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Comment by dmitriid | Hacker News Reader

"Except there isn’t a centralized actor manipulating the supply and issuance" and "distributed to block producers as a reward" are mutually exclusive

> So a single BTC will be worth millions in 50 years, got it.

If bitcoin (or any other supply-limited coin) remains popular for such an extended period of time: yes, yes it will. And not necessarily millions in relation to other currencies. Even within itself. It's limited.

Example: "The Solana Foundation has announced that a total of 489 million SOL tokens will be released in circulation. At the moment, about 260 million of these have already entered the market."

There are 9 billion people in the world. By the very definition of a limited coin whoever got hold of the initial supply will be richer (in Solana) than anyone who didn't get there in time. Forget 50 years from now. Already now there aren't enough coins in circulation.

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> "Except there isn’t a centralized actor manipulating the supply and issuance" and "distributed to block producers as a reward" are mutually exclusive

No. The protocol defines the supply, issuance and inflation rate, but - assuming we are talking about a decentralized network - a single actor cannot manipulate it. Solana is an example of a centralized crypto currency upheld by a single entity.

> whoever got hold of the initial supply will be richer (in Solana) than anyone who didn't get there in time

The same happens with US dollars. It has a limited supply, but more is printed and entered into circulation each year, creating inflation. This is like a decentralized crypto currency, but in US dollars a single country controls the circulation, and users of the currency cannot fork the protocol.

Bitcoin is one of the few popular crypto currencies that aims to have a hard limit in total supply with no plans for adaptive issuance or inflation.

> The protocol defines the supply, issuance and inflation rate

Without diving into specifics I will still assume this is a very simplistic thing that doesn't even begin to cover the necessities of a currency.

And yeah "there's no one controlling this" except, you know, the people who program the protocol.

> Bitcoin is one of the few popular crypto currencies that aims

Bitcoin is the popular cryptocurrency. Let's not pretend any other cryptocurrency are even on the radar in comparison.

“without bothering to understand how this works I will assume it doesn’t.”

> And yeah "there's no one controlling this" except, you know, the people who program the protocol.

Which can be anybody as there is no single group of developers - it is governed by social consensus, and if enough users want to change the protocol they can do so with EIPs or a fork.

> Bitcoin is the popular cryptocurrency.

By price - not usage or fee expenditure, aka block space demand.

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