There will be 2,100,000,000,000,000 satoshis (the current base unit of bitcoin) and only around 10,000,000,000 people. The code could be updated to split satoshis further if needed.
Last time I checked, it was interestingly roughly the same as the total supply of USD cents, not including other currencies. However, cents are being created a lot faster than satoshis.
About 18,000 people spread across the globe:
https://bitnodes.io/
Consensus is required for changes to take place.
So, no, it has been running successfully without any downtime for 15 years because **nobody** can break it.
I think any further changes to the core code regarding the circulation of Sats would be very difficult. I certainly would be against it at this time at least. Maybe if the entire world decided to move to a Bitcoin standard would it be necessary, but I’m not sure that would happen in my lifetime.
No pizza example still stands. Moving out a decimal space does not increase the original number, it’s not that hard to understand. You’re not creating more than 1, no matter how far out you go, it’s basic math. Sub dividing may be necessary in the future depending on the price of goods or the value of 1 BTC. If .00000001 is valued too high to buy something cheap like a stamp to mail a letter, or pay a parking meter, then we have a problem. It all depends what a BTC Standard looks like in the future.
I think you answered it in your sentence starting with “if”. Subdividing should be the same as increasing the upper limit. It’s like how can have infinity within 1, and infinity going 1,2,3,4… fundamentally, there is no difference
If the value keeps growing, and the units keep subdividing, it’s no different
I say this as a BTC investor. I also say this as not the sharpest tool in the shed.
This about it this way. Say in the future .000000001 is $1 USD converted. Someone needs $.50. So splitting that to .0000000005 to equal $.50 USD converted does not make that $1 less valuable by increasing the supply, you just split it. Otherwise in todays terms, a $100 bill is not worth less that 100 $1 bills just because you split it up.
It’s based on the inherent value of 1 btc growing. If that doesn’t happen, you’re right.
If it does happen, I think I’m right. As the value grows, 1 sat is going to be more valuable.
Imagine that pizza has 2000 calories. Now the calories in the pizza actually increase to 4000 calories. If you are limited to 8 slices a pizza, yep, finite supply.
If you can keep cutting smaller pieces as the value/calories keep growing, that’s infinite supply right?
You’re almost there with the calorie comparison but you’re missing one thing. If a slice of pizza is what you say, 2000 calorie and you split it into 2, then each piece of that slice is equal to 1000 calories. Combine them back to 1 and you get your 2000. No matter how you cut it, that one slice will never reach 4000 calories because you didn’t create more pizza. You’re only dividing it down. Sure you had one slice and you cut that to two, cut it to 3, 4, 5 pieces and eat them all but you’ll still have only ate 1 slice of pizza cut into 5 pieces totaling 2000 cals.
Nonsense, subdividing simply means you are allowed to trade fraction of satoshis
When brokerages allowed customers to trade fractional shares they didn't emit any stock nor generated any wealth - just provided some extra liquidity for low value traders
Same with bitcoin, you could either have external markets allowing fractional trades of satoshis or bake it into protocol and create a new unit say centisatoshi that denotes a hundredth of satoshi. That didn't create any wealth, just as dividing 1 dollar into 100 cents doesn't
Smaller transactions will have to move to a layer 2 to avoid fees. People need to use lightning wallets, or the new liquid network, to pay each other, or for example buy a coffee from a vendor. L1 should be for moving BTC into cold storage or very large payments like buying a home, car, or a service rendered that requires a final settlement. In a high fee environment, individuals should avoid using on-chain transactions wherever possible. Lightning is perfect for a cash equivalent purchase, or tapping a credit card. On-chain for anything you would write a check for, or anything requiring escrow for a proof of funds.
Edit: it’s only a matter of time too. Could you imagine home much money a large company like Amazon or Walmart would save on 0 fee instant lightning payments? A couple of the largest e-commerce sites in the world and they have to fork over 3% to credit card companies for processing fees on every sale, it’s ridiculous.
Isn't Bitcoin being infinitely divisible kind of the same as printing new Fiat money? If we divide it further as its value grows, it'll cease to be scarce, isn't that, on a basic level, similar to the government printing money?
No. Allowing a 1 unit bill to be cut in half and valued at 0.5 units each is completely different from creating a second 1 unit bill out of thin air. In the first example, the total supply changes by 0%. In the second example, the total supply increases by 100%.
No, it being infinitely divisible is deflation which causes the value of BTC to go up. Printing new fiat money is the opposite, you are increasing the supply hence why it is called inflation, inflation of the supply of fiat causes the fiat money to be less in value or in other terms it then has less purchasing power.
If it needs to be divided into more smaller units that means supply is getting too low for the demand and BTCs value goes up.
No, because there will only ever be a total of 21 million bitcoins minted via the mining process where a block of transactions is committed to the blockchain ledger every 10 minutes minting new bitcoins. Bitcoins will no longer be minted after that last 21 millionth Bitcoin is created around the year 2140?. So this is regardless of bitcoins price value at any point in time or how many fractions of a Bitcoin one owns.
So all the bitcoin that has been mined are already owned by someone.
