NO, this is one of the worst possible proposals in practice. Think about it. You have two paths here. I will use 1M confiscation to keep the example simple.

• Option 1: Increase the limit by 1M to 22M and slowly issue this. Total supply changes right now, circulating supply changes as these get issued.
• Option 2: Do not increase the limit, but confiscatedconfiscate 1M of old coins. Total supply stays the same, circulating supply changes as these get reissued.

In practice, option 2 is much worse than option 1. While traditionally the limit is defined by the total supply, in practice what matters is circulating supply otherwise you are just playing a game of semantics. Think about it. If for some weird technical reason you had to increase the total supply by a factor of 100x, but 0% of these coins entered circulation, what changes in practice? Nothing. There would be some bad PR for sure, but the limit of 21M circulating coins would remain the same. In the option that you talk about, option 2, you get both an increase in circulating supply and a precedent of confiscation. It attacks two of the most important points of Bitcoin. Please note that I am not advocating for a supply increase, I am merely saying that between two such options that the latter is much worse in practice.

More complexity and more units is not desirable. Anyhow, if I understood you correctly your proposal will punish the best holders for simply holding. This? That is a terrible incentiveand radical change of incentives.

Replace one type of confiscation with another? How do you know that my coins are lost, because I am not using them actively?  

There are simpler ways to approach this, and I will give one example. You can introduce a primary flat miner fee, and retain the variable fee from the fee market on top of it. Let's say that we introduce a a flat fee of 100 satoshi, which as of today would be $0.11. At 3000 transactions per block, that is an extra 300 000 sats. Over a year using current prices that is an extra $17M for miners. No burn, no demurrage, no confiscation, no supply increase.  

Where we stand today, this is not even yet a problem let alone one that requires immediate intention. Most of the speculation about this being a problem is coming from altcoin advocates who want to prove POW and Bitcoin's fair economics wrong, and prove POS, token-printing and sellingmoney raises as correct.  Do fees need to always stay high? No. Does the hashrate have to always increase? Also no.

Quote from: Mia Chloe on May 27, 2025, 07:39:30 PM

Increasing Bitcoin's capacity by allowing more transactions per block is the direct route to higher fees for miners in the future but you can't actually ignore the downsides too.

While I am quite conservative on the block size part of the equation, nobody serious can't be advocating that we retain the same block size 10-30 years from now and ignore all technological progress. In the flat-fee example that I have given, a blocksize increase would proportionally increase the benefit for miners. A doubling would increase the maximum they could earn as extra by 2x.

NO, this is one of the worst possible proposals in practice. Think about it. You have two paths here. I will use 1M confiscation to keep the example simple.

• Option 1: Increase the limit by 1M to 22M and slowly issue this. Total supply changes right now, circulating supply changes as these get issued.
• Option 2: Do not increase the limit, but confiscated 1M of old coins. Total supply stays the same, circulating supply changes as these get reissued.

In practice, option 2 is much worse than option 1. While traditionally the limit is defined by the total supply, in practice what matters is circulating supply. Think about it. If for some weird technical reason you had to increase the total supply by a factor of 100x, but 0% of these coins entered circulation, what changes in practice? Nothing. There would be bad PR for sure, but the limit of 21M circulating coins would remain the same. In the option that you talk about, option 2: you get both an increase in circulating supply and a precedent of confiscation. It attacks two of the most important points of Bitcoin. Please note that I am not advocating for a supply increase, I am merely saying that between two such options that the latter is much worse in practice.
In practice, option 2 is much worse than option 1. While traditionally the limit is defined by the total supply, in practice what matters is circulating supply otherwise you are just playing a game of semantics. Think about it. If for some weird technical reason you had to increase the total supply by a factor of 100x, but 0% of these coins entered circulation, what changes in practice? Nothing. There would be some bad PR for sure, but the limit of 21M circulating coins would remain the same. In the option that you talk about, option 2, you get both an increase in circulating supply and a precedent of confiscation. It attacks two of the most important points of Bitcoin. Please note that I am not advocating for a supply increase, I am merely saying that between two such options that the latