I've read many of Satoshi's previous posts and writings, it's mind blowing how Satoshi was expecting bitcoin to come this far and he was prepared for it. Even in one of his posts he says he placed 8 decimals for upcoming decades... I've looked but couldn't find any info about what made him choose 21,000,000 as number of supply? Is there any logic/reason behind choosing that number? would love to know!
It seems to be just an arbitrary choice. He could have set any limit. I don't remember it being mentioned by anyone that he posted any reasons for it. It's just what he decided on, for reasons only he knows.
Personally I would have like it to be 42M.
Haha yeah, thanks! I guess he just choose it.. I was thinking someone that smart has a reason to choose that number. In one of his posts he was talking about world population and bitcoin supply.. I think he wanted to create scarcity, clearly 21m is not enough for over 6 billion people
Likewise I do not know of any reason, it seems a strange number to choose which makes me think that there must be some reason behind it. Perhaps it's just a lucky number of his or something as simple as that. But you'd think if he was just going to pick a value he'd have gone 10m or 100m or such.
There was actually a reason behind it that had to do with how bytes are divided or something like that, or maybe with the gold supply... I remember reading some theory about it, so it was not fully arbitrary, there was some thought put into it.
It's similar to the 1MB blocksize, it is what it is, but there is also thought put behind the number. Satoshi didn't simply roll a dice and choose these numbers.