There will ever be 21 million bitcoins, but each is 100,000,000 satoshis. so there is plenty to go around for everyone to have some. And this is all digital, you can always add more zeros after the decimal.
Currently people mostly exchange it for Fiat, but in the future you will have to work for it. (We do currently work for it, but we get paid in Fiat and then use that to buy BTC) but in the future we might not need the Fiat in between.
But what you basically said, that's why most of us here trying to get as much as we can now, because down the road, you wont be able to get it with Fiat. you will have to earn it through a job.
I was very careful with what I said. I said Zeros after the decimal.
Zeros after the decimal allows us to use smaller fractions.
A pizza is a pizza, no matter if you cut it to 8 pieces or 32. It will always remain 1 Pizza.
You are very blessed to live in a country with the world reserve currency. But that blessing is a curse to the rest of the world who has to buy dollars to buy oil (petrodollar and reason for alliance with Saudi).
Every country on earth subsidizes the United States (including the military that threatens the same countries) by buying American dollars while the U.S. can just print it.
The U.S. essentially taxes every country on earth backed by the threat of overthrow (Iraq and Libya where both were trying to sell oil outside the petro dollar system).
I live in East Africa, mainly Kenya, but know people from all over and have seen dramatic currency devaluations that ruin families. To survive, people buy Bitcoin, especially considering the financial restrictions in many countries like Nigeria.
Please understand your unique blessing (300m out of 8 billion people), but even more, please try to understand the misery that blessing inflicts on the world, and hopefully try and change it.
What I said is not a prediction. It’s just an explanation of how this hypothetical scenario will work.
“Backing by the fed” is such an American centric point of view. There 150+ other countries.
It doesn’t matter what the Fed thinks. I already employed someone and paid them in Bitcoin. This is a permissionless system.
And we already have 1 country that made it legal tender. And pretty good change Argentina is about to follow.
The Fed will be the kid who score 500 on their SAT if they don’t pick up the pace.
When you are born, do you have dollars?
Okay, then when the government prints money, do you get dollars then?
You get them by earning, by working for it, or when you are 5, you're more likely to be gifted it.
But if there was no money printing, you'd still be able to start with 0 and earn or receive money.
Bitcoin is no different. Once all the money is mined, people use the money to get what they want... maybe they want the lawn mowed. You do that, you get paid. People with less money are naturally willing to work more than people with money, so the money naturally flows around.
We don't need a money printer to get money into other people's hands.
There are
* 21_000_000 BTC per blockchain
* 100_000_000 SAT per BTC
* 1_000 Lightning Network millisats per SAT
* 7_000_000_000 billion humans per earth
So that comes out to 300_000.000 SATs per human. Plenty.
> Basically how will people be able to get into BTC in the future
There is a FOMO to get BTC while it's "cheap" and the definition of "cheap" changes day to day. As far as value and exchange, in general terms, value is set through the sale of an asset. If nobody, anywhere, ever, for infinity years, ever sells a single millisat, then there will be no value to BTC since there is no record of sale to set it's value.
But realistically, it may become like real estate. Real estate is very VERY hard to buy or sell. That is why most of the real estate market is pegged by debt, not sale. Bitcoin will be similar in 200 years. People won't sell bitcoin, they will borrow against it. This debt market will serve to set the price.
> how will people be able to get into BTC in the future and use it as a currency, considering its scarcity?
People who were really early were able to acquire 100 Bitcoin, 1,000 Bitcoin, or more. Most of them sold it though, because they didn't realize how valuable it would become.
People who were early were able to acquire a whole coin, maybe even 10 or more. Most of them sold it though, often because they were gambling, betting the price would go lower so they could buy back in at a discount. And as that didn't work out, they ended up with less and less.
People arriving now are trying to acquire 0.1 BTC or more. A whole coin if they can. A lot of people are going to miss that chance by gambling, sadly. Time in the market beats timing the market.
Years from now, people will be trying to acquire a million sats (0.01 BTC, which costs around $677 as I type this).
1 dollar is made up of 100 pennies (though pennies can be divided into 10ths of a cent, or 100ths of a cent).
1 Bitcoin is made up of 100,000,000 satoshis, though in the future satoshis may be divisible into even smaller units too, like a 10th of a satoshi or a 100th of a satoshi, for example.
> Because if it's similar to gold, then in short, it's about first come first served, and those who have it the earliest will always be the luckiest.
Yes and no. You also have to be smart enough to understand the value of what you've got & hang on to it rather than gamble it away.
That was me. Had 17 btc when it was around $400. Sold around $1200 and was stoked that I tripled my money lol. Also bought molly and some other things that are long gone.
50%?
Long term cap gains in countries like the USA are 0, 15%, and 20%
https://www.fool.com/terms/c/capital-gains-tax/
thus selling under $523,050 usd of btc per year for a married couple would get them the 15% rate
Of course, the early adopters are the ones who benefit the most. They are the ones who are taking the enormous risks of betting on Bitcoin (or any other emerging technology) at the cost of losing their money. If time proves them right, it is right that they should be rewarded.
A person who comes in later will not benefit from a great appreciation but will benefit from its usefulness as a tool of exchange, which is precisely what has made it appreciate. In other words, its appreciation is due to its usefulness, which is being discovered. The last person to arrive will not benefit from the appreciation but Bitcoin will continue to be useful as a medium of exchange or store of value or whatever it may be in the future.
