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> I like Bitcoin as a diversification for being a “better version of gold” - it has the scarcity ... Why do we repeat the claim of Bitcoin scarcity when we all

> I like Bitcoin as a diversification for being a “better version of gold” - it has the scarcity ... Why do we repeat the claim of Bitcoin scarcity when we all know it's just a promise and nothing more, there is no technical limitation? All it takes to "print" more Bitcoins is for the majority of miners to agree to make a fork that will allow for more. And that will happen at one point. As for Gold, good luck trying to mine an infinite amount of it.

Fjolsvith 6y ago
> All it takes to "print" more Bitcoins is for the majority of miners to agree to make a fork that will allow for more. And that will happen at one point. Why is this a bad thing? America's founders believed that the people could mint their own coins.
- josephwegner 6y ago
  It's not intrinsically a bad thing (some may hold that opinion, though). However, if you are investing in Bitcoin because it is similar to gold in that scarcity is a primary attribute, then the ability to mint new bitcoins is dangerous. I'd also posit that "because America does it" is a fairly weak argument for many of the claimed benefits of Bitcoin. Much of Bitcoin's charter is that it helps move away from government-controlled currency. If you think America's monetary system is the best option available, then Bitcoin likely is not your thing.
rawtxapp 6y ago
Nothing stops you from changing the 21M cap in the code, but you need majority of the network nodes to agree to the new rules (aka a hard fork), the miners can't willy nilly change the rules of the network. What you would have at that point isn't Bitcoin, it would be probably be called "Bitcoin infinite" or something, similar to "Bitcoin cash".
- user-the-name 6y ago
  You don't need the nodes to agree on anything. If they don't agree, they drop off the network, and form their own chain with little to no hashing power, that will stagnate and die in short order.
  - Spivak 6y ago
    You need a majority of computing power on the network to agree to actually do this which is what the parent means.
    - user-the-name 6y ago
      No, that was the original claim. That you need the miners to agree. They are the ones that hold the computing power. The claim I responded to says that in addition to this, you also need the majority of the "nodes", which are just computers that do no work and just forward transactions. This is incorrect, you do not need their help. It is easier if you have it, but you do not need it.
      - PKop 6y ago
        >They are the ones that hold the computing power If they hold this power to dictate value to the market, why don't they do this right now and print infinite money for themselves? It's because they don't actually have this power.
        user-the-name 6y ago
        They absolutely and obviously hold that power. It is just not in their interests at the moment to rock the boat.
      - rand49an 6y ago
        The nodes are what actually enforce the rules. If you send out a transaction with 25M coins in, nodes won't broadcast that transaction and it doesn't make it to the blockchain.
    - 6y ago
zulln 6y ago
> And that will happen at one point. Why?
- user-the-name 6y ago
  Probably because the fee market will turn out to be non-viable, and bitcoin would collapse without mining rewards.
- mindcandy 6y ago
  It has already happened dozens of times and no one noticed. Probably the only such fork that anyone here has heard of is Dogecoin. And, that one only took off as a collective running joke.
blhack 6y ago
And all it takes to "print" more gold is for a majority of people using gold to decide that lead painted yellow is, in actual fact, gold.
- leetcrew 6y ago
  I got some pyrite for sale, great deal at $1600/oz! don't miss your chance to get in on the ground floor.
PKop 6y ago
>All it takes Oh just that huh? The market wouldn't value that new fork on par with finite BTC, so those miners would be hurting themselves, and burning energy for a worth-less coin. This action is trivial to consider, so what makes you think it has bearing on BTC value? When these miners leave old network, hash power & difficulty go down so other miners who prefer finite protocol can come in to mine. What's the actual threat then?
- thedudeabides5 6y ago
  Actually this isn’t the only way. If financial intermediaries like Coinbase start extending credit or engaging in fractional reserve banking, then yes, you can “create more Bitcoin.” Just like how in the gold standard, you could still create more gold backed dollars by making a mortgage loan... Kind of funny how all these new monetary wizards miss out on this simple fact.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - Aunche 6y ago
    This is a really dangerous way to create more Bitcoin. If the credit markets freeze, then the entire system collapses.
