Topic: [Curiosity made ask] Why the limitation in bitcoin just 21 million? (Read 120 times)

Many users answer that bitcoin only has 21 million supply because it creates scarcity which affects its value compared to other assets, but that's not what i think the OP is looking for. If the answer is to create a level of scarcity, why not just make it only have 10 million supply or even just 1 million supply?

I also wonder about this, what is the real reason Satoshi Nakamoto made it only 21 million, I think it has to do with the whole infrastructure like the 10 minute block time and other things. By the way, did you know that bitcoin has a supply of 21 million, and the last bitcoin will be mined around 2140 which is the 21st century.

I wouldn't go dip, here is this simple analogy. Have you ever asked yourself why is that $20k could help you get a home 20 years ago but today, it can't help you pay house rent in some cities? They don't tell you what they do behind the scene and came up with the excuse of inflation thing but in reality when you create a supply for too much, such currency tends to lose value because of the supply but Satoshi decide to do something different which is scarcity of Bitcoin through mining of block and halving.

Bitcoin is just 21 million, if you decide to share a single Bitcoin to just one country, it might not be enough to go around but if you decide to share the world banks reserve for the world, the dollar bills will go around everyone and there will be more left in their vault because it's in excess. The less the supply of a currency, with more demand th higher the value it becomes, this is what Bitcoin is today and fiat is doing the opposite losing purchasing power every 3 years and Bitcoin keep climbing a new all time high each Bitcoin halving/cycle.

Bitcoin is designed on the principle of limited supply, this is one of the advantages that makes Bitcoin rare, and guarantees its value will increase in the future. Perhaps Satoshi had a grand plan that is hard to explain why the maximum limit of Bitcoin available is only 21 million pieces, even though he could create as many as he wanted. Limiting the maximum supply will make each smallest fraction of a Bitcoin (satoshi) increase in value over time. For example, if the price of Bitcoin reaches $1 million (1 BTC = 100 million satoshis), then each satoshi will be worth $0.01.

Here is an email conversation between Satoshi and Mike Hearn (Bitcoin Core contributor) on April 12, 2009, perhaps this will represent the answer to your question.
Source: https://www.bitcoin.com/satoshi-archive/emails/mike-hearn/1/

How is the 21 million Bitcoin cap defined and enforced?
Can Bitcoin's Hard Cap of 21 Million Be Changed?
Why 21 million and not ______?

I think bitcoin was naturally created to solve the problem of inflation and by extension, currency devaluation. This means it is bound to increase in value with time using the forces if demand and supply. With a fixed supply and wider acceptance and popularity, their will be more demand pressures and this will also create a corresponding increase in price. Although it is not clear what the future of bitcoin will be when all the coins are mined but I have the feeling that there may be some sort of problems with that because miners might intentionally make transaction very expensive. This is the only concern I have about the fixed supply of bitcoin.

the only time when the limited supply of Bitcoin will be an issue is when no one sells his Bitcoin. As long as people continue to buy Bitcoin and still sells it almost everyday, the number of Bitcoin in circulation will always be sufficient for everyone that has interest to buy Bitcoin.

Even with the fiat, overprinting money cause it to loose it value and that's why money don't just get printed because the people in charge of printing money want it to continue being supplus in circulation.

  The basic concept of the economic effect of excessive supply of a commodity having a negative effect on the price of that commodity is still application to the design of Bitcoin with a 21 maximum number in circulation. A major factor that has been responsible for the increase in the value of Bitcoin is it limited number in circulation but even though it's limited to 21 million and a lot of them are held in places where they might not likely get into circulationn ever again, with the available ones that's used for making payments and that traders are using almost every day, it will be somehow practically impossible that in a couple of years to come, Bitcoin will go off circulation. If anything close to that is about happening, the first indication will be that Bitcoin price will first skyrocket very high.

Bitcoin is limited to 21 million so that there will be scarcity of bitcoin and that will preserve bitcoin value.


Bitcoin cannot be duplicated unlike fiat that you can keep on printing more money because it is decentralized, it cannot be manipulated.

The last bitcoin will be mined in the year 2150, which is a very long years from now and not in our generation.

I appreciate for your question. We know bitcoins are limited to 21 million and some are yet to be mined. But from them almost 3-4 million bitcoins are lost forever. So the actual amount will be near around 16-17 million.


When Satoshi Nakamoto created bitcoin, he tried to maintain the values of cryptocurrency and create scarcity. The program was that the miners will be no longer rewarded once all bitcoins are mined.

https://t.co/lUo4fRn0yS

Read through the image and also the link to Satoshi, email.

It's still going to take some years before we mine the remaining coins to cover the 21 million supply. Literally the amount of coins currently in circulation is still not up to the total amount of coins that has been mined because Satoshi hasn't moved his coins for quite a long while now and he mined over a million before he disappeared.

The truth is that 21 million cap is enough to supply almost the whole world simply because we are not looking at how many coins in economics rather the value of those coins. Bitcoin literally has a better supply system compared to fiat that can be printed in abundance almost anytime (which is part of the reasons inflation is a world problem) . Bitcoin has the 21 million cap to control circulation cap and avoid devaluation.

Over circulation leads to devaluation.

Here is a table showing when the 21million coins will be mined.

img source--->
1miau post on 100 days to halving

While one OP created a thread about how Bitcoin will take over the global payment word in the future, and I tried to understand that Bitcoin itself is limited to 21 million only and its increase is not even certain, which eventually might end up with a yes/no answer. And it's going to take more than some decades to change from that.

So curiosity made me ask why it is limited and why more can't be made before those decades. I'm just a beginner with little to no knowledge about bitcoin technically.