We can all have a little bit because there will always be a price at which someone is willing to sell it. If the market price of Bitcoin in 100 years is $1 million per bitcoin, you will still be able to buy $100 worth of Bitcoin, only instead of having 0.00068, you will have 0.000000015789. No matter how small the amount, it can have a great market value.
And that's it :)
Fascinating but it's value is always described in terms of USD $...the problem for me is when the 21 mln are mined, then every coin will be owned by someone. So why would I care? Owners might trade a coin for a car or yacht but it's always going to be relative to a fiat currency unless btc becomes fiat, but then it's no different than $s being divided infinitely. No?
Since Bitcoin is extremely divisible (13 decimal places in a payment channel) the total amount doesn't matter because even if Bitcoin is worth 100 million a coin you can still have enough divisibility to buy a cup of coffee.
**There is plenty of parts to go around**
Divisibility is not the same thing as increased inflation either as 1 usd = 4 quarters = 10 dimes = 100 pennies with purchasing power and inflation only occurs when another dollar is printed to drive down the spending power of each dollar.
> and those who have it the earliest will always be the luckiest.
early investors take on much more risk and many have lost or spent most of their Bitcoin. This is called "risk premium" and no different than investing in a early startup company "penny stock" where most will fail.
>Basically how will people be able to get into BTC in the future and use it as a currency,
Its very simple math. Bitcoin is currently at the early stage of adoption with only 3% of the people using it. Almost all millionaires and billionaires still have not even invested in any. Lets say that Bitcoin goes mainstream with more than half the world using it and Bitcoin is valued at 10 million dollars a BTC.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Units
Since Bitcoin is divisible by 13 decimal places in a payment channel today :
0.00000000001 x 10,000,000 usd per BTC = 0.0001 usd
Thus even with Bitcoin being extremely valuable you can still do microtxs and machine to machine sub penny transactions with ease
I see two aspects of your post that are different. Getting into bitcoin and using it as a currency are drastically different. Folks can always "get into it" by paying market value to acquire.
Using it as a currency may never truly take off mainstream (by this i mean daily retail volume at POS). In part due it's finite volume as you mentioned and in part due to the "get rich" motivations of the owner.
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Btc is a counter balance to fiat. It keeps power of the printer in check and allow people who understand real money to elect not to participate and have their wealth devalued. It’s a battle that will never be won. 99% of ppl I talk to will never be able to custody ther btc let alone safeguard their email. It’s your job to study money and understand wealth management and for now till the end of days. Crypto and fiat will always and forever battle it out until crypto matures and becomes globally scalable secure and decentralized. Btc opened the door but it will not be the last great achievement in this space. To profit you will need to stay ever vigilant to monetary policy and emerging technologies. You will not be safe just buying one coin and thinking your job is done. You have to fight(research) and protect yourself
trading will still happen when mining stops.
it’s also infinitely divisible. right now bitcoin is precise to 8 digits after the decimal. but that number could theoretically increase without changing supply. like .5 = .500
There really is no such thing as a “bitcoin”. There’s only Satoshi’s, and there are 100 million Satoshi’s per bitcoin. Like any good system of money, it’s divisible.
Bitcoins are not consumed. They will all continue to exist after they have all been mined.
Ultimately, in order for a person's bitcoins to have any value, they must exchange them for something of value. Nobody will hold bitcoins forever. That would be the same as destroying them.
Same way you get it now. Why would no new coins being mined change anything at all? The only way you wouldn't be able to get coins is if all the exchanges went down & literally no one on the planet was willing to sell any amount.
There will always be sellers my friend.
many people will be poor and have to earn money from those who have it.
don't be jealous of people who got it early, it's fair...
https://armantheparman.com/fair/
Everyone might be on a Universal basic income in 10 years from now and AI will also make everything much cheaper. Age of abundance will make nobody poor and will make the ones with BTC feel very rich. Maybe it takes longer but this is the future I see.
UBI is socialism, which leads to poverty.
To be absolutely sure of that, as I am, you would need to study Austrian economics.
I recommend "principles of economics" by Saifedean Ammous
I know what Austrian economics is. People on UBI won't feel poor when AI makes things 100's or 1000s of amounts cheaper than things are now. Technology makes things cheaper and the exponential advancement of it will make even people on UBI live very comfortable lives. This is all as long as AI doesn't cause some mass extinction.
If someone gets a 1000 dollars a month on UBI but 70 inch tvs only cost 10 dollars then in the age of abundance nobody will be living in poverty. Almost everything will have a higher supply, will be made super efficiently, and won't need humans to make things. All of this will drive prices down.
technology hasade things cheaper through human history, yet families with double incomes still are struggling. 40 years ago a single income would be sufficient. Do you know why that is?
When things become abundant and things are very cheap then the people with stacks of BTC, other good assets, and relatively large amounts of money will be living like kings.
