Topic: Isn't it a bad thing to never have more than 21 million coins? (Read 3453 times)

Sure but you cant divide them without dividing their value too IOW, you can divide your coins all you want, but it wont affect mine. With dollars/euro's etc, some entity can create more and thereby affect yours.

There are not 21 million coins. There an infinite number for all practical purposes. Bitcoins can be divided to a thousand decimal places. It would take a simple programming change to do this.

I think it's a good thing, because the value of BTC will increase slowly once the cap is hit.

smaller increments will just be worth more, that's all

This site has a lot of answers to questions like that

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Myths

Good and bad are in the eye of the judger, but I'll spout some words.

I believe 21 million coin limitation is the central reason for bitcoin's stagnant adoption rate. The lack of a stable value (not to be confused with a stable exchange rate!) is keeping people from using the currency. The reason is that there's always this spectre of radical price appreciation. And whenever there's a spectre of radical appreciation, there's also downward risk. The problem is value instability, and bitcoin has a lot of that because of the 21 million thing. Cryptocurrency will really take off as more people recognize this and start moving towards new designs with value stability in mind.

One such coin in the design stages right now is EnCoin, a coin based on the value of 10kwh of electricity. Another idea is HashCoin, one based on a particular # of ghash, which could be achieved by simply increasing the payout-per-block based on the difficulty of solving that block (and having on limit on the number of coins).

I suspect bitcoin is not the future of money, but something like it is going to be a major player. Whether or not that's bitcoin itself will depend on bitcoin's ability to own up to it's 21-million-coin flaw. If it does not, it probably will lose to a competing currency that deals with value stability. If the bitcoin developers agree to fix the 21-million-coin problem, then bitcoin could become a big deal. However, in that case you're not going to get rich off of it because in fixing the 21-million-coin problem you've remove the "radical-upside" (fantasy) that so many are talking about with bitcoin.

You may want to think twice if you're buying bitcoins as an "investment" and holding them on the expectation that they'll make you a lot of wealth. You're taking a very big risk.

+1

it is the entire bitcoin supply.

however other forms of money can easily include bitcoin IOUs or many other kinds of derivatives.

That makes no sense what so ever. That would be like saying I could invest 21 million bitcoins in someone and create another 21 million bitcoins out of thin air because it was an investment that I traded for something else. The 21 million bitcoins is not the base money supply, it is the entire the money supply. Once the last bitcoin is mined, no others will be created.

Since about 7 million of 21 million have been mined, there are about 14 million left unmined.

i was wondering, how many bitcoin are left "unmined"?

why so mad? Bitcoin is IN inflation right now... 7000+ coins minted a day that is lowering the value of the coins you have today.


Quote from your link:


Ok, so he found flaw, 21 million coins, lol.

you trolling ? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin#Monetary_differences

I think the 21 million coin limit is a fatal flaw in Bitcoin, but luckily we won't reach it for a while.  So we still have a normal inflationary currency for now.

the code will be patched to tolerate a low inflation rate. 1% maybe 2%...whatever is needed to keep the hash rate of the network going.

I definitively believe it is a really good thing to keep the Bitcoin supply limited to 21 million.

Fiduciary money such as dollars and euros are based on the trust you have on central bankers to keep inflation at bay. You can go back 100 years in History and see that fiduciary money has always been debased over time, whatever politicians have ever said. The US is flooding the country with oversupply of dollars which will definitely generate high levels of inflation in the long term.

On the other hand, the European Central Bank is trying to strictly control inflation, but this is causing instabilities in the most indebted countries, and the outcome is yet to be seen.

The 21 million threshold may make Bitcoin a currency or commodity nobody will like to borrow from, but it is in the cards that it well may be an excellent store of value and trading platform.

Only a year ago, a pizza would have cost you about that many bitcoins. So what? Rather than using bitcoin, you'd typically use "KiloCoin" or whatever, and you pay for your pizza with 40KC. I dont see the problem with that as a trade instrument.

yea I heard that guy did he spent 40,000? Bitcoins to buy an pizza! Seriously who is gonna do this when bitcoin is worth .0001 us dollar? seriously. I lol at that concept. I'm sure they will just move onto solidcoin 3.0 before that shitz happen, or namecoin 10.0 etc...

Picture the old Zimbabwe money or the german mark during the 1920s.




The reason why people are holding onto bitcoins right now is 5-10 years down the line when it's harder to generate more coins and thus a bigger demand for the coins compared to what it is now.

The price of bitcoin is not relevant to its usefulness as a way to conduct transactions. Even if bitcoins become nearly worthless with a trade value of $0.0001, it will still be an awesome way to transfer funds. You only have to type a few more zero's when you do a transaction. Volatility is a bigger problem if its value fluctuates too much on a short timescale it would make it less usable.

bitcoins is in inflation right now, something akin to like 7,000 coins minted every day?.. It won't be bad until 10 years later when bitcoin is worth 2000 per us dollar. OR when this current currency fade out of popularity.