Topic: How difficult is it to change total bitcoin's 21 million suppply? (Read 659 times)

Bitcoin is like gold in many ways. Like gold, bitcoin cannot simply be created arbitrarily. Gold must be mined out of the ground, and bitcoin must be mined via digital means. Linked with this process is the stipulation set forth by the founders of bitcoin that, like gold, it must have a limited and finite supply.


In fact, there are only 21 million bitcoins that can be mined in total.1 Once miners have unlocked this many bitcoins, the planet's supply will essentially be tapped out, unless bitcoin's protocol is changed to allow for a larger supply. Supporters of bitcoin say that, like gold, the fixed supply of the currency means that banks are kept in check and not allowed to arbitrarily issue fiduciary media. What will happen when the global supply of bitcoin reaches its limit? This is the subject of much debate among the followers and aficionados of all things cryptocurrency.


Currently, about 18 million bitcoin have been mined, leaving under three million more to be introduced into circulation. To better understand what will happen with these remaining bitcoin as well as when and how the network will have mined its last tokens, we'll need to explore some of the details of the mining process itself.

I believe this answer is quite correct and noteworthy.

1 BTC is divisible by 8.  That's a lot of BTC already and if we still experience shortage there is ETH and all other cryptocurrency which is more than 3500 that is listed on CMC, that's more than 42M.  You might be thinking the digital world's wealth is distributed unfairly but just as how you see it, we also see it that way. Take our chance to altcoins.

I think what the author wants to know is if there is any way bitcoins can be reduced to create an artificial shortage on the market to mess with it's price. The answer is no, there is no known way as of now to digitally render bitcoins generated by Satoshi Nakamoto useless, but every 4 years we have what we call hving where we reduce the amount of bitcoin that could be mined. In these period usually bitcoin increases in price.

I think it is impossible to change it I don't know how the system works but surely if it was easy to do a lot of people already done it but until today no one has done it.
In my opinion, we need to hack bitcoin or crack the bitcoin technology in order to change the supply of bitcoin. I think developers could do this but in the case of bitcoin, we don't really know if Satoshi Nakamoto is still alive or even if he is alive we don't know if he could do it.

What if magically, the real Satoshi would come back to the living, confirm he is the one and state:
"Dear all, you misunderstood the purpose of the creation of Bitcoin. It was supposed to be a cryptoCURRENCY, not cryptoINVESTMENT, and we need to go back to the roots, let's double the supply!"

Do you think people could follow him?

Considering the nature of the entire cryptocurrency network and the blockchain platform, its quite easy to change the total supply of bitcoin but doing that will go beyond the intended purpose for the creation of bitcoin and the principle of scarcity.  Also, the value of bitcoin might be down graded when the total supply of bitcoin is changed.

I think bitcoin supply is not raise about 21 million because many holder loss their private key and increase of bitcoin supply, last year I found website link where some one loss their data and have more than 10k bitcoin in his wallet, every time bitcoin will increase lower than 21 million because many investor have other reason about their assets lost by pass away and some loss their data.

How difficult it is?It's impossibe. Limited suppy is the way how Bitcoin is created and designed and that can't be changed. The whole Bitcoin technology and functioning is based on that and that is also the reason why we have halving and similar. You can't change just number of mined coins without intervening into whole Bitcoin system and functioning, so that is not possible.

If there is a way to change 21 million supply of bitcoin then many other parameters of bitcoin can also be changed like coin halving and no of transactions a block can accommodate. There is no way to change total supply of 21 million bitcoin. 21 million is quite enough and those who cant buy 1 bitcoin can buy many satoshis.

The number of bitcoin is limited but there is one problem. Futures opened. The number of Bitcoins is technically stable but in practice it seems to have increased. Bitcoin is a great technology in every condition. The last mining activity for Bitcoin will continue until 2140.

It will end up having a fork again. Its not that simple to change the supply for miners will have to mine the blocks from where they will start the fork. This is going to divide the miners who will support the 21M and who will support the 42M. In the end another BTCXX will be produced in the market. They get what they want but that wouldn't be the real chain since the 21M-BTC-chain will still exist.

