[sgeisler]

> You could periodically increase the block size

It's unclear if that would solve the problem. If BTC becomes a global store of value (which it seems to be in the process of), the avg. transaction value goes up and with it the fees that can potentially be paid. The block size cap ensures that there is a fee market if there's enough demand for transactions, so that not everyone simply pays the minimum fee. If you increase the cap this market might disappear and leave miners with _less_ income.

> The cap of 21 million bitcoin isn't a fundamental unit, it can be changed if a majority of the mining pool decides to.

No.

1. It is one of _the_ fundamental selling points of BTC. 2. A miner majority isn't sufficient to force such changes, the mined blocks would simply be invalid for any validating client. So you need to get users on board too.

I think the solution will be L2/L3 transactions for payments and L1 transactions for settlement and large transfers, so that each L1 (=on the blockchain) transaction has enough economic value to afford high fees.

[jki275]

If the miners decided to change, it would change. They control enough of the chain that it wouldn’t matter. Not many people run full nodes.

[kmkemp]

It seems likely to me that the cap will just be expanded at some point, but that is likely tens of years away and its expansion will likely be equal to or less than the replacement value of lost coins.

[jki275]

Bitcoin? Sure, you can make any number of additional forks of btc with a different cap -- hell, dogecoin is a fork of bitcoin with no cap at all.

But it won't be bitcoin.