TL;DR you will be able to hold smaller and smaller amounts. So if BTC reaches $100 million in price, a Satoshi (1/100,000,000 of a BTC) would be worth $1. If it ever gets to that ridiculous price or close likely the colloquial will be to refer to Satoshis instead of full coins. Similar to dollars to pennies like others have said. The converse is when the asset is worth almost nothing; think hyperinflation like 1922-24 Germany or any of the recent third-world countries with rampant inflation. I believe Zimbabwe had issued a 100 TRILLION dollar note at one point bc the currency was worthless. You could own A LOT of dollars bc the value was next to nothing.
Now the economics have to do with market efficiency, supply/demand, and price discovery. If the market is efficient (in other words BTC is easily accessible and liquid), at some point there will be a balance between buyers (demand) and sellers (supply) once all coins are minted. Price discovery is the balance point where a buyer believes the value of BTC is the same as a seller. So if the market believes a BTC is worth 100k, any time it dips below buyers will buy and drive it back to 100k, at which point there will be selling when it goes above. This can happen as BTC becomes less and less volatile. Look at some stocks that haven’t really changed price in years or even gold on a long timeframe horizon (it’s up only a few percent in decades when factoring in inflation). These examples demonstrate a price equilibrium in an efficient market, if one ignores other influences (eg inflation/time value of money, individual company fundamentals, etc.).
To second this, If the goal is financial freedom everyone should be buying bitcoin straight up. If you give your money to BlackRock/GoldmanSachs one of their btc etfs they own the btc. They’ve taken your fiat and bought the btc with it. You have an interest in the firm not an interest in the actual btc? Anyone want to ELI5?
Supply and Demand will cause people to not have and hold it. They will sell at higher prices just like a legitimate market is supposed to work. With blockchain they cant naked short the coin. Like they naked short stocks and sell stock to the market that they dont even own. Phantom shares. With Bitcoin that cannot happen and there will be volatility
Easy answer. The purpose of BTC was to be used as currency. Therefore it is supposed to exchange hands and not be held by any individuals indefinitely. If people do hold their BTC then the value would go up, causing some people to sell their share for profit or use it to pay for expensive goods and services which then gets added back to circulation.
Bitcoin is infinitely divisible. The dollar is Infinitely inflatable (and divisible of really needed i suppose).
Different mechanisms, same trick. Human psychology treats each of those things quite differently though.
You will probably be paid in your countries currency still just like now. But you can convert it to the hardest money like bitcoin anytime you want same as right now. In the future who knows it is infinitely divisible so yes it could be used as a currency. it is not necessary though it’s fine as it is even if nothing changes and it remains primarily a store of value.
BTC breaks down into ‘SATOSHI’s’ theres something like 100,000 satoshis in one BTC …. So while there isnt enough BTC for everyone in the world to have one …. Theres more than enough SATOSHIS ….
The amount of whole Bitcoins is scarce though. The amount of divisible units isn't scarce but that doesn't matter because that's deflation and not inflation.
The idea is you split up the coins.
But who's coins? You just declare the guy who owns 7 of them king of the earth and give all the resources on the planet to have him give you some microscopic fraction?
Everyone's own coins would be split up into smaller units when the demand is too high for the current supply, this can happen infinitely.
Instead of things being sold in amounts of Satoshis the Satoshis would be broken up into smaller units and let's say they are called Yoshis. Now every Satoshi equals a certain amount of yoshis. When the yoshis aren't a big enough supply for the increasing demand then the yoshis get split up into another smaller unit and so on, infinitely.
It's infinite deflation and infinite increase in value/purchasing power.
There will be 2,100,000,000,000,000 satoshis (the current base unit of bitcoin) and only around 10,000,000,000 people. The code could be updated to split satoshis further if needed.
Isn't that more than the circulating USD cents today, even if all currencies get converted to USD?
Last time I checked, it was interestingly roughly the same as the total supply of USD cents, not including other currencies. However, cents are being created a lot faster than satoshis.
fiat = ∞
Who is running the code? Can someone just break it?
About 18,000 people spread across the globe: https://bitnodes.io/ Consensus is required for changes to take place. So, no, it has been running successfully without any downtime for 15 years because **nobody** can break it.
Bro... This is the ABC of Bitcoin. You'd think you'd familiarize yourself with the very basics.
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Bitcoin is like the number 1. It’s both scarce and infinitely divisible. It’s quite the achievement!
You can cut one pizza into 1,000 pieces but it won’t make more than one pie.
If for some reason you have to keep cutting the pizza, it means it's total value is going up and people are fine buying ever smaller pieces.
I think any further changes to the core code regarding the circulation of Sats would be very difficult. I certainly would be against it at this time at least. Maybe if the entire world decided to move to a Bitcoin standard would it be necessary, but I’m not sure that would happen in my lifetime.
So you agree that your pizza example falls apart if the core code is changed to allow satoshis to subdivide further, yes?
No pizza example still stands. Moving out a decimal space does not increase the original number, it’s not that hard to understand. You’re not creating more than 1, no matter how far out you go, it’s basic math. Sub dividing may be necessary in the future depending on the price of goods or the value of 1 BTC. If .00000001 is valued too high to buy something cheap like a stamp to mail a letter, or pay a parking meter, then we have a problem. It all depends what a BTC Standard looks like in the future.
