Last week, some commotion started in the Bitcoin scene around the latest video published by Blackrock (Decrypt article). Although a bit hidden, Blackrock expresses that the max supply of 21 Million Bitcoin is not guaranteed and may be subject to change. Those who know Bitcoin sufficiently enough, know this topic is not new.
When I mentioned this to a crypto investor the other day, he responded: "When that happens, that marks the end of Bitcoin!". He may be right, but he may also not be.
The chances such changes to Bitcoin will be made, increase with institutions of any kind, taking larger positions in BTC. Sure, they are not mining, hence they will not have direct control in the consensus governance of the blockchain itself, but they are named accounts. As are the miners (pools, data centres); Named account as well.
Named accounts can easily create plans together out-of-sight-of-everyone, plans in their favour.
What do I mean by 'Named Accounts': these are named individuals, companies, institutions, governments of which contact details are available.
Interestingly, the three guys running the BTC podcast I so much love (Satoshi Radio, a Dutch podcast talking about Bitcoin and crypto in general), have one guy who is a true original Bitcoin guy. Not necessarily he is a BTC maxi, but someone who believes in the original intend of Bitcoin. He is not against institutions stepping in persé, but he realises Bitcoin isn't exactly what Satoshi meant with his whitepaper. Almost every week he discusses this topic in one or the other way.
Out of the three hosts, he is also the guy who experiments the most in crypto space. Like he also went down the rabbit hole of pumpfun and such like that. Love that, since that reflects so much with what I do; Experiment with much of what is around in crypto space.
Another interesting thing he did, he launched a Bitcoin mining pool last summer (with a different setup to a normal pool; a block mined by a miner in the pool receives the entire block rewards, ie the rewards are not split across all miners in the pool) as part of a one time only project to get the podcast community to get into BTC mining, using BitAxe hardware (approx 200$ costs to buy). Within days he got 350 orders and suddenly the pool became of a size that waved around in the Bitcoin world. Had to laugh, not against him but in favour of him. How a Dutch podcast host (addressing only the people who master the Dutch language) running now for 5 years or so, with a few hundred to thousand regular listeners, results in many eyes around the world pointing at his initiative. An initiative launched by a single who did this out of love for Bitcoin and his strong belief for the everyday person to contribute to mining to counter the big ass, more or less centralised, setup of Bitcoin mining across the board.
Honestly, I agree with him!
Best would be millions of people, perhaps even a billion people will run a BTC miner. The best setup not only for Bitcoin network but for any other blockchain. Best is to distribute mining more or less evenly across millions to billions of people. Anything needs to be done, to make such happen. Preferably even without needing a pool to still have chances to receive same benefits as the bigger miners get. Since all this increases the certainty, bad actors of any kind are not able to screw around with the foundation of a blockchain (and its associated money).
Bitcoin is getting (or already is) in the danger zone imho, even though many arguments can be made, nobody will act abusive because it may cost them dearly. But nothing is guaranteed. Like, when the majority of bitcoin holders want changes, they may be able to convince each other and subsequently push through the changes they want and hold the floor in case the other group start to exit. The more 2%, 3%, 4%, 5% total supply holders around, the more centralised mining and even data centres are, the higher the chance of 'centralised' control over the blockchain and the Bitcoin currency itself.
The more Michael Sailor's, Salvador's, Butan's, Trumps/USA reserve's are favouring Bitcoin and take increasingly larger positions, the chances increase the control over Bitcoin as a blockchain and as a currency ends up with the powerful few who will drive both, the blockchain and the currency in directions of their preferences.
When such a scenario plays out, in whatever timeframe, even when this is in eg 50 years from now, we end up with a currency much like a Dollar, a Euro or whatever fiat currency we can think of. However, now controlled by an undefined group of people and institutions.
Everything done in crypto space: all for nothing 😂😂
In my view: This shall never ever happen! 😱🙏
Not for Bitcoin, not for any other blockchain and its associated currency. This is one of the reasons why I find it so important for a blockchain it allows people to run a miner on everyday hardware, like a laptop, a smartphone, a Raspberry Pi or something like that. Cheap and affordable hardware for the majority of the world's population.
