Author: ZmnSCPxj 2020-03-26 01:42:22
Published on: 2020-03-26T01:42:22+00:00
The idea of increasing the Bitcoin supply beyond 21 million is considered fundamentally broken as it would change the meaning of Bitcoin and create a contradiction in its use. Although upgrades to the protocol change the meaning of Bitcoin, this change would be too significant. The transaction fee already acts as an implicit "field" that votes for how much security is needed, making it costly to the voter. This is appropriate as you pay for your security. However, transaction fees are only paid when bitcoins get moved, and there is no on-going cost for people holding bitcoins. The voting idea allows everyone to decide what everyone pays via dilution to keep the network secure, with votes weighted by the value of the UTXO so that people vote and pay in proportion to the amount of bitcoin they're holding. If someone loses their private keys, then the vote of that UTXO containing the bitcoins remains forever fixed and cannot change according to what the community decided. One must make up a synthetic transaction to pay fees and affect the current security of the blockchain, similar to having to make a synthetic self-paying transaction to affect the vote. As a UTXO gets buried deeper, its security inevitably becomes better, so once someone has sufficient security in owning the coin, they won't care about any improved security and won't be interested in paying for more. Therefore, they would support a fork that retains the current supply and does not make them pay for continued security. If someone wants to spend their bitcoins, then they will pay transaction fees, which would ensure that the received UTXO is deeply buried to the point that it has sufficient security for the receiver before releasing or providing the product or service being exchanged. There is no need for any mechanism beyond transaction fees.
Updated on: 2023-06-14T00:09:14.277708+00:00