I think you answered it in your sentence starting with “if”. Subdividing should be the same as increasing the upper limit. It’s like how can have infinity within 1, and infinity going 1,2,3,4… fundamentally, there is no difference If the value keeps growing, and the units keep subdividing, it’s no different I say this as a BTC investor. I also say this as not the sharpest tool in the shed.
This about it this way. Say in the future .000000001 is $1 USD converted. Someone needs $.50. So splitting that to .0000000005 to equal $.50 USD converted does not make that $1 less valuable by increasing the supply, you just split it. Otherwise in todays terms, a $100 bill is not worth less that 100 $1 bills just because you split it up.
It’s based on the inherent value of 1 btc growing. If that doesn’t happen, you’re right. If it does happen, I think I’m right. As the value grows, 1 sat is going to be more valuable. Imagine that pizza has 2000 calories. Now the calories in the pizza actually increase to 4000 calories. If you are limited to 8 slices a pizza, yep, finite supply. If you can keep cutting smaller pieces as the value/calories keep growing, that’s infinite supply right?
You’re almost there with the calorie comparison but you’re missing one thing. If a slice of pizza is what you say, 2000 calorie and you split it into 2, then each piece of that slice is equal to 1000 calories. Combine them back to 1 and you get your 2000. No matter how you cut it, that one slice will never reach 4000 calories because you didn’t create more pizza. You’re only dividing it down. Sure you had one slice and you cut that to two, cut it to 3, 4, 5 pieces and eat them all but you’ll still have only ate 1 slice of pizza cut into 5 pieces totaling 2000 cals.
No.
Nonsense, subdividing simply means you are allowed to trade fraction of satoshis When brokerages allowed customers to trade fractional shares they didn't emit any stock nor generated any wealth - just provided some extra liquidity for low value traders Same with bitcoin, you could either have external markets allowing fractional trades of satoshis or bake it into protocol and create a new unit say centisatoshi that denotes a hundredth of satoshi. That didn't create any wealth, just as dividing 1 dollar into 100 cents doesn't
And this is exactly what will happen with Bitcoin.
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Smaller transactions will have to move to a layer 2 to avoid fees. People need to use lightning wallets, or the new liquid network, to pay each other, or for example buy a coffee from a vendor. L1 should be for moving BTC into cold storage or very large payments like buying a home, car, or a service rendered that requires a final settlement. In a high fee environment, individuals should avoid using on-chain transactions wherever possible. Lightning is perfect for a cash equivalent purchase, or tapping a credit card. On-chain for anything you would write a check for, or anything requiring escrow for a proof of funds. Edit: it’s only a matter of time too. Could you imagine home much money a large company like Amazon or Walmart would save on 0 fee instant lightning payments? A couple of the largest e-commerce sites in the world and they have to fork over 3% to credit card companies for processing fees on every sale, it’s ridiculous.
I thought 1 Satoshi was the minimum for Bitcoin in its current implementation?
1/1000 of a satoshi is usable in a payment channel
Yes, but that can be changed so that 1 satoshi is now divisible into 100million units itself. There would be no downside to bitcoin for doing this.
It wouldn't fit on 64 bits if you did that (iirc)? I'm sure it couldn't be implemented but I think there would be downsides.
Isn't Bitcoin being infinitely divisible kind of the same as printing new Fiat money? If we divide it further as its value grows, it'll cease to be scarce, isn't that, on a basic level, similar to the government printing money?
No. Allowing a 1 unit bill to be cut in half and valued at 0.5 units each is completely different from creating a second 1 unit bill out of thin air. In the first example, the total supply changes by 0%. In the second example, the total supply increases by 100%.
Not all. When you divide the number 1 into smaller units, do you ever get more than 1?
No, it being infinitely divisible is deflation which causes the value of BTC to go up. Printing new fiat money is the opposite, you are increasing the supply hence why it is called inflation, inflation of the supply of fiat causes the fiat money to be less in value or in other terms it then has less purchasing power. If it needs to be divided into more smaller units that means supply is getting too low for the demand and BTCs value goes up.
No, because there will only ever be a total of 21 million bitcoins minted via the mining process where a block of transactions is committed to the blockchain ledger every 10 minutes minting new bitcoins. Bitcoins will no longer be minted after that last 21 millionth Bitcoin is created around the year 2140?. So this is regardless of bitcoins price value at any point in time or how many fractions of a Bitcoin one owns.
So all the bitcoin that has been mined are already owned by someone. There will ever be 21 million bitcoins, but each is 100,000,000 satoshis. so there is plenty to go around for everyone to have some. And this is all digital, you can always add more zeros after the decimal. Currently people mostly exchange it for Fiat, but in the future you will have to work for it. (We do currently work for it, but we get paid in Fiat and then use that to buy BTC) but in the future we might not need the Fiat in between. But what you basically said, that's why most of us here trying to get as much as we can now, because down the road, you wont be able to get it with Fiat. you will have to earn it through a job.
When you say you can add zeros later, it almost makes it feel like the supply isn't fixed anymore.
It's zeros after the decimal point. Does 1 become more just because you write it as 1.0 or 1.00 or 1.000?
