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Comment by yen223 | Hacker News Reader

> I would contend that though you are at the tail end of the curve that doesn't need an intermediary

If you want to do away with intermediaries, what Bitcoin needs is a large ecosystem, such that my BTC never needs to be converted to USD to be useful - I want to be able to be paid in BTC, then to be able to exchange that same BTC for food. The food vendor in turn needs to be able to exchange that BTC for, say, a car.

For that to happen, Bitcoin needs a critical mass of adopters. Unfortunately, the Bitcoin feature of capping the number of total BTCs in circulation means that the number of BTC users will always be limited.

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the number of BTC users will always be limited

Mmh.. mathematically true, but practically? First consider that block awards will continue being generated until roughly the year 2100 and probably up to another half decade on top of that.

Empires have crumbled in less time..

Secondly, remember that 1BTC is divisible down to 8 decimal places. There's no reason that .00000001BTC (aka 1 Satoshi) couldn't become the base unit of transaction.

If this were to happen (say with a client update), that would mean, once the block awards cease generating in a hundred years or so, and all 24,000,000 BTC are mined, that would mean there's (24M * 10^8) 24 quintillion individual units of currency in the world.

There will never be even 21 million of BTC. Pretty close to 21M, but it won't get there. Also, 99,99% of block rewards will be distributed before 2040. The next 60 years till 2100 blocks will only reward a few satoshis each, except for transaction fees.

There will never be even 21 million of BTC.

Why not? As I understand the algorithm, the decay rate of block awards is pretty much a constant, understood thing.

Bitcoins are very divisible. As more and more people use Bitcoins, the coins become worth more and people can simply trade smaller and smaller pieces of them. The limited supply doesn't limit the number of users.

They do have a division limit though. One satoshi is only four orders of magnitude smaller than a penny (US).

EDIT: answered my own question

The blockchain describes stakes in a conceptual ledger. The current limitations on divisibility are easy to change in the future. 21 million is arbitrary and meaningless.

> The current limitations on divisibility are easy to change in the future.

Not true.

> 21 million is arbitrary and meaningless.

Also not true.

Changing either of those things requires a hard fork of the network and a majority consensus among the miners globally which is in no way "easy to do".

It's easy to do if it will increase miner wealth, which a more useful currency will do.

Disagree with that all you want. My point is that it's possible. Speculating about the likelihood of it succeeding doesn't seem worthwhile to me.

Call it easy all you like, you're still incorrect.

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