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Comment by galeos | Hacker News Reader

"...most people will know by now that only 21 million will ever exist, i.e. that you can’t print more of it."

This is, at the very least, debatable: https://www.onionfutures.com/essays/turning-off-bitcoins-inf...

It is false, members of the Bitcoin core team have already said as much - that in order for the base network to continue functioning, inflation will need to take place.

More than that, the supply is essentially infinite right now. You can already see this in the boom and bust cycles where AOSS (any old s*tcoin) will rise and fall in tandem - this indicates that any large moves draw speculators to those tokens they subjectively view as less or more expensive.

The biggest issue with this ultimately is that for Bitcoin to succeed, civilisation has to fail. You can't tax an asset you can't see and account for transparently (pseudonymous wallets), so you can't have electricity networks, heating networks, schools, police, military, welfare, public roads, running water, sewage, public facilities like libraries/museums, bursaries, national parks, ownership by right of any physical property whatsoever (there'd be no way to enforce physical ownership without public bodies, so essentially all ownership is decided moment-to-moment at the end of a gun last-of-us-style), or Bitcoin itself (as the public infrastructure supporting the network would not be maintained).

While it's true that the vanishing block subsidy will cause security issues within several decades, solutions cannot involve breaking the 21M limit that is the core essence of Bitcoin.

Why not?

Because the 21m hard cap and change resistance are the definition of Bitcoin.

If these are taken away for any reason, the result would be indistinguishable from shitcoins.

I suppose that might be true, but we can imagine a situation where there is no choice in the matter:

If network security cannot be maintained without sufficient inflation, then it surely it doesn't matter how philosophically wedded some users are to the 21m cap. It would lead to a hard fork, with two resulting coins:

1. An unchanged 'Capped-supply Bitcoin' 2. A new 'Permanent-subsidy Bitcoin'

Given a total breakdown in network security of the 'Capped-supply Bitcoin' (and its associated collapse in value), we would expect users to deem the, still secure and therefore higher value, 'Permanent-subsidy Bitcoin' to be the 'true' Bitcoin going forward, no?

For the unaware, a protocol hard fork would result in participants owning bitcoin on two chains.

A fork is possible if fees become an issue, participants will then vote with hash power, nodes, and value.

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