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The supply of capital-B Bitcoin is 21M, but at any time, anyone can create Bitcoin2, which is an exact clone of Bitcoin but with a fresh chain. Any Bitcoin2 to
by Imnimo 6y ago
The supply of capital-B Bitcoin is 21M, but at any time, anyone can create Bitcoin2, which is an exact clone of Bitcoin but with a fresh chain. Any Bitcoin2 token has exactly the same utility as a Bitcoin token in principle - the only difference is that, for now at least, lots of people are mining Bitcoin and no one is mining Bitcoin2. If there comes a day when a lot of people think there should be 42M bitcoins, instead of 21, what would stop them from just starting a second chain? Granted, these "a lot of people" are not a "central authority", but is there really a difference when it comes to the question of bitcoin's total supply? As long as those people have enough compute they're willing to put to work mining Bitcoin2, there's nothing stopping them from creating more tokens that are just as useful as original Bitcoins.
And, of course, they could freely choose to make Bitcoin2 have a trillion tokens instead of 21M, or whatever number they want.
- anythingdude321 6y agoyes but the beauty is that, due to the lack of a central authority, the game theory of the situation virtually ensures that no one would ever do that — that is, take bitcoin2 seriously
- Imnimo 6y agoI don't know if I agree with that. Like take the example of a country whose currency collapses due to government mismanagement and its people decide that they would be better off with a cryptocurrency. I'm not sure how realistic this is, but it's at least a scenario that I see proposed from time to time. Those citizens face a trade-off when deciding between Bitcoin and Bitcoin2. Bitcoin has a lot of active miners, which is valuable, as it means their future transactions will be more secure. But Bitcoin is also very expensive, and difficult to acquire. Joining the bitcoin economy is entering into a game where other players (bitcoin early adopters) have a huge head start, and these newcomers have nothing. If they instead start a new chain, they will need to bring their own compute power, but will have an opportunity to have a meaningful share of the tokens, and therefore some amount of influence on steering the currency. It's probably unlikely that an enfranchised bitcoin user would be incentivized to jump to a newborn chain, but I don't think it's the case that a new user is always incentivized to adopt the existing chain. As the price of bitcoin increases, and the remaining coins to be issued decreases, a new chain becomes more attractive for new users.
- mettamage 6y agoIs that true though? Bitcoin cash, bitcoin gold, etc.
- Yizahi 6y agoWell Bitcoin does have almost central authority - if Top 3 mining pools decide to change their software in literally any way, then everyone else will comply of will be left in the dust. It's not that hard for 3 people to agree on a common action plan.
- eruleman 6y agoIt's easy to create a fork of software. It's hard to create a fork of firmware running in people's minds.
- e_y_ 6y agoI think the main thing Bitcoin has going for it is name recognition. Would be better if we could leave proof-of-work in a flaming trash pile and migrate Bitcoin to Ethereum (and rename it Bitcoin)
- spurgu 6y agoSimilar things have already happened (Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Gold). The original is still standing tall. But if you think you can convince someone your Bitcoin is better, feel free to do a fork!