In my opinion, this issue is being raised in order to discuss the possibility of creating a shortage of bitcoin in the market and, due to this, hang its artificial price.  In fact, there is no way to reduce the number of lures, but you can reduce the supply of Bitcoin in the cryptocurrency market.  If demand exceeds supply, then this will be a good way out of the difficult situation on the market, but How to implement this is very difficult to come up with.

Always remember in every circumstances there is always a possibility to change the total supply of 21 million Bitcoin but I believe it is not that simple.  Bitcoin is just a code so if majority of the supporters believe that there is need for modification of Bitcoin total supplies then it can be done.  The only thing that keeps it in that current total supply is its economy.  Changing the supply will possibly devastate the economic progress of Bitcoin so developer dare not to change it.

By economic majority, they do not refer to the people who have more bitcoins but rather to the nodes, one node one vote. If the nodes reject a change in the number of Bitcoins, it will simply create a fork that will take away a part of the miners and create a shitcoin like Bitcoin Cash or Bitcoin SV.

Seriously, I don't understand why you're asking this kind of question if the 21 million limit is what makes Bitcoin so attractive.

I don’t think there is possibility to change the total supply of 21 million bitcoin, last one of which will be mined in 2140. Satoshi designed the algorithm in a manner that bitcoin will have a controlled inflation. As per my knowledge there is no one who can change this supply.

Wouldn't this be a centralized coin if only the devs are to have the power to decide?

As far as I know the miners will have to vote for it whether they are going to support the fork and it means they will have to make a lot of changes before all these will take place. The community might just be divided actually and will have BTC and probably BTC42 

No, if its not accepted people won't upgrade their nodes and the network would remain with the current rules. Its not as simple as developers simply pushing the change. Most improvements are minor and tacitly accepted, but if something this controversial would come you can expect a hell lot more of resistance.

Yes its technically 21 000 000 x 100 000 000 = 2100000000000000 satoshis, to be objective the OP would be asking, if they could change this into 4200000000000000 satoshis.

Everyone knows 42 is the answer. As for the question, you'd have to read a book, actually a guide... Something about mice running an experiment... (Douglas Adams actually said he didn't pick 42 for any specific reason, but this joke is endless).

As for the reason Satoshi used 21, i guess, it was the same (arbitrary). But most importantly, it was set and accepted as the rules. If it were 42 since the beginning, the result would be identical, bitcoin price would be exactly half, and people would have exactly twice of them. You could also do the opposite but i see no reason to change the rules at this point.

Change supply just like that?

I guess you'd need the consent of all stakeholders, both small and big to do this.
If changing things on Bitcoin is that easy, Bitcoin would lose one of its most cherished values.
All stakeholders should determine major changes, and the purposes for the changes have to be well explained to them.
I think there should be long discussion between the majority and those elected to represent Bitcoin interest and it's principles. If these representatives are discovered to be going against the laid down rule, they are quickly remove by all stakeholders.
By the way, small group representing Bitcoin without the input of majority, is quite risky. They can easily be influenced.

The 21 Million supple is just a parameter, it is not necessarily an exact 21 million. Nevertheless, as of the moment there is no need for people to amp up the amount of existing bitcoin as the value it holds makes it even harder for an average person to earn one. On top of this, creating more bitcoins per se will cause it's value to depreciate, just like normal fiat coins, so it is not the best thing to do as of the moment.

It is not possible to change because it is fix and whatever they created it is only thing that they will. I think if something they will create or change the supply, it have a bigger change and a huge effect for all.

the devs are the ones that decide if they will make changes on thier coin  . for bitcoin , bitcoin core developers and not the majority or the ones that hold alot of bitcoin  .

 but i dont know if its possible to change the supply of the coin once they were already released and running  . if yes then i still think that it was not easy   .  laslty , i dont think that its beneficial to up the supply of btc because that will only make its price lesser but that would make bitcoin more stable  .