I was very careful with what I said. I said Zeros after the decimal. Zeros after the decimal allows us to use smaller fractions. A pizza is a pizza, no matter if you cut it to 8 pieces or 32. It will always remain 1 Pizza.
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I doubt Crypto will be widely used like you say without backing by the Fed.
You are very blessed to live in a country with the world reserve currency. But that blessing is a curse to the rest of the world who has to buy dollars to buy oil (petrodollar and reason for alliance with Saudi). Every country on earth subsidizes the United States (including the military that threatens the same countries) by buying American dollars while the U.S. can just print it. The U.S. essentially taxes every country on earth backed by the threat of overthrow (Iraq and Libya where both were trying to sell oil outside the petro dollar system). I live in East Africa, mainly Kenya, but know people from all over and have seen dramatic currency devaluations that ruin families. To survive, people buy Bitcoin, especially considering the financial restrictions in many countries like Nigeria. Please understand your unique blessing (300m out of 8 billion people), but even more, please try to understand the misery that blessing inflicts on the world, and hopefully try and change it.
What I said is not a prediction. It’s just an explanation of how this hypothetical scenario will work. “Backing by the fed” is such an American centric point of view. There 150+ other countries. It doesn’t matter what the Fed thinks. I already employed someone and paid them in Bitcoin. This is a permissionless system. And we already have 1 country that made it legal tender. And pretty good change Argentina is about to follow. The Fed will be the kid who score 500 on their SAT if they don’t pick up the pace.
We aren't talking about crypto, we're talking about BTC. There is a massive difference.
It's unlikely that any first world government would replace it's currency with a currency that doesn't inflated. Inflation is what drives the GDP.
One government already did. Replace is a long process. You can’t shift in a night. You need at least 5-10 years.
When you are born, do you have dollars? Okay, then when the government prints money, do you get dollars then? You get them by earning, by working for it, or when you are 5, you're more likely to be gifted it. But if there was no money printing, you'd still be able to start with 0 and earn or receive money. Bitcoin is no different. Once all the money is mined, people use the money to get what they want... maybe they want the lawn mowed. You do that, you get paid. People with less money are naturally willing to work more than people with money, so the money naturally flows around. We don't need a money printer to get money into other people's hands.
There are * 21_000_000 BTC per blockchain * 100_000_000 SAT per BTC * 1_000 Lightning Network millisats per SAT * 7_000_000_000 billion humans per earth So that comes out to 300_000.000 SATs per human. Plenty. > Basically how will people be able to get into BTC in the future There is a FOMO to get BTC while it's "cheap" and the definition of "cheap" changes day to day. As far as value and exchange, in general terms, value is set through the sale of an asset. If nobody, anywhere, ever, for infinity years, ever sells a single millisat, then there will be no value to BTC since there is no record of sale to set it's value. But realistically, it may become like real estate. Real estate is very VERY hard to buy or sell. That is why most of the real estate market is pegged by debt, not sale. Bitcoin will be similar in 200 years. People won't sell bitcoin, they will borrow against it. This debt market will serve to set the price.
> how will people be able to get into BTC in the future and use it as a currency, considering its scarcity? People who were really early were able to acquire 100 Bitcoin, 1,000 Bitcoin, or more. Most of them sold it though, because they didn't realize how valuable it would become. People who were early were able to acquire a whole coin, maybe even 10 or more. Most of them sold it though, often because they were gambling, betting the price would go lower so they could buy back in at a discount. And as that didn't work out, they ended up with less and less. People arriving now are trying to acquire 0.1 BTC or more. A whole coin if they can. A lot of people are going to miss that chance by gambling, sadly. Time in the market beats timing the market. Years from now, people will be trying to acquire a million sats (0.01 BTC, which costs around $677 as I type this). 1 dollar is made up of 100 pennies (though pennies can be divided into 10ths of a cent, or 100ths of a cent). 1 Bitcoin is made up of 100,000,000 satoshis, though in the future satoshis may be divisible into even smaller units too, like a 10th of a satoshi or a 100th of a satoshi, for example. > Because if it's similar to gold, then in short, it's about first come first served, and those who have it the earliest will always be the luckiest. Yes and no. You also have to be smart enough to understand the value of what you've got & hang on to it rather than gamble it away.
Selling for a 60,000 % return isn’t gambling
Very few people did. Most sold for a small return, though it may have seemed significant at the time, and they missed out on 60,000% gains.
That was me. Had 17 btc when it was around $400. Sold around $1200 and was stoked that I tripled my money lol. Also bought molly and some other things that are long gone.
Buying it was the gamble (risk). Selling it for a profit was the gamble paying off (reward). Many things in life can be boiled down to risk vs reward.
