Bitcoin has Literal Infinite Potential

Brief thoughts about Bitcoin representing all value forever.

Just as all things in the universe are made from stardust, so too, will your Bitcoin slowly absorb the infinite representation of value.

In 150 years it’s not 21 Million divided between 8 billion people, it’s between 10 Billion, or even 12 Billion depending on how many people exist then. The number of humans and machines that use Bitcoin will increase, forever, into infinity.

This is of course assuming humanity is flourishing instead of obliterating itself. And provided no 1984 or Fahrenheit 451 scenarios have played out.

Bitcoin’s value is engineered to increase, FOREVER

Bitcoin has a fixed supply, 21 million units, with a predetermined supply issuance rate. Fundamentally, everything about the supply is known.

Because of the halving process, Bitcoin’s supply issuance exponentially decreases, meaning the amount of work expended PER UNIT of Bitcoin produced exponentially increases. That does not mean however, that you need double the work in the same amount of time. You can’t mine bitcoin faster with more power, it will just take twice as long assuming the same energy output, thus twice the energy, to mine the same amount. Bitcoin ensures this with the difficulty adjustment so that a block is created approximately every 10 minutes on average.

It takes twice as long because the mining reward gets cut in half every 210,000 blocks (approx. 4 years), a.k.a. the halving events. And this will increase Bitcoin’s value, because that value is derived from energy, which creates, secures, and facilitates the transaction of Bitcoin.

Imagine 118 years from now. It’s 2140. All of the Bitcoin have been mined. There is no more block reward for mining, aside from transaction fees. Bitcoin has penetrated, violated, and rebuilt every government monetary system and financial institution, and is now the settlement layer of value for the entire human race. How does the value continue to increase then? Well as stated, if the human race is flourishing, then that creates new entities whose value needs to be represented by the same 21 Million Bitcoin.

With the unstoppable force of increased adoption, an ever-growing wall of demand comes up against the immovable object of Bitcoin’s supply. What do you think will happen to the value in the Bitcoin system?

Can it become too valuable?

Currently, 1 Bitcoin can be divided into 100 million units. As a number Bitcoin might look like this: 1.00000000 (8 decimal places). The final decimal place, and smallest unit, is called a Satoshi (named after Satoshi Nakamoto). In the future, it will become more common to talk about buying things in terms of Satoshis, because the Bitcoin unit will be too valuable. We’ll be saying 1,000 Sats, not 0.00001 Bitcoin.

What if Bitcoin were priced at $1 Billion today. One Satoshi would be worth $10. This is now impractical because you couldn’t purchase anything with Bitcoin that’s less than $10 in value, so you wouldn’t be able to buy a bottle of water anymore. This isn’t a problem though, because when the time comes, the core code of Bitcoin will have updated to add a few more decimal points. And this can keep happening theoretically as long as needed. It will have sub-satoshis, milli-satoshis, whatever. Perfect money is perfectly divisible, to have the best flexibility, and since Bitcoin is a computer program, we can make it as divisible as we want.

Finally

Given this line of thinking, it’s seems theoretically impossible to be late to Bitcoin, when every next person is having their representation of value squeezed into the same 21 Million that was previously shared by 1 person less. You can only ever be early, and just how early you are is still just a simple choice. Thinking in terms of the infinity of Bitcoin, it’s pretty incredible to be alive in the same century that it was invented.