Just 1 million Bitcoin remaining
Bitcoin recently passed the milestone of 20 million BTC mined. Approximately 1 million Bitcoin remains until the maximum limit provided by the protocol is reached. Miners currently receive 3.125 BTC per block. The block reward is halved approximately every four years. Around 30 halvings remain, and the last satoshis are expected to be mined around 2140. After that, no new Bitcoin will be created. The question that has concerned Peter Todd for years is what will happen to miners when this reward disappears. They will then have to rely exclusively on the transaction fees paid by users to record their transactions in blocks.
Fear over network security
Todd believes that fee revenue is overly volatile. Some blocks yield high commissions, while others significantly less. In his view, this situation could encourage miners to reorganize the blockchain in order to recover particularly lucrative blocks. The solution he proposes is maintaining a small, permanent reward of new Bitcoin issuance. In such a scenario, the total supply of Bitcoin would gradually exceed 21 million.
Adam Back: "Don't touch the 21 million"
The proposal does not find agreement from Adam Back. The head of Blockstream accuses proponents of such changes of creating simplified narratives to draw less-informed users toward changes he considers dangerous. Back compares this approach to the recent debate surrounding BIP-110, a controversial proposal to limit certain non-payment data in Bitcoin blocks. The proposal gathered only about 2.53% miner support, while the required threshold was 55%.
Lost Bitcoin as an argument for new issuance
Peter Todd presents, however, another argument. Bitcoin is permanently lost when holders lose their private keys. A small, permanent creation of new Bitcoin could, according to his model, offset these losses. Thus, the available supplycould eventually stabilize, as Bitcoin would be lost at roughly the same rate that new units were created. Monero already implements a similar mechanism known as tail emission.
The miner problem will grow larger
The issue of miner compensation did not arise overnight. As block rewards decrease, future mining profitability will depend increasingly on fees. In the long term, transaction fees will have to play a much larger role in funding and network security. However, the issue is not immediate. The year 2140 is still more than a century away, leaving ample time for debate and potential alternative solutions.
Exceeding 21 million requires a hard fork
Peter Todd may propose a new monetary policy, but to implement it, the whole network would need to be convinced. Changing the 21 million limit would not be a simple software upgrade. It would require a hard fork. Users, developers, companies, platforms, and miners would then have to choose between the new rules and the existing version of Bitcoin. No one can guarantee that the chain choosing an inflationary monetary policy would retain the name Bitcoin or the same market value.
"21 million" is more than just a number
Here lies the greatest difficulty. The 21 million BTC is not just a number in the code. It is a fundamental part of the economic narrative of Bitcoin since its inception. Investors purchase Bitcoin precisely because they believe no one can arbitrarily decide to produce more coins. The community has already experienced technical forks with far less economic significance. A direct change in the money supply, however, would challenge the initial economic contract of Bitcoin itself. Adam Back, therefore, is not claiming that Bitcoin will exceed 21 million. He warns about arguments that could eventually be used to advocate for such a change. And the debate is just beginning. As the block reward decreases, the question of how to fund network security will be raised more intensely. Fees may prove to be enough. They may not. For now, however, the digital scarcity of Bitcoin continues to rest on the 21 million limit. And no one has changed it — yet.
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