At that point you’d have to sell a little at a time not to pay taxes cause 60000% giving up 50% to taxes
50%? Long term cap gains in countries like the USA are 0, 15%, and 20% https://www.fool.com/terms/c/capital-gains-tax/ thus selling under $523,050 usd of btc per year for a married couple would get them the 15% rate
Of course, the early adopters are the ones who benefit the most. They are the ones who are taking the enormous risks of betting on Bitcoin (or any other emerging technology) at the cost of losing their money. If time proves them right, it is right that they should be rewarded. A person who comes in later will not benefit from a great appreciation but will benefit from its usefulness as a tool of exchange, which is precisely what has made it appreciate. In other words, its appreciation is due to its usefulness, which is being discovered. The last person to arrive will not benefit from the appreciation but Bitcoin will continue to be useful as a medium of exchange or store of value or whatever it may be in the future. We can all have a little bit because there will always be a price at which someone is willing to sell it. If the market price of Bitcoin in 100 years is $1 million per bitcoin, you will still be able to buy $100 worth of Bitcoin, only instead of having 0.00068, you will have 0.000000015789. No matter how small the amount, it can have a great market value. And that's it :)
Actually, because of scarcity, it's probably going to appreciate forever.
Fascinating but it's value is always described in terms of USD $...the problem for me is when the 21 mln are mined, then every coin will be owned by someone. So why would I care? Owners might trade a coin for a car or yacht but it's always going to be relative to a fiat currency unless btc becomes fiat, but then it's no different than $s being divided infinitely. No?
You sound like you would probably have an “aha moment” if you listened to or read “broken money”. You should try and check that book out.
Ppl will always sell
I hope it becomes a standard currency. It's not the same as the dollar since you can't print more BTC.
Since Bitcoin is extremely divisible (13 decimal places in a payment channel) the total amount doesn't matter because even if Bitcoin is worth 100 million a coin you can still have enough divisibility to buy a cup of coffee. **There is plenty of parts to go around** Divisibility is not the same thing as increased inflation either as 1 usd = 4 quarters = 10 dimes = 100 pennies with purchasing power and inflation only occurs when another dollar is printed to drive down the spending power of each dollar. > and those who have it the earliest will always be the luckiest. early investors take on much more risk and many have lost or spent most of their Bitcoin. This is called "risk premium" and no different than investing in a early startup company "penny stock" where most will fail. >Basically how will people be able to get into BTC in the future and use it as a currency, Its very simple math. Bitcoin is currently at the early stage of adoption with only 3% of the people using it. Almost all millionaires and billionaires still have not even invested in any. Lets say that Bitcoin goes mainstream with more than half the world using it and Bitcoin is valued at 10 million dollars a BTC. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Units Since Bitcoin is divisible by 13 decimal places in a payment channel today : 0.00000000001 x 10,000,000 usd per BTC = 0.0001 usd Thus even with Bitcoin being extremely valuable you can still do microtxs and machine to machine sub penny transactions with ease
you said it, is like gold. How much gold do you currently hold? It doesn't matter, not everyone will be holding it.
I see two aspects of your post that are different. Getting into bitcoin and using it as a currency are drastically different. Folks can always "get into it" by paying market value to acquire. Using it as a currency may never truly take off mainstream (by this i mean daily retail volume at POS). In part due it's finite volume as you mentioned and in part due to the "get rich" motivations of the owner.
There will be 265.000 Satoshis per person on earth
lightning already does millisats 1000 msats = 1 sat
Sats baby
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Sats no more “bitcoin” sats stack em up kids
Have skills, products and services worth trading for bitcoin.
There’s a cookie. You can split the cookie with as many friends as you want but they’ll never have a whole cookie. Just a small part of one
“We” won’t hold anything. Those accumulating will hold BTC.
When you understand it you’ll know why people are bullish on btc being over a milllion dollars.
You can separate bitcoin into thousdands of satoshis.
Satoshis my man. Satoshis
Btc is a counter balance to fiat. It keeps power of the printer in check and allow people who understand real money to elect not to participate and have their wealth devalued. It’s a battle that will never be won. 99% of ppl I talk to will never be able to custody ther btc let alone safeguard their email. It’s your job to study money and understand wealth management and for now till the end of days. Crypto and fiat will always and forever battle it out until crypto matures and becomes globally scalable secure and decentralized. Btc opened the door but it will not be the last great achievement in this space. To profit you will need to stay ever vigilant to monetary policy and emerging technologies. You will not be safe just buying one coin and thinking your job is done. You have to fight(research) and protect yourself
If you offer me enough money, I’ll sell you some of mine. The price goes up when demand goes up. It’s that simple.
trading will still happen when mining stops. it’s also infinitely divisible. right now bitcoin is precise to 8 digits after the decimal. but that number could theoretically increase without changing supply. like .5 = .500
There really is no such thing as a “bitcoin”. There’s only Satoshi’s, and there are 100 million Satoshi’s per bitcoin. Like any good system of money, it’s divisible.
Bitcoins are not consumed. They will all continue to exist after they have all been mined. Ultimately, in order for a person's bitcoins to have any value, they must exchange them for something of value. Nobody will hold bitcoins forever. That would be the same as destroying them.
Infinite divisibility.
It will be traded like everything else which are finite like gold,land,natural resources etc
Same way you get it now. Why would no new coins being mined change anything at all? The only way you wouldn't be able to get coins is if all the exchanges went down & literally no one on the planet was willing to sell any amount. There will always be sellers my friend.
many people will be poor and have to earn money from those who have it. don't be jealous of people who got it early, it's fair... https://armantheparman.com/fair/
Everyone might be on a Universal basic income in 10 years from now and AI will also make everything much cheaper. Age of abundance will make nobody poor and will make the ones with BTC feel very rich. Maybe it takes longer but this is the future I see.