bitcoins 21m is just an arbitrary number based on a user-interface value

what most people dont realise is that at actual code level bitcoin started at 5,000,000,000 satoshis per reward and every 210,000 blocks that amount of satosh's halves

at graphic user interface it is very very very easy to change todays 1,250,000,000 sat reward to be represented as GUI level that its not 12.5btc. but claim that 125btc just by moving the conversion of sats / 100m to being sats /10mill

its as easy as that

..
bitcoin devs are actually(and foolishly) thinking off subdividing sats by another 1000. yep they want to make it so the reward is 1,250,000,000,000 millisat tokens created per block instead of
1,250,000,000 sat tokens created per block

this would require the unit of account of smallest divisible unit requiring 100Bill units to be classed as a btc

people dont actually realise that the 'sharable units' right now are a max capacity of 2,100,000,000,000,000 sharable units. and not limited to 21m sharable units

yep bitcoin can be shared between alot more than 21m people. and devs want to increase it from 2.1quadriion to 2.1quintillion
thus abusing the 'scarcity' promise bitcoin had

and why do they wanna do that.. to make bitcoin compatible with an alt network which other altcoins can also use. thus also removing bitcoins unique feature and usefulness by trying to get people over to other networks

but to summarise the topic question
its very easy to change the 21m cap figure as 21m is just a GUI number and not a code number
no transaction found in the blockchain is measured in bitcoin. its measured in satoshis. thus wont break any chain rules by changing the GUI interface

yep people can run the node on the network and just have the basket term known as 'btc' be called anything. and it will still function. because 'btc' is not in the blockchain.

.. go on people.. try it
grab the codebase and just change any reference to 'btc' and call it 'helicopter' and i bet the node will still run, still validate the same blocks
..
next change the conversion of 100m sats to be 10m sats=1 heiicopter.
again it will still function. but now people can get 125 helicopters

yes you will be seeing helicopters and others will be seeing whatever rename they want. but it has not broke the consensus or caused any orphaning of transactions/blocks

In a simple understanding manner, if you change something which Satoshi didnt thought of doing then it will be an altcoin. People are still not completely educated about this and lots of confusions around this matter.

There was a consensus before to decide if we should change the original code of bitcoin and make supply bigger and it resulted to an hardfork, because some may think increasing the supply could possibly affect the bitcoin price and all those effort to increase the price may suddenly fall down.
Honestly for me BTC is like an digital gold and it should be preserve the way it is, cause scarcity could potentially increase the price in the near future that's why it has insane volatility. If we increase supply it could remove BTC volatility and become stagnant.

My understanding is it’s impossible, if this is so easy to change, Bitcoin wouldn’t be a trustworthy protocol

I don't think it is dependent on those with largest market share. They don't contribute anything to the hashing power. Those that matter are the full nodes, and the honesty of those nodes. If an attacker, say using 51% attack methodology, gets a hold of nodes larger than half of the whole network nodes, then they could generate more longer blockchain than that honest blockchain, making double spending possible.

I'm an Information Technology student and I still have no idea about this I think as the bitcoin technology was made to be able to change the bitcoin supply you need to hack the bitcoin first,
which is almost impossible since until today no one could still hack bitcoin and I think there is a reward to this so I think bitcoin technology has a solid security.

Your argument is not right. "As it will divide the community and a section of the users will shift to BCH and BSV if any such measure is implemented", you can say the same thing about Zimbabwean dollar as increasing the supply of Zimbabwean dollar and a section of Zimbabwean people will shift to US dollars and gold. Yet see what happened to  Zimbabwean dollar.

I have been saying this for quite some time. We need to re-denominate Bitcoin, as it has become very "expensive" now. The total supply will remain the same, but the coins will be redenominated, for example one coin becoming 10,000. Anyone with a balance of 10 BTC in his wallet will be having 100,000 BTC after the redenomination. The total circulating supply would increased to 176 billion from the current 17.6 million and the maximum supply would increase to 210 billion from 21 million. If we do the redenomination now, then the price of 1 BTC will almost become equal to 1 USD.

And please don't confuse redenomination with increasing the supply by creating more coins to mine. It is different. Redenomination is similar to stock bonuses. Here someone owns 1 coin gets another 999 as bonus.

This supply of bitcoin is still quite a mystery to me, because I am unsure how this supply would even be able to serve population of over 7 billion people if bitcoin was to become a global currency, and based on what I have always understood, it would be impossible for supply to be further expanded once it has been exhausted expect maybe the person that wrote the code of the program himself has an answer or a solution to this, so I would not really know too if it would ever be possible.

