Talking about changing the total amount of Bitcoin to 21 million BTC, PoW to PoS? Stop daydreaming

Originally, it was just a suggestion made by a participant in the competing currency (Ethereum) community at the Satoshi Nakamoto Roundtable (to change the total upper limit of Bitcoin to 21 million BTC). After being reported by BCH's headquarters bitcoin.com, it was misinterpreted by some people in the Chinese community as a proposal by the Bitcoin development team core to change the total amount of Bitcoin.

The author did not want to waste time writing this article, but the rumors are spreading more and more fiercely. Jiang Zhuoer, the founder of Litecoin Mining Pool, even stated seriously that Bitcoin will stop halving in the future. Since he admitted that he would invest in Bitcoin regularly, I have reason to believe that what he said is worthy of questioning.

In fact, history has proven that anyone who dares to propose changing the upper limit of Bitcoin or the halving rules, no matter how much they have contributed to Bitcoin, will be regarded as an enemy by the Bitcoin community, because this infringes on the interests of the majority of participants. I believe that even if Satoshi Nakamoto himself made this suggestion, he would be kicked out of the Bitcoin community.

Responding to Jiang Zhuoer's statement one by one, he wrote:

“I knew that Core was going to stop the halving plan, and I was just impressed at the time that Core was really brave enough to challenge such an epic task. However, Core is still firmly implementing it step by step, such as the experiment of never halving on Grin, and the discussion raised at the recent Satoshi Nakamoto roundtable meeting (finally started to do it [laughing and silent]), and it was also very smart to find an external developer to trigger it.”

Sorry, no one discussed canceling the halving at the Nakamoto roundtable, and the outside developer only suggested that if Bitcoin's transaction fees are not enough to sustain miners' expenses, a slight inflation strategy could be considered. This is completely different from canceling the halving, and even the developer couldn't stand it anymore, and he wrote on Twitter:

“Can anyone in the Chinese Bitcoin community correct him? Whether it’s a big deal or slander, I particularly like people thinking that I claim to be a Bitcoin core developer.”

Then Jiang wrote:

“2. The suspension of halving has its inherent rationality in logic, and it is all for the highest ideal of Core - anti-censorship service. Core needs to be anti-censorship, so it needs small blocks (can run on Raspberry Pi), so it opposes expansion (requires high-performance nodes).

Since the blocks are small, there is a ceiling on the total number of transactions that miners can make, and there is also a ceiling on the revenue from each transaction, for example, a few hundred yuan (if it is higher, users will choose off-chain transactions, second-layer networks and other alternatives), so the income from miners' transaction fees (after removing the initial coin reward) is actually very small.

The small income of miners means the small scale of the mining industry, and the cost of a 51% attack by attackers. When the [market value of Bitcoin]/[total scale of the mining industry] reaches a certain level, some people will choose to short sell first, and then spend a little money to make a 51% attack to make a profit. Even mining capital may have this internal motivation: if I attack once, I can get 10 times or 100 times the profit of turning the mining machine into scrap metal, so why not do it?

And Core is determined to choose POW, so the only way left is to increase miners’ income – that is, no halving.”

Since Mr. Jiang believes that the no-halving rule is logical, he admits that grin's economic model is correct. Why is grin's economic model criticized by so many people? It seems that not many people are optimistic about this economic model? Why do Core developers do things that harm others and benefit themselves for the sake of miners (and will be criticized)? Regarding this point, a more reasonable explanation is that Mr. Jiang is complaining about Core's practice of not expanding capacity.

Finally, Jiang wrote:

“3. Is audit resistance the most important, or is the number of users the most important? This is a question of direction. Once you choose to prioritize audit resistance and choose not to expand the capacity, then stopping the halving (or changing POW to POS) becomes an inevitable choice. Otherwise, can you give a solution to the small scale of mining?

Not halving is an issue that requires long-term negotiation (not the halving in 2020). Core’s will has always been firm. In 2013, who could have thought that Core would be able to succeed without expansion? But in the years-long debate, Core has turned the situation around little by little without giving in. Moreover, this time, miners have turned from enemies to allies. ”

Compared with capacity expansion, brain-dead proposals such as stopping halving and changing POW to POS are tantamount to self-destruction. I believe that capacity expansion will eventually be achieved, which is also needed for the development of L2 networks such as Lightning Network. What I don’t understand is that solution A for one thing has a difficulty of 1, but Mr. Jiang insisted on choosing the logic of solution B with a difficulty of 10, and he was scolded by everyone?

So, when Mr. Jiang wrote this article, on the surface he was saying that the total amount of Bitcoin would be changed, but I believe what he actually wanted to express was that he hoped Core could expand its capacity.

The author believes that compared to these useless quarrels, we should pay more attention to the technological development of Bitcoin, such as confidential transaction (CT) technology, Lightning Network (LN), Taproot, Schnorr signature, Bulletproofs, etc.

Finally, I hope Mr. Jiang can just give everyone some basic knowledge instead of leading the trend blindly.

Update: Attached is the reply from Wladimir van der Laan, the current lead maintainer of core:

“This is bullshit, and sadly it has to be said that no one in their right mind would propose changing Bitcoin’s monetary policy.

If software claiming to be 'bitcoin core' makes this point, I recommend running the software without this change, as it is broken.

Take a shower and go to bed.