As a Bitcoiner, I get a constant barrage of hate and questions for my advocating for the technology and the possibilities it can bring; as someone who doesn’t like to lose an argument, it’s forced me to do a lot of research. The greatest rabbit holes have often been the ones I’ve been sent down by questions I cannot answer.
Recently I was asked about well if Bitcoin has a hard cap of 21 million coins, how will we use it once the supply has been exhausted, and I gave it some thought and provided a really shitty answer on the fly.
The fact that the last Bitcoin will be mined in 2140 means all of us will be dead. Alternatively, we could be frozen to be reanimated later or downloaded into an AI, but that’s a story for another day. Very few humans living today will have to deal with the so-called problem of the final Bitcoin.
I personally wasn’t happy with that answer because it was very dismissive and kind of a fiat mindset answer, that oh well, we’re dead the debt must be handled by the living sort of answer to problems.
Bitcoin is a game of accumulation
I think of myself as someone as further down the Bitcoin rabbit hole than the average user, not to stroke my own ego, but I don’t care about the fiat price of Bitcoin. To me, the price of Bitcoin is always the same 1 Bitcoin is one Bitcoin.
I don’t see Bitcoin as volatile I see the primary tool measurement we pair it with is volatile. Bitcoin isn’t going up and down in price in my mind. In my mind, fiat is going up and down in purchasing power in relation to Bitcoin.
As a HODL’r, my goal is not to try and trade the item but to accumulate as much of it as possible. The large percentage of the 21 million I can get, the happier I am. As more people accumulate the coin, as more people lose the coin, the availability that actually creates the market of liquid Bitcoin is put under continuous pressure.
As that happens, it takes more and more fiat to tempt a Bitcoin holder to sell. If all of us have the incentive to save it, how will other people get hold of it if we are to use it as a medium of exchange one day?
Image source: – memegenerator.net
Debasement, but not debasement
Bitcoin is starting to reach the point where fewer and fewer people will be able to own a full 1. So they will have to settle for Satoshis instead. As Bitcoin increases in price, lets, say the 200k, 500k and even the 1 million USD mark, that means it’s well within the 10 to 20 million mark in various currencies; the Satoshi becomes more valuable and practical.
Since 10 million satoshis make up 1 Bitcoin, it allows for far more people to won satoshis and the market will not be based on 1 Bitcoin but on the value of a satoshi.
Eventually, we could get to a point where the Satoshi is so valuable that it isn’t easily divisible enough to make purchases. If that does get to such a point, we can move fork the code to increase the decimal points and start using mili satoshis instead.
This doesn’t devalue the position of all holders in fact; it just allows us to unlock the value within a satoshi. So in that regard, we cannot run out of Bitcoin to be used by consumers.
Yet, it still drives the incentive to keep stacking Bitcoin for savers.