Bitcoin on the other hand cannot be control or re-code by any other person out there since it cannot be altered, so even the person that has the most bitcoin cannot except maybe satoshi can because he still has the highest number of bitcoin as of today. I think he has about 1 million bitcoin untouched.

I think that Bitcoin supply is predetermined, there's no way to change it... But now I can see that some people are seriously discussing that, so I guess it might be possible, even if miners' consensus won't get it done: https://news.bitcoin.com/proposal-to-increase-bitcoins-21-million-supply-sparks-debate/. As for changing the block size, I think it's an easier task, but I don't see how this is related to changing the supply.
If we are talking about Bitcoins being too scarce, don't forget that there's way more in Satoshis, and eventually, we might just turn to count them rather than bitcoins. And if there aren't enough Satoshis - well, then we need to make something to split them into even smaller pieces the possibility of which is also debatable.

Increasing of supply really miners role. They mine the bitcoin supply. But because there is halving bitcoin supply every four years, mining of 21Million BTC is really hard and takes time. The circulation of BTC makes it more volatile. Because of its limited supply, the price hike. So, we don't need to request that bitcoin increase even up to 100 Million coins only.

Increasing the supply is never going to happen, as it will divide the community and a section of the users will shift to BCH and BSV if any such measure is implemented. If the circulating supply is not enough, then the only viable solution is to split the existing and coins to be mined in the future, rather than creating new coins. If the miners just create new coins, then there will be no difference between BTC and fiat currency. 

I don't think it is that hard.

If the developers think that it is the right thing to do, it will be done immediately it is just that, I don't see that happening too. Well, let's say that it is a choice so, it will happen if they want it and if the people also wanted it.

First of all Bitcoin is a token, programmed and deployed according to specifications.

Many of we even don't believe that whatever mentioned in Whitepaper published by Satoshi Nakamoto.

But in the last 11 years, everything is happening according to whitepapers.

I agree that many forks are already there, but in the coming future, there will be many more forks which can produce more accessibility to users compared to BTC and many other altcoins.

But Supply of Bitcoin is quite impossible to change.

This has nothing to do with difficulty. The number of Bitcoin is limited to 21 million units.

But we can think of this as an illusion. There will be 21 million pieces of bitcoin, but it can also be evaluated with 8 decimal places. So the total number of 21 million * 100 million can think. Thus, the monetary value can be called 1 satoshi.

Don't take it serious what total number of BTC is. Think about its value, its tech, its development...

The following post has the answer that I asked:

https://medium.com/@galea/bitcoin-development-who-can-change-the-core-protocol-478b8ac5fe43

Yes you're right, a better example would have been a bitcoin fork like the ones you mentioned, but unfortunately I don't know them very much so I was not aware of this supply "evolution"  
And as I said before, yes 21 million is not hardcoded, in fact there will be only 20 999 999.97690 btc at the end according to en.bitcoin.it
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Controlled_supply

It's not impossible if everything will follow and support this kind of suggestion. We all want the price to become more expensive so having a limited supply makes it more possible. The scenario of having more supply might be more complicated for bitcoin if ever, but we should still open for this possibilities and Developers either make their own analysis and be close minded for the supply increase. We have more years to come, let's see if the limited supply affects the whole market of cryptocurrency.

Hash power merely decides which valid chain is the best chain. Essentially, their only power is to decide which transactions get confirmed, and in which order. They can't just arbitrarily change consensus rules like the the total bitcoin supply. If they break consensus rules like that, the economic majority -- exchanges, services, economically relevant users -- would just ignore their chain.

Basically it's impossible to change the total supply of 21 millions, as it's a built in parameter configured when Bitcoin has been created and it cannot be modified.

your example of altcoins is good, but a better example could have been one of the fork coins that also copied the blockchain and changed the total supply, a fork coin like bitcoin-diamond.
also as far as i know 21 million is NOT hardcoded anywhere in bitcoin's code! there is a lot of other things in place (the block rewards, and halvings) that ensure the cap is not higher than 21 million.

There are no economic incentive for miners to accept a protocol change that increase the Bitcoin supply. Anyone holding coins now, will never accept a change that would decrease scarcity and also the devaluation of their current coins. 

The miners with full nodes needs to run a newer protocol with these changes and I can tell you, that none of them would be willing to do that. We saw how difficult it was to get consensus on "Block sizes" ...just imagine what will happen when they are messing with the total supply.     

