What if there were not enough BTC for us Bitcoiners? \ stacker news ~bitcoin

What if there were not enough BTC for us Bitcoiners?

297 sats \ 18 comments \ @cryotosensei 31 Mar bitcoin_beginners

zaps forwarded to @grayruby (30%)

I fully expect to be roasted for this. But @grayruby’s latest quote sharing made me voice my apprehension n reservation wrt Bitcoin.

I wrote there:

but I feel that there are larger forces beyond my control. What if MircoStrategy goes all out to acquire a substantial percentage of BTC? What if more nations make BTC their national currency? What if the ETFs grow exponentially n suck up all the BTC like a black hole?

Some current developments:

1. MicroStrategy owns 1% of all BTC

2. 11 Spot BTC ETFs generate $12.1 billion in total inflows.

3. 28 companies buy BTC as part of corporate treasury

What if these institutions scoop up so much BTC that its price becomes prohibitively expensive for us plebs? What if there is not enough to go around?

view all related items

89 sats \ 9 replies \ @Undisciplined 31 Mar

Short answer: it's almost infinitely divisible so price (purchasing power) going up just means you wouldn't need to use as much to buy anything and you would therefore also trade your labor for less of it.

85 sats \ 6 replies \ @Murch 1 Apr

I'm not sure I follow. On-chain you cannot express smaller amounts than sats. How is that "almost infinitely divisible"?

50 sats \ 5 replies \ @Undisciplined 1 Apr

I'm assuming there's still some Bitcoin being put towards LN or something else and the "problem" is just that Bitcoin has a much higher fiat exchange rate than it currently does.

85 sats \ 4 replies \ @Murch 2 Apr

Oh, you mean we get another three decimals via lightning being denominated by millisats?

HTLCs are only worth to be enforced above a few hundred sats, below that they're essentially credit until folded into the balance, because adding an output to the closing transaction costs more than the amount in the HTLC. So, it can work, but only as long as everyone plays nice. Divisibility is not a problem that completely gets solved by lightning.

20 sats \ 3 replies \ @Undisciplined 2 Apr

That's true and no doubt you're better versed on the technical aspects than I am. However, there's no reason I'm aware of that some other layer 2 technology couldn't be more divisible.

Also, a question: Is it inherently more expensive to add an output to the closing transaction or is that just because the current purchasing power of bitcoin is so low?

83 sats \ 2 replies \ @Murch 2 Apr

Spending an HTLC output incurs over 400 weight units of transaction data. With the feerates lately being usually in the double digit [s/vB], it would cost you at least 1,000 sats to enforce an HTLC on-chain. So very small payments are not actually added to commitment transactions and this generally applies to any layer-2 technology that is enforced by users’ ability to unilaterally exit. Bitcoin transaction fees are paid in bitcoin and scale with the weight of a transaction, so the issue is independent of the exchange rate.

20 sats \ 1 reply \ @Undisciplined 2 Apr

Thanks for the explanation.

Doesn't that just mean that if Bitcoin becomes radically more expensive, such that people are using these new decimal places, a bunch of activity will be restricted to layer-2? On-chain settlements would only be approximate, in a sense.

83 sats \ 0 replies \ @Murch 2 Apr

Yeah, there would be no way to express that precision on-chain, nor would it be worth paying for

reply on another page

39 sats \ 1 reply \ @cryotosensei OP 31 Mar

I guess that’s where Stay Humble, Stack Sats comes in. Better stack those sats while the sun shines

43 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 31 Mar

Exactly. My takeaway from playing around with that simulator was that we should be treating sats as though they're worth at least one US cent, roughly 15x they're current valuation.

50 sats \ 0 replies \ @riberet19 1 Apr

If a sat can be split as well, then absolutely not much would happen, as the more the network grows and the more Bitcoin becomes scarcer, the more valuable every piece of BTC becomes.

50 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 1 Apr

There are 2 approaches to this fallacy "not enough bitcoin"...

Those who follow to get rich in fiat by only buying and holding BTC (doing nothing with it) are the losers. They always think that NgU technology will make them rich. It is wrong assumption. Those billions of trillions of gazzilions they hope will get, nobody in the end will want them anymore.

People will want sats. So the hoarders in the end will have to spend their holdings. That means they will put back in circulation all their stash.

Those that see Bitcoin as simply money, will create value and make Bitcoin to circulate around. Bitcoin ONLY by making it to circulate will create value. There's no other way.

For more we push out fiat from its existence, more value will be created with Bitcoin. Bitcoin in itself do not have value, but products and services have value, expressed in sats. Those sats are the energy used to create those products and services.

People wrongfully think that Bitcoin value is expressed in USD price... totally wrong. The amount of bitcoin you pay for a product or service is the price of energy used to create that product / service.

Here, in one image how bitcoin and value flow...

Do you want to read more? Here is an excellent article by Jeffrey Tucker: https://fee.org/articles/what-gave-bitcoin-its-value/

20 sats \ 5 replies \ @BitcoinIsTheFuture 1 Apr

You get Bitcoin at the price you deserve and it’s infinitely divisible! You can go as far to the right of the decimal as you want!

20 sats \ 4 replies \ @Murch 1 Apr

Can you describe what you mean with infinitely divisible? On-chain you can only go down to sats.

20 sats \ 3 replies \ @BitcoinIsTheFuture 1 Apr

Correct for now. In the future you could go more to the right of the decimal than 8 and it won’t devalue the current holders. You could go 16 to the right of the decimal and call it a nak ( short for Nakamoto)!

20 sats \ 2 replies \ @Murch 2 Apr

We could, but it would require a fairly invasive hardfork to do that on-chain.

50 sats \ 1 reply \ @BitcoinIsTheFuture 2 Apr

Yup if it became a problem it would be done!

20 sats \ 0 replies \ @Murch 2 Apr

TBH, there are a lot of hardfork proposals that would give me fewer nightmares than one that implements additional divisibility. It would require that every single piece of Bitcoin software and hardware be updated to handle entirely different magnitudes of amounts and feerates as well as a change in the transaction format because anything more than three more digits of additional precision would no longer fit in a 64-bit integer (which is the current size of the amount field in the output).