Topic: a flaw in the 21 million BTC? - page 2. (Read 7739 times)

The market doesn't care about what we want. 

There won't be 21mio BTC in 2033, and in fact, this limit will never be fully reached.

Not all of the people will use BTC, it is a high-end currency that only will be used by a few of people which have enough computer and financial knowledge

There is no need for asics, people want them because the first few to get them will make a pretty decent buck.

You don't turn the steering wheel now because your car might be heading for a cliff in thirty years. Relax, if this is every a problem, the solution is well-understood.

yep, similarly, there is no difference (as of this moment) bitcoin becoming $100 USD or $94.70 AUD.

one is more psychologically significant for a specific set of people, while another set of people would find $105.58 USD / $100 AUD a more significant milestone.

As noted previously, the there are 2.1 quadrillion satoshis, not 2 billion. That is plenty. Also, remember that it is not necessary to have enough currency to represent all the wealth in the world. There only needs to be enough to facilitate transactions. In other words, my house is worth $100,000, but there isn't $100,000 stored somewhere that represents my house.

You don't think it will happen because 1 BTC = $1 million is a lot and it hasn't happened before, but that doesn't mean it won't or that it can't. But the more important answer is that even if it never reaches $1 million, it doesn't mean that Bitcoin has a flaw. It just means that Bitcoin doesn't become the only currency in the world.

The value of gold has gone up by a factor of 50 in only 30 years. Give it another 30 years and it could go up by another factor of 50 to 2500 in 60 years. Another 30 years could be another factor of 50. In your lifetime gold could go up by a factor of 125,000. So, perhaps it is possible that BTC could go up by 100,000 in your lifetime.

It's just an example, the $10B and $100B numbers are not related. BTW, the ratio of the two is called the "velocity of money".

Any prediction on the value of BTC (in any time frame) is just speculation. Nobody knows with any certainty.


Does it seem more believable that  1 yen/BTC could reach 1000 yen/BTC ? If you say no, then you are falling victim to your dollar-based bias. The numbers truly are arbitrary. There is no difference between $0.014 becoming $14 and  $14 becoming $14000.

Sure however name a global payment network that allows you to make payments with 0.1 cent precision.  Can you western union $123.001?  ACH? Bank Wire?  Credit Card?  Is there even a need?  I mean 1 cent has a negligible purchasing power (in todays dollars).  Most countries are getting rid of coins with purchasing power around 1 US cent (circa 2012 purchasing power).  The smallest subdivision of the Euro is about 2 US cents in purchasing power, and the smallest subdivision of the Yuan is about 6 US cents in purchasing power.  If 1 satoshi rose to be worth ~$0.05 (in 2012 dollars) that would put the money supply at ~$100 Trillion.  The global money supply (all currencies, all forms) is estimated at ~$80T.    Now all this is academic I don't think Bitcoin will replace all global currencies, but it would be possible and still have $0.05 precision.  Not bad and that is without a fork to add additional units.  It is essentially a non-problem.   Now lets figure out how to grow the economy to $1B before we worry about the second $100T.

I don't want bitcoin to "get by"
if it ever come down to pushing these limits
we will just agree to have 16 decimals.

I (for lack of a better word) pray every night that this actually becomes a issue 

I agree that there are not enough bitcoins to represent all the money in the world with precision of $0.001, and that is a deficiency. However, the precision of $0.001 may not be necessary. There are no $0.001 coins and nobody (as far as I know) does transactions with that precision. Furthermore, even $0.01 coins are becoming outmoded. I think Bitcoin can get by with a $21 to $210 trillion value.

wait a min.

their 21 million coins
each coin can be divied into 8 decimals
so each coins actually represents  100,000,000 units
100,000,000 * 21,000,000 = 2,100,000,000,000,000
IF we want 0.00000001 BTC to be worth no more then 0.001$
this means we can only ever accommodate  2.1 Trillion dollars?

I'll just repeat myself:

all who agree will move their coins to the new system ( by upgrading the software ) or be left behind in a "dead fork."



anyway, in the far future, i suspect their will be no need for money, humans will have every one of there needs provided for by busty android slave girls.

Would the entire community have to agree in getting the new client/protocol or only something like 51% of the clients?

I don't think it would be hard to get everyone to agree to 16 decimals, if it becomes necessary.
adding decimals doesn't really effect bitcoin in any negative way, its not like talking about changing the 21million coin limit.

That really depends on your definition of "easily".  The 8 decimals may not be set in stone, but they are set in the blockchain and the protocol.

Remember the 8 decimals is not set in stone we could easily make it 16 decimals
put that in your pipe and smoke it!

 

the problem is not that we can't fit the worlds economy into bitcoin ( we can ... even with only 8 decimals )
the problem is having the network process all the worlds transactions every sec of every day.

Yes but that's purely psychological. The long-term fair market-cap should be more or less the same

With division down to 8 decimal places, There are really 2,099,999,997,690,000 (just over 2 quadrillion) maximum possible atomic units in the bitcoin design.

The value of BTC is dictated by supply and demand, and can go up and down. Super crazy exchange rates have happened many many times in the past with other currencies, see this article on hyperinflation for some examples...

Zimbabwe is a recent case, with hyperinflation since 1980 which had 10 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 ZWL = 1 ZWD, and today 361 ZWD = 1 USD...

I think you are confusing certainty with possibility.

Is it possible the money supply of Bitcoin is someday worth billions, or even trillions?  Sure.  Is it certain?  No.

Nobody knows what the future holds for Bitcoin.  It could die off, it could remain a small marginalized darknet tool, it could be fringe mainstream with millions of users, it could become completely mainstream with billions of users and trillions in market cap.  Nobody knows for sure.  Plenty of people have ideas but nobody knows with absolute certainty.  Your posts seem to indicate because nobody knows the future it isn't possible.