Topic: The myth of 21 million coins (Read 3720 times)

There are a lot of altcokes but Coca Cola can still charge a premium.

A couple of things to consider.

Bitcoin is a brand, and a valuable one.

Satoshi said bitcoin is a collectible.  I think there is some intrinsic value there.

There is the wrong believe that after certain years no more Bitcoins will be mined, that is incorrect, technically mining will continue  forever but that the block will be half every 4 years.

so to have a idea of the value of the block after so many years this is the formula.

n= number of years
v= value of block.

v = 50 * 2^trunc[-1*n/4 ]

where trunc just takes the integer part of the number.

so for n=1 to 3 v=50 BTC
for n=4 to 7 v=25 BTC

for example at 60 years later the blocksize for the reward will be.

60/4=15   so it will be 50*2^-15 which is 1.52 * 10^-3

in other words the block size will be 0.00152 bitcoins of course by then the bitcoin wil be very valuable.
Very different than dead as some made the comment, by then most will be  using satoshis.

the block size will continue to get closer to 0 but it will never be 0.

So when people say mining will stop at 2040 they are wrong, some will quit mining but that is a different story, the blocks will always be there.

This is what is called a geometric series, so even though the number of blocks is very much infinite (finite for other reasons) but mathematically infinite, the total number of bitcoins converges to 21 millions.

belive in math dude

I am going to assume this isn't a troll and hopefully make this clear and easy to understand.

Bitcoin has value compared to other Crypto-currencies because of the strength of the bitcoin netowrk.  As more people mine, the value will increase.  This is simple because the more hash power a coin has, the harder it is to be subverted by bad actors.  It really is as simple as that.

Coincidentally, I believe Litecoin will increase in value relative to USD (but not BTC) as more and more GPU miners switch to Litecoin mining.

Full disclosure: I do not own any Litecoin.

At the beginning I let it slide, but enough is enough, people have had enough time to analyze bitcoin. If you dont understand why bitcoin is valuable you are a retard

This is precisely why BTC has ZERO INTRINSIC VALUE.

people often say that BTC is valuable because I can transfer and spend it in ways that other currencies don't offer, however nothing is preventing me from making an ALTCHAIN and providing this same exact intrinsic value for presumably any price.

People got suckered into letting the state hold their gold in return to a gold backed IOU because gold was not divisible into small units and was heavy, then they came in and said "said sorry our bad rather than 28$ being worth an ounce of gold its 35 now" and people sheeply agreed. Then they pushed it further and said "hey we changed our minds.....yea there is no gold behind your money, just trust us its necessary for the economy to thrive, bartering for something that can't be manipulated by us will stunt the economy" And thats how we got off the gold standard.

The reason this wont happen with BTC (besides the fact that we are wiser this time) is that there is no major benefit in trading BTC for a token representing BTC , as the BTC is already easy to carry, send and divide, contrary to gold. In the case that a BTC token system were to be implemented in order to circumvent blockchain problems, the low barriers to entry of competing token systems, and the ability to return to the system the token is backed by with ease (bitcoins) would result in the token system always being highly competitive by nature in order to be adopted by the community. In other words we would agree to use a token system that cancelled transaction fees, but would disagree if it started issuing loans with our BTC; in the case that the system did something we didnt like it would fail (unlike the dollar, you cant decide to not accept the dollar as legal tender, or go and compete with the dollar

Perhaps, though it's hard to conceive of even what a block chain for gold might mean.

There's three good reasons to make transactions "off block"

1) Translate your trust into new money

2) You dont have to pay the tx fee, so this allows high volume

3) Instant confirms are possible

It wouldn't be if there were a blockchain for gold.

nothing to see here, move along.

Exactly yes.  So a trusted third party can lever up the money supply using IOUs.

The short squeeze occurs if they dont have enough bitcoins to pay all the IOUs.  But that's exactly how the current system works with fractional reserve banking.

No that's called an IOU, like printing money only generating it.

Sure, that's called a "short squeeze".  But you can settle in cash.  So instead of me giving you your 10 coins i could give you say $1200

There are like 608 sites now that offer bitcoin coupons.

What's to stop one of these from just making coupons... Kind of like how the feds do it. Its always backed by coin, but if everyone pulls out there wont be enough.

Yes but it's just a parameter.  Parameters can change, at least in theory, in the future.  Parameters HAVE changed, e.g. the default dust size.

So it's correct to say that we are currently scheduled to have 21 million coins, right now.

NOT that there will never be more than 21 million coins in the future.  The final number of coins will be decided by consensus.

Nothing more to add

This

This may help clear things up regarding 21 million coins; under subtitles:
'21 million coins isn't enough; doesn't scale' 
'After 21 million coins are mined, no one will generate new blocks'

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Myths#21_million_coins_isn.27t_enough.3B_doesn.27t_scale

ROFLOL!