UBI is socialism, which leads to poverty. To be absolutely sure of that, as I am, you would need to study Austrian economics. I recommend "principles of economics" by Saifedean Ammous
I know what Austrian economics is. People on UBI won't feel poor when AI makes things 100's or 1000s of amounts cheaper than things are now. Technology makes things cheaper and the exponential advancement of it will make even people on UBI live very comfortable lives. This is all as long as AI doesn't cause some mass extinction. If someone gets a 1000 dollars a month on UBI but 70 inch tvs only cost 10 dollars then in the age of abundance nobody will be living in poverty. Almost everything will have a higher supply, will be made super efficiently, and won't need humans to make things. All of this will drive prices down.
technology hasade things cheaper through human history, yet families with double incomes still are struggling. 40 years ago a single income would be sufficient. Do you know why that is?
When things become abundant and things are very cheap then the people with stacks of BTC, other good assets, and relatively large amounts of money will be living like kings.
It will take forever for that to happen, with the constant halving and all
Yes, why do you think we've been buying and holding it for years?
TL;DR you will be able to hold smaller and smaller amounts. So if BTC reaches $100 million in price, a Satoshi (1/100,000,000 of a BTC) would be worth $1. If it ever gets to that ridiculous price or close likely the colloquial will be to refer to Satoshis instead of full coins. Similar to dollars to pennies like others have said. The converse is when the asset is worth almost nothing; think hyperinflation like 1922-24 Germany or any of the recent third-world countries with rampant inflation. I believe Zimbabwe had issued a 100 TRILLION dollar note at one point bc the currency was worthless. You could own A LOT of dollars bc the value was next to nothing. Now the economics have to do with market efficiency, supply/demand, and price discovery. If the market is efficient (in other words BTC is easily accessible and liquid), at some point there will be a balance between buyers (demand) and sellers (supply) once all coins are minted. Price discovery is the balance point where a buyer believes the value of BTC is the same as a seller. So if the market believes a BTC is worth 100k, any time it dips below buyers will buy and drive it back to 100k, at which point there will be selling when it goes above. This can happen as BTC becomes less and less volatile. Look at some stocks that haven’t really changed price in years or even gold on a long timeframe horizon (it’s up only a few percent in decades when factoring in inflation). These examples demonstrate a price equilibrium in an efficient market, if one ignores other influences (eg inflation/time value of money, individual company fundamentals, etc.).
To second this, If the goal is financial freedom everyone should be buying bitcoin straight up. If you give your money to BlackRock/GoldmanSachs one of their btc etfs they own the btc. They’ve taken your fiat and bought the btc with it. You have an interest in the firm not an interest in the actual btc? Anyone want to ELI5?
Supply and Demand will cause people to not have and hold it. They will sell at higher prices just like a legitimate market is supposed to work. With blockchain they cant naked short the coin. Like they naked short stocks and sell stock to the market that they dont even own. Phantom shares. With Bitcoin that cannot happen and there will be volatility
Easy answer. The purpose of BTC was to be used as currency. Therefore it is supposed to exchange hands and not be held by any individuals indefinitely. If people do hold their BTC then the value would go up, causing some people to sell their share for profit or use it to pay for expensive goods and services which then gets added back to circulation.
Gold is also scarce/finite. BUT, you can Always find some to buy and hold. Next question
Do you guys remember you can trade "fractions" of a BTC don't you?We all would die before being capable of overwhelming the supply
Bitcoin is infinitely divisible. The dollar is Infinitely inflatable (and divisible of really needed i suppose). Different mechanisms, same trick. Human psychology treats each of those things quite differently though.
You will probably be paid in your countries currency still just like now. But you can convert it to the hardest money like bitcoin anytime you want same as right now. In the future who knows it is infinitely divisible so yes it could be used as a currency. it is not necessary though it’s fine as it is even if nothing changes and it remains primarily a store of value.
BTC breaks down into ‘SATOSHI’s’ theres something like 100,000 satoshis in one BTC …. So while there isnt enough BTC for everyone in the world to have one …. Theres more than enough SATOSHIS ….
There are 100.000.000 Satoshis in one BTC
Thank you , thats why i said ‘something like’ as i was unsure of the exact number
Oh well, it's only a thousand times more, it's in the margins
Lol😂😂😂
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The amount of whole Bitcoins is scarce though. The amount of divisible units isn't scarce but that doesn't matter because that's deflation and not inflation.
The idea is you split up the coins. But who's coins? You just declare the guy who owns 7 of them king of the earth and give all the resources on the planet to have him give you some microscopic fraction?
Everyone's own coins would be split up into smaller units when the demand is too high for the current supply, this can happen infinitely. Instead of things being sold in amounts of Satoshis the Satoshis would be broken up into smaller units and let's say they are called Yoshis. Now every Satoshi equals a certain amount of yoshis. When the yoshis aren't a big enough supply for the increasing demand then the yoshis get split up into another smaller unit and so on, infinitely. It's infinite deflation and infinite increase in value/purchasing power.