Could Bitcoin’s 21 Million Supply Cap Change? Zcash Co-Founder Makes Bold Proposal

In a post, Zcash co-founder Eli Ben-Sasson proposes rethinking Bitcoin’s fixed 21 million supply cap.

According to Ben-Sasson, capping the supply of Bitcoin at 21 million BTC does not make sense. This is because, over time, keys will be lost. He believes that this will eventually happen over an infinite time horizon.

The maximum number of Bitcoins that can ever exist is 21 million BTC. This hard cap on the total Bitcoin supply is a fundamental part of Bitcoin’s monetary policy, which is designed to promote scarcity and prevent inflation. Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto encoded this limit into the cryptocurrency’s source code.

Rather than a fixed supply, Ben-Sasson indicated strong support for a clear monetary policy with an “absolute cap” but suggested adjusting the strategy, such as setting a fixed maximum issuance rate — for example, 4% per year — to keep the circulating supply aligned with human growth and ensure sufficient liquidity.

“This way, you ensure there’s enough to go around,” Ben-Sasson stated.

Can Bitcoin’s supply limit be changed?

Changing Bitcoin‘s hard cap is possible, but it would not be an easy task, as it would require collaboration from developers, community members, and nodes. Developers would have to put this in a proposal and publish written code to implement the change. The proposal would lead to community discussion, which might not be accepted by all in the Bitcoin community.

If the change were agreed upon, it would be integrated into Bitcoin Core. This leaves the question of how the change would be activated. Once this is answered, it must be agreed upon by the community to ensure compliance. Changing Bitcoin’s supply might require a hard fork, which all nodes on the network would have to accept.

Bitcoin’s fixed 21 million supply cap might never be changed, given these hurdles that need to be cleared.