  - G3rn0ti 6y ago
    That’s nonsense. Only miners can create new Bitcoin. What Coinbase could do is to issue a financial derivative backed by Bitcoin e.g. a “Coinbase Penny” representing a 1/1000th of Bitcoins. And then could go on issue more of those pennies than actually backed by Bitcoins. But it wouldn’t be cryptocurrency if it wouldn’t run on a blockchain. Of course, the “Coinbase Penny” could collapse if we people stopped trusting Coinbase. Bitcoin wouldn’t notice like the gold price does not care whether a single US dollar is still backed by 24.057 grams of silver like it originally did.
    - arcticbull 6y ago
      It would work just fine unless there's a run on it. So long as HODLers HODL, nobody would ever notice. That's the premise of the whole proof of keys business. (https://www.proofofkeys.com/ https://www.proofofkeys.com/)
cactus2093 6y ago
Honestly maybe it will fork, and maybe that will be a good change. We don’t exactly know how the dynamics of mining will play out in a post-block reward world, maybe it’s actually better to keep mining at the current block reward size indefinitely rather than decrease all the way to zero. Very slow fixed inflation is not necessarily that different than having a hard cap on supply. Gold is still being mined too. If it forked in a way that completely defeated the limited supply and led to rapid inflation then it would massively tank in value and miners would lose a lot of money. That’s a pretty good incentive for them not to destroy it. As far as bitcoin existential threats go, there are many of them - the energy cost, a 51% attack, so much concentration of mining in China, etc. Miners mutually colluding to destroy their own investments is not at the top of my list of worries.
elif 6y ago
Your theory is fantasy, and your conclusion that it is inevitable is hilarious. Please do a 2 minute read of the BCH wikipedia page and correct your comment.
- uncletammy 6y ago
  Just read the BCH wikipedia page. What does BCH have to do with increasing the total number of coins?
dools 6y ago
Bitcoin is nothing more than a blockchain ledger of who owns Bitcoin
- bdamm 6y ago
  Bitcoin definitely includes more than just the ledger. Without the miners, there would be no transactions, and without the intermediate processors, there would be no transaction intake. Without exchanges, there would be no value. Bitcoin is clearly a lot more than just the ledger.
  - dools 6y ago
    What you described is just a blockchain implementation.
spamizbad 6y ago
> As for Gold, good luck trying to mine an infinite amount of it. Biggest barrier to more gold is technology. There's a ton of it in space.
- sdbrown 6y ago
  I hadn't thought about that before! Very slick incentive structure there...like, build the tech to go to space and mine it and become enormously wealthy on Earth (ignoring the amount of wealth required to accomplish this).
- kgwgk 6y ago
  You don't need to go to space. Gold can be created from other elements. It's just a question of tweaking atoms after all.
PragmaticPulp 6y ago
The core Bitcoin holders don’t want more coins, so it won’t happen. Simple as that. The real elephant in the room is that new crypto currencies are being printed left and right. We may have a finite number of Bitcoin (in a couple decades) but one look at the list of crypto currencies will show that the number of crypto coins in general continues to explode at a phenomenal rate.
- isoskeles 6y ago
  Why do the core Bitcoin holders have much to do with the decision? The decision here would be made by the miners, right? They have a different set of incentives from people who hold BTC. Maybe I’m missing something, I don’t see how holders and miners have the same interests.
  - px43 6y ago
    First off, miners need to ensure that the coin they're mining retains value, so they need the network effect of the entire economy. No miner is going to make a decision that makes the underlying thing that they are mining worthless. Even if 80% of miners wanted something, if it was egregious enough, like a change in supply, then no one would go along with it. Ecommerce companies like Coinbase etc would just ignore the fork and keep going with the remaining 20% of miners whose heads are screwed on straight. Those 80% of rebel miners who are burning all that energy, and have all that sunk cost in hardware, would be stuck mining a nothing coin that no one wants, and would lose everything almost immediately. Remember, miners have sunk costs. They, more than anyone, need the coin to retain value. Their incentives are incredibly aligned with everyone else in the ecosystem.
  - entropea 6y ago
    Miners have never had any reason to change anything in Bitcoin and will not change anything to this day. They make profit just by doing nothing and have been for a decade. They've held Bitcoin back from being much better than it is almost solely.

