That's not how it works. There's a 21 million BTC cap on the Bitcoin chain. A hard fork would be required to remove the cap, and perhaps allow for tail emissions to prevent miners from abandoning BTC mining.
Any change to the 21 M rule is a hard fork — meaning nodes that don’t upgrade will reject blocks that mint more than 21 M.
In practice, this means two chains would exist:
- One honoring the original cap (classic BTC).
- One with the new inflationary rules.
Gib, a person with say 100 BTC would still only have 100 BTC on the original Bitcoin chain with the finite cap. They could also potentially get another 100 tokens of the Bitcoin chain with the infinite supply if they had self custody of their BTC. I am not sure they would receive any new tokens if their BTC was on an exchange at the time of the fork.
If miners decide to reject the new chain, then they can continue to mine at a loss or go bankrupt and be forced to quit. Electricity, hardware, and infrastructure is not free. Bitcoin would then be vulnerable to 51% attacks as miners fall off.
After 16 years, the fee market hasn’t proven itself. The sustainability of the “finite cap + fee-only” model is an open question, and it’s one of Bitcoin’s biggest long-term risks. The 21M cap isn’t just an economic design choice — it’s a social contract. If that’s broken, Bitcoin’s main value prop (digital scarcity) could collapse.
Lol you are hilarious Obsidian, with these half truths.
I'll try and make it simple. Imagine you own a tree, from the trunk upwards. Any new branches, twigs, leaves etc on that tree belong to you as they connect to the trunk. So, for example, I received every single part of the Bitcoin Cash fork that was created from the fork back in 2017. I sold most of it, (more out of principle), but I could have kept it. For my BTC on exchange, there was a period of uncertainty - I think the exchange said initially they "would not support it", but eventually they did, and of course anything I held directly, no issue. Hence the importance of NYKNYC (or to very clearly understand any agreement you have and obligations of any custodian you keep your coins with). This is also the reason for the often misunderstood disclaimer you see with ETFs like Blackrock's iBit or exchanges like Coinbase. Ie - they do not want to be obliged to support any forks. In reality they likely would, or would sell to buy more BTC, or simply refund in cash. MSTR I expect would likely keep any and all forks, just to be safe (and for the trunk and branches principle I mentioned above). Don't get confused though - its all still one tree. (Just like the pizza is still one pizza no matter how slices it is, and 1 kg of gold is still one kg, no matter how many portions its broken into).
I will respond to the rest of the nonsense later regarding mining, but in short mining is very profitable for anyone that does it below the average cost (hence there is a never ending race to efficiency and free energy), and provided price doubles every 4 years, mining yield (assuming all things being even) means same value will be unlocked each halving (all other things being equal). You keep failing to see the wood through the trees. Mining is supposed to be "difficult", and we have a difficulty adjustment which swings both ways, depending on supply and demand, which assures support of the network.
You will maybe still be asking "oh but what about x,y,z when the USD has fallen to 1m USD to BTC. I'll simply be there with my coins. You still have the chance to come join me. Or will you be there instead with a deflated bag of "the next best thing" and telling stories to your kids of how close you were, but backed the wrong horse...
See you at 125K.
