was somehow to their benefit.  

Are there any circumstances where it would be generally agreed that an increase in the inflation rate is necessary?  The only thing I can think of is to increase network security should the fees from transactions not be deemed adequate some point in the distant future.  Perhaps the economic majority would feel that a perpetual 0.5% inflation rate is superior to 0%, as it represents a direct subsidy to miners who secure the network.  Note that this doesn't actually benefit miners, as there is no reason to expect profit margins in the mining sector to increase.  It just means that more energy would be directed towards securing the network.

In summary, it would take much more than 51% agreement to change bitcoin's inflation schedule.  The economic majority of bitcoin holders would have to be willing to trade out of bitcoin and into bitcoin++, accepting the risk that this new inflating version could collapse sucking all their wealth with it.  In other words, it would have to be pretty obvious that an increase in the inflation rate was necessary.    

[acs267]

How about the following conspiracy theory: US is preparing plan B: US dollar will no longer be trusted in the nearest future, US dept is off control, there is no way in increase the upper limit of it, etc. In other words US dollar "on the verge of collapse" and will go down to tubes in 10 years.
So they decided to come up with cryptocurrency - a Bitcoin. But if US officials introduce BTC to public - they will be laugh out right on site. So they are asking MIT, Stanford teams to come up with the algorithm for BTC. Strict non-disclosure agreement had been signed. So the mysterious Satoshi is just a team of the brightest PhD students under control. Wide public loves something open source and revolutionary? You got it: BTC! Invented by anonymous guy who donated his invention to the public!
Once BTC is adopted internationally, the real "Satoshi" (US) comes to the scene and adjusts the rules of the game.
How about that?

Disclaimer: this is just speculation, I have no fricking idea who Satoshi really is and if US are smart enough to start the thing like BTC

That's irrelevant to the topic. We were talking about the Bitcoin Foundation, and you switch to a conspiracy theory.

How about that?

[designfail]

That's irrelevant to the topic. We were talking about the Bitcoin Foundation, and you switch to a conspiracy theory.

How about that?

There is an opinion that the Foundation is full of crap and controls nothing. I am just speculating that there is a possibility that the Foundation is not that harmless and powerless than it could appear at the first look. I almost guarantee the changes once the real big dogs start joining the Foundation.

[MrBea]

My fucking god. The Bitcoin Foundation has no power. Realize that.

This.  Then the foundation would mine their weakcoin and you would have 2 forks to eat with

[Light]

You have things completely mixed up. Bitcoin Foundation =/= Control over the implementation

The reality is that miners and nodes will accept and implement changes that they agree with, so even if the developers decided to do this (which they wouldn't) unless most of the nodes and miners accepted this you'd never actually get a change. Not to mention that the Bitcoin Foundation has little to do with actually how the protocol is implemented - they more of a fake 'voice' for Bitcoin that is basically charging exorbitant fees that supports leechers and in return you get nothing.

[acs267]

That's irrelevant to the topic. We were talking about the Bitcoin Foundation, and you switch to a conspiracy theory.

How about that?

There is an opinion that the Foundation is full of crap and controls nothing. I am just speculating that there is a possibility that the Foundation is not that harmless and powerless than it could appear at the first look. I almost guarantee the changes once the real big dogs start joining the Foundation.

And what do you describe as the 'big dogs'? The ones that'll donate 100,000BTC just to join a foundation? The ones that want to lose wealth?

[bassguitarman]

There would be 2 forks, and most likely, the majority would stay on the orriginal chain

[cr1776]

This - thanks for posting this.  There will be Bitcoin and this inflate-a-coin fork.  Then people will have coins on both forks and pick the one that makes the most sense.

The network consists of nodes. If such a change was decided to be implemented, it would require agreement of more than the 51% of those nodes so the network can fork and implement this change as a valid one.

My technical knowledge on bitcoin is not an expert's one since I'm not familiar with programming. But I'm sure that you can see where this is going. In simple words: if a "central authority" decides to to something like that they wouldn't be able to without the networks permission.

The network consists of everyone running a bitcoin node, you and me could be running a node by having a wallet with the full blockchain in it...

This is not quite correct.  Even if 51% of users actually want to change, they still can't force a change upon the other 49%.  

A highly controversial change to bitcoin would likely result in a blockchain fork such that after the fork two coins would exist: bitcoin and bitcoin++.  Pre-fork coins would be valid on both chains.

Bitcoin++ would trade directly against bitcoin and the market's opinion of bitcoin++ would quickly become clear. For it to become the dominant fork, the economic majority would need to be willing to swap their bitcoins for additional bitcoin++ coins, thereby legitimizing the new chain.  However, it isn't logical for the holders of a currency to voluntarily agree to an increase in the inflation rate unless it was somehow to their benefit.  

Are there any circumstances where it would be generally agreed that an increase in the inflation rate is necessary?  The only thing I can think of is to increase network security should the fees from transactions not be deemed adequate some point in the distant future.  Perhaps the economic majority would feel that a perpetual 0.5% inflation rate is superior to 0%, as it represents a direct subsidy to miners who secure the network.  Note that this doesn't actually benefit miners, as there is no reason to expect profit margins in the mining sector to increase.  It just means that more energy would be directed towards securing the network.

In summary, it would take much more than 51% agreement to change bitcoin's inflation schedule.  The economic majority of bitcoin holders would have to be willing to trade out of bitcoin and into bitcoin++, accepting the risk that this new inflating version could collapse sucking all their wealth with it.  In other words, it would have to be pretty obvious that an increase in the inflation rate was necessary.    

[mustyoshi]

There would be 2 forks, and most likely, the majority would stay on the orriginal chain

There's two types of Bitcoin users.

Those who want to get rich from it (anti inflation).
And those who want it to be a frictionless way to transact (neutral/pro inflation).

[b!z]

Nobody in their right mind is going to switch.

[alani123]

Ok well, thanks for the correction.

[Siegfried]

There would be 2 forks, and most likely, the majority would stay on the orriginal chain

There's two types of Bitcoin users.

Those who want to get rich from it (anti inflation).
And those who want it to be a frictionless way to transact (neutral/pro inflation).

Most Bitcoin users want it to be a store of value, a medium of exchange, and a frictionless transaction system. Inflation runs counter to the store of value function. Inflation/deflation has no bearing on frictionless transactions.