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I agree with most of what you said, and disagree with a few things... maybe one... 😃
I remember the time when I was saying something similar, in the days when Google was taking over the SE sphere from Yahoo... Everyone was cheering, I was concerned about its monopoly position... The same thing happened when they took over the advertising space GoogleAds and Adsense... Everyone was cheering as profits were great for publishers, but that was probably the "full circle" that Google made... Killing the competition... Anyway... back to the topic...
I'm afraid that already happened... There is no explanation for this recent BTC dump when EVERYONE is buying thousands and thousands of tokens, while NOBODY is selling... Even mining companies are BUYING additional coins (not selling theirs)!!! Please correct me in this assumption, is there public addresses for ETFs where you can check if they REALLY hold those BTCs? I think not... I bet we have more than 21M BTC tokens (on the paper), while on the chain, we have less...
Agree with this too... Yes, BTC isn't POS, but still, miners are already very, very centralized... and the stake is also getting centralized, which opens many doors for manipulation, bribery (pardon, lobbying 😂), and other shady stuff...
With this, I disagree! Yes, you were probably joking , but it's not for nothing... Bitcoin is the FIRST, and it paved the road for many others... But, there are OTHERS, and there will be more and more of them... We will have a choice to "trust" to someone else... It's not the end, it's the beginning... 😉
Cheers! Have a great weekend... Thanks for kicking my grey cells on the weekend... 😃
The next bear market is going to be very interesting and finding out who is wearing no clothes. It would be good to see BlackRock, Coinbase and MicroStrategy on chain wallets... Haha 😁
Agree with the transparency needs for wallets of these big ass corporates.
WOW, that IS a massive response. A post on its own. You did an 'edje' here, while I was trying to keep my post condense, this time 😆
Do you honestly think this whole Blackrock (and other ETF creators) aren't following their own rules they must have the same amount of BTC in their wallets as ETF shares they sell? Sure, the rules aren't such they need this in real time, but I think they need to settle at least on a daily basis.
All lost. Well, I do hope it is not. But I didn't touch on so many topics that made me write this sentence "Everything done in crypto space: all for nothing 😂😂". Like the market favouring centralised crypto such as Ripple. Like the market favouring low-quality chains like Solana. Like the market simply believes the stories scalability is best through L2, L3, Lx approaches. Like the market simply fade those L1s that are much better suited to run the dApps of the future. But the market does like Lightning as the p2p payment system, loved by many bitcoin maxis, while it is centralised as hell to make it affordable for everyday use.
Anyways, time will tell what is lost and pointless and what is not 😉
Some great food for thought. I do think that it would be nice if more people could mine bitcoin as well as just run nodes. Bitcoin seems to be moving toward a base layer of the fiat monetary system. I guess the race to SBR will allow fiat to run for longer.
I do think we can only view the next 10 years or so in the future as tech evolves so fast and in this time frame bitcoin is secure. Anyone attempting to change the 21M hardcoded amount would clearly fail, as that is the core essence of Bitcoin imo.
Bitcoin is also money for your enemies. Those with larger stakes have even more incentive not to rock the boat with the protocol, so why would they try and change the issuance?
For some reason I dont understand the wish of so many to try to make Bitcoin in something that it is clearly not designed for, like a p2p payment system for everyday use. Somehow, the market also seems to see the holy grail in Bitcoin while not embarrassing all the newer tech that is clearly 'outperforming' Bitcoin L1 left and right. With 'outperforming', I do not just mean performance, but also simplicity to work with, for dApps to integrate with, the costs to the transaction, the need for feeless setup for many use cases that aren't brought to the decentralised world yet etc etc
Anyways, time will tell what happens with Bitcoin, and how it'll evolve. I wouldn't rule out the max of 21M will change over time. Let's see how centralised the control over Bitcoin will become.
The reason the market isn't embracing newer tech for Bitcoin is imo a few reasons, first mover advantage and brand being out there, the newer tech doesn't solve the main problem that bitcoin solves better - store of value and thirdly, you can never have another fair launch of a Bitcoin/store of value product- it was a one time deal.
"you can never have another fair launch of a Bitcoin/store of value product- it was a one time deal"
Not sure why you state this, since I do think it is possible, and some chains proofed it they can launch fair and square. Regarding the store-of-value, this all relates to how distributed a chain is in terms of node operators and/or miners. I do believe other chains will emerge over time to play the role of store-of-value to at least the same degree as Bitcoin, or perhaps even to a higher degree. Only time will tell us, for now it is just a 'believe' 😉
Agree something could come if it improves enough.