Fjolsvith 6y ago

> All it takes to "print" more Bitcoins is for the majority of miners to agree to make a fork that will allow for more. And that will happen at one point. Why is this a bad thing? America's founders believed that the people could mint their own coins.

josephwegner 6y ago
It's not intrinsically a bad thing (some may hold that opinion, though). However, if you are investing in Bitcoin because it is similar to gold in that scarcity is a primary attribute, then the ability to mint new bitcoins is dangerous. I'd also posit that "because America does it" is a fairly weak argument for many of the claimed benefits of Bitcoin. Much of Bitcoin's charter is that it helps move away from government-controlled currency. If you think America's monetary system is the best option available, then Bitcoin likely is not your thing.

rawtxapp 6y ago

Nothing stops you from changing the 21M cap in the code, but you need majority of the network nodes to agree to the new rules (aka a hard fork), the miners can't willy nilly change the rules of the network. What you would have at that point isn't Bitcoin, it would be probably be called "Bitcoin infinite" or something, similar to "Bitcoin cash".

user-the-name 6y ago
You don't need the nodes to agree on anything. If they don't agree, they drop off the network, and form their own chain with little to no hashing power, that will stagnate and die in short order.
- Spivak 6y ago
  You need a majority of computing power on the network to agree to actually do this which is what the parent means.
  - user-the-name 6y ago
    No, that was the original claim. That you need the miners to agree. They are the ones that hold the computing power. The claim I responded to says that in addition to this, you also need the majority of the "nodes", which are just computers that do no work and just forward transactions. This is incorrect, you do not need their help. It is easier if you have it, but you do not need it.
    - PKop 6y ago
      >They are the ones that hold the computing power If they hold this power to dictate value to the market, why don't they do this right now and print infinite money for themselves? It's because they don't actually have this power.
      - user-the-name 6y ago
        They absolutely and obviously hold that power. It is just not in their interests at the moment to rock the boat.
    - rand49an 6y ago
      The nodes are what actually enforce the rules. If you send out a transaction with 25M coins in, nodes won't broadcast that transaction and it doesn't make it to the blockchain.
  - 6y ago

zulln 6y ago

> And that will happen at one point. Why?

user-the-name 6y ago
Probably because the fee market will turn out to be non-viable, and bitcoin would collapse without mining rewards.
mindcandy 6y ago
It has already happened dozens of times and no one noticed. Probably the only such fork that anyone here has heard of is Dogecoin. And, that one only took off as a collective running joke.

blhack 6y ago

And all it takes to "print" more gold is for a majority of people using gold to decide that lead painted yellow is, in actual fact, gold.

leetcrew 6y ago
I got some pyrite for sale, great deal at $1600/oz! don't miss your chance to get in on the ground floor.

PKop 6y ago

>All it takes Oh just that huh? The market wouldn't value that new fork on par with finite BTC, so those miners would be hurting themselves, and burning energy for a worth-less coin. This action is trivial to consider, so what makes you think it has bearing on BTC value? When these miners leave old network, hash power & difficulty go down so other miners who prefer finite protocol can come in to mine. What's the actual threat then?

