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by newswasboring 1960 days ago
> Since the supply is known, one has to estimate the demand to estimate its price.

Is there any other asset we can make this statement about? That supply is 100% known and cannot change in future?

4 comments

The supply isn't really known. As of this older 2020 article [0], something like half of the total number of (future) Bitcoins haven't moved in at least a year. I've seen figures like 2/3 from later in 2020. Some fraction of those probably represent lost keys, and hence will never move again absent a consensus change. Another fraction represent people who are just sitting on the coins waiting for a chance to sell. But we don't know what the fractions are! These are big uncertainties.

[0] https://www.coindesk.com/10m-bitcoins-havent-moved-in-more-t...

Lost and burned coins are included in the notion of circulating supply, which is simply the sum of all historical block subsidies.
It’s not 100%. If >= 50% of the network is in agreement we can make more bitcoins, right? The limit is set in code. But that code can be altered.

Let me know if I’m wrong

10%, 50%, 80% doesn't matter. Any node who wants to change Bitcoin's code and rules is free to do so.

It just creates an additional coin and it already has happened dozen of times (Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin SV, Bitcoin ABC, Bitcoin Cash, ...). Some of them claim to be "the real Bitcoin" but market consensus seems to disagree: All of them are either dead or valued at <1/100 of Bitcoin.

As long as you run your own node you define for yourself what Bitcoin is.

You are wrong. > 50% of mining can only censor transaction.

Changing the fixed cap would break consensus, so it can only be done with an overwhelming majority not only of miners, but also users, exchanges and merchants. (otherwise miners would mine an empty chain).

Technically yes it is possible. Very, very unlikely though.
But who knows what we'll all be thinking when 2140 arrives?
Block reward is now 6.25 btc, and fees reward is about 1.5 btc.

Every 4 years block reward halves, so in the next two halving block reward will be much less than fee reward, making it more and more irrelevant.

The 2140 is the date where it reaches 0, but it will be completely irrelevant in 12 years (3 more halving cycles).

But doesn't the value of BTC go up as the reward halves? So "3 more halving cycles" should be counteracted by each coin being 8 times more valuable, no? I could very well be wrong, but that's what seems intuitive to me (I don't follow crypto very closely).
Will that stop you from making a small allocation into Bitcoin? Any and all risks to bitcoin can be mitigated by portfolio sizing.
I'm not sure, besides all the other cryptocurrencies that have the same property.
Maybe Helium?