Everything is technically possible within the realm of imagination. Probably a BIP hard fork and a lot of code change. You can even change algorithm, rate of new block appearing, etc (see Litecoin and Dogecoin).

But, i don't think this will ever reach consensus. People simply do not want this. Those that do, go to an altcoin.

The first question is why do you want more bitcoins to begin with. This is probably a problem in your thinking, perhaps you are pro inflation, so most people will point to to ETH, XRP, DOGE, etc. Seems that you do not understand deflation economies to bring this idea again.

But Bitcoin was made deflationary. And even if you just wanted to change the number, i still fail to see the reason to do it, and most people will object it, just like the big blocks drama. In fact the blocks discussion was far more tame in comparison to this issue. Next thing that comes from time to time is the aforementioned crypto algorithm change.

I believe this can be changed if the concensus of developers and miners agrees with it.  I believe block reward is just a code that can be modified once majority voted for a change in block reward.  Same rule applies to total supply. But I believe it is not that easy because there are lots of consequences to be considered.

Yes I think we could change that. Some other crypto currencies based on the Bitcoin code like Dogecoin, have no halving at all...
So I think theorically with a hard fork we could change the future block rewards, but since Bitcoin is famous for having a so called  hard coded max supply of 21million, it would not be Bitcoin anymore and we would certainly get a contentious split like for BCH and BSV.

And you franklin2058, what do you think?

With all due respect, you did NOT answer any part of my question.

I am not a coder, but I understand the bitcoin cryptographic network is been operated on consensus rule, meaning if any major effect is to take place, it's agreed upon otherwise, nothing will happen. No party of miners will ever agree for bitcoin total supply to be increased above what we already have. The only thing we keep seeing is the fork of bitcoin and not increasing the total supply of bitcoin itself. Satoshi is/are truly a genius

Ok, then let me reformulate my question. Currently the block reward is 12.5 btc, can we change that?

Usually when these things arise, a group of people propose their version of bitcoin, then the miners will decide which way bitcoin will go to. A fork is created, and the version with the most number of miners and nodes will get the most support and basically that will be the 'chosen' one. Perhaps I'm wrong with what I'm saying here but that is the concept I grasped and is almost close to what it really is.



Economic majority is not applicable for PoW coins. Hashing power is what decides the fate of bitcoin, not the people who holds a shitton of it.
 

An address isn't associated with any personal information whatsoever, so I don't think it will be an easy feat.

--

For further reading on the matter:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Hardfork
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Consensus

See here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin_is_not_ruled_by_miners

I am afraid your understanding is wrong.

I don't think there is a parameter in the code, I think it's just the result of the rewards of each mined block, considering the halvings until the last one at block 6 930 000 in 2140, that gives this amount of almost 21million of BTC.

Increase in the supply of bitcoin happens through various parameters, and particularly miners play a big role in reaching concensus on the same. Even for increase of block size it was great struggle to reach consensus among the miners. I don't think this will happen, and if such a decision is taken bitcoin is gonna loss its value.

Based on what I am used to hear, I would have first said that it is not possible to change the total supply.

But after thinking a bit about it, two things came to my mind, and at the same time, the answer to your question.

1) Total supply is just a parameter, so according to me (as I said, I have never thought about this precise issue before, nor heard anyone talking about it!), the sole people who would have the power to change it are the miners, and no one else.
That is for the your answer.

2) But now let's go a bit further.
On the other hand, I am pretty sure this is a situation that will never happen. Just see how simpler improvements led to great debates!
So the only way for the total supply to be realistically increased, is through a hard fork.

How would it be possible for the total supply to be increased: through a miner vote.
Will it ever happen on the main chain? No, that is sure at 99.99%.

What kind of process have to go through? Who make the final votes? I guess the change is similar to implementing BIP.

I heard many posts here said "Economic Majority" vote decides. Does this mean who hold the most bitcoins decide? Maybe not. I guess BIP is determined by Bitcoin Core developers, so the total bitcoin supply (21 million) is also determined by Bitcoin Core developers.

Also, the argument against the "Economic Majority" is it is often the case we can't find holder for the addresses with a lot of bitcoins. How can we contact them for vote?

Thank you indeed!