thedudeabides5 6y ago
Actually this isn’t the only way. If financial intermediaries like Coinbase start extending credit or engaging in fractional reserve banking, then yes, you can “create more Bitcoin.” Just like how in the gold standard, you could still create more gold backed dollars by making a mortgage loan... Kind of funny how all these new monetary wizards miss out on this simple fact.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Aunche 6y ago
  This is a really dangerous way to create more Bitcoin. If the credit markets freeze, then the entire system collapses.
- G3rn0ti 6y ago
  That’s nonsense. Only miners can create new Bitcoin. What Coinbase could do is to issue a financial derivative backed by Bitcoin e.g. a “Coinbase Penny” representing a 1/1000th of Bitcoins. And then could go on issue more of those pennies than actually backed by Bitcoins. But it wouldn’t be cryptocurrency if it wouldn’t run on a blockchain. Of course, the “Coinbase Penny” could collapse if we people stopped trusting Coinbase. Bitcoin wouldn’t notice like the gold price does not care whether a single US dollar is still backed by 24.057 grams of silver like it originally did.
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    It would work just fine unless there's a run on it. So long as HODLers HODL, nobody would ever notice. That's the premise of the whole proof of keys business. (https://www.proofofkeys.com/ https://www.proofofkeys.com/)

cactus2093 6y ago

Honestly maybe it will fork, and maybe that will be a good change. We don’t exactly know how the dynamics of mining will play out in a post-block reward world, maybe it’s actually better to keep mining at the current block reward size indefinitely rather than decrease all the way to zero. Very slow fixed inflation is not necessarily that different than having a hard cap on supply. Gold is still being mined too. If it forked in a way that completely defeated the limited supply and led to rapid inflation then it would massively tank in value and miners would lose a lot of money. That’s a pretty good incentive for them not to destroy it. As far as bitcoin existential threats go, there are many of them - the energy cost, a 51% attack, so much concentration of mining in China, etc. Miners mutually colluding to destroy their own investments is not at the top of my list of worries.

elif 6y ago

Your theory is fantasy, and your conclusion that it is inevitable is hilarious. Please do a 2 minute read of the BCH wikipedia page and correct your comment.

uncletammy 6y ago
Just read the BCH wikipedia page. What does BCH have to do with increasing the total number of coins?

dools 6y ago

Bitcoin is nothing more than a blockchain ledger of who owns Bitcoin

bdamm 6y ago
Bitcoin definitely includes more than just the ledger. Without the miners, there would be no transactions, and without the intermediate processors, there would be no transaction intake. Without exchanges, there would be no value. Bitcoin is clearly a lot more than just the ledger.
- dools 6y ago
  What you described is just a blockchain implementation.

spamizbad 6y ago

> As for Gold, good luck trying to mine an infinite amount of it. Biggest barrier to more gold is technology. There's a ton of it in space.

sdbrown 6y ago
I hadn't thought about that before! Very slick incentive structure there...like, build the tech to go to space and mine it and become enormously wealthy on Earth (ignoring the amount of wealth required to accomplish this).
kgwgk 6y ago
You don't need to go to space. Gold can be created from other elements. It's just a question of tweaking atoms after all.

PragmaticPulp 6y ago

The core Bitcoin holders don’t want more coins, so it won’t happen. Simple as that. The real elephant in the room is that new crypto currencies are being printed left and right. We may have a finite number of Bitcoin (in a couple decades) but one look at the list of crypto currencies will show that the number of crypto coins in general continues to explode at a phenomenal rate.

isoskeles 6y ago
Why do the core Bitcoin holders have much to do with the decision? The decision here would be made by the miners, right? They have a different set of incentives from people who hold BTC. Maybe I’m missing something, I don’t see how holders and miners have the same interests.
- px43 6y ago
  First off, miners need to ensure that the coin they're mining retains value, so they need the network effect of the entire economy. No miner is going to make a decision that makes the underlying thing that they are mining worthless. Even if 80% of miners wanted something, if it was egregious enough, like a change in supply, then no one would go along with it. Ecommerce companies like Coinbase etc would just ignore the fork and keep going with the remaining 20% of miners whose heads are screwed on straight. Those 80% of rebel miners who are burning all that energy, and have all that sunk cost in hardware, would be stuck mining a nothing coin that no one wants, and would lose everything almost immediately. Remember, miners have sunk costs. They, more than anyone, need the coin to retain value. Their incentives are incredibly aligned with everyone else in the ecosystem.
- entropea 6y ago
  Miners have never had any reason to change anything in Bitcoin and will not change anything to this day. They make profit just by doing nothing and have been for a decade. They've held Bitcoin back from being much better than it is almost solely.