Bitcoin developers could, in theory, remove the 21 million Bitcoin supply limit from the source code, but miners are unlikely to accept this change, according to one analyst. But I remind you it’s possible! And everything what you see around BTC its just what you believe in it! BTC invented not an Aliens or by magic! It’s simple code which can be modified.
The 21 million BTC hard cap is a fundamental principle of the Bitcoin network, designed to ensure scarcity — the gap between limited resources and unlimited needs.
The 21 million Bitcoin supply limit is embedded in the open-source code by anonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto and is publicly available on GitHub, though it is not explicitly stated in the code.
The limit can be found in the code file “validation.cpp” within a section called “GetBlockSubsidy.” The code mentions that the miner subsidy “is halved every 210,000 blocks, which will happen approximately every 4 years.” This implies that the reward for miners will eventually drop to zero from the initial 50 BTC subsidy as a result of 33 halvings of the Bitcoin reward, programmed to occur every four years.
Like most other code, Bitcoin’s source code is subject to change, meaning that the 21 million limit could theoretically be altered. However, for such a change to take effect, it would need to be accepted by miners, according to Josef Tetek, a Bitcoin analyst at hardware wallet company Trezor.
“Developers can potentially make whatever changes they want, but they can’t force changes on anyone. The node managers — the people around the world who run Bitcoin full nodes — have the final say in what gets accepted.”
The analyst referenced a historical precedent, the “block size war” of 2017, when some developers, miners, and exchanges wanted to increase Bitcoin’s block size from its original 1 megabyte.
“Node managers rejected the change because it would have led to more centralization of Bitcoin,”
Some commentators in the Bitcoin community shared similar views on the cryptocurrency forum Bitcointalk, with many expressing confidence that miners would not support lifting the 21 million supply cap.
“Network participants will not run this code, and it will have to hard fork, which almost no one will support,” wrote Bitcointalk user Kakmakr.
“Bitcoin is not like paper currency; you can’t just turn on money printers and increase the supply… You need a consensus of the participants in that network,” he added.
The comments came in response to JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon questioning the finality of the 21 million Bitcoin cap in a Jan. 17 CNBC interview and criticizing BTC for its alleged use cases, such as “sex trafficking, tax evasion, anti-money laundering.”
And you might didn’t know but in 2010 hacker had managed to create over 184 billion BTC out of thin air due to a number overflow error.
On 15 August, the vulnerability was exploited; over 184 billion bitcoins were generated in a transaction, and sent to two addresses on the network. Within hours, the transaction was spotted and erased from the transaction log after the bug was fixed and the network forked to an updated version of the Bitcoin protocol. Read more about block 74638. This was the only major security flaw found and exploited in Bitcoin's history but who told you we will not see something similar with AI power now in a next few years ))
