In a recent thread asking what is the most important BIP I learned about BIP42 which established the fixed supply of 21m.
Given the importance of fixed supply in the Bitcoin story and how much it is referenced, can someone explain the background to this please? Was this a technical oversight by Satoshi in the original code implementation? Was Satoshi never interested in fixed supply? Was their discussion about this between 2009 and 2014 when this BIP was proposed?
"Although it is widely believed that Satoshi was an inflation-hating goldbug he never said this, and in fact programmed Bitcoin's money supply to grow indefinitely, forever. He modeled the monetary supply as 4 gold mines being discovered per mibillenium (1024 years), with equal intervals between them, each one being depleted over the course of 140 years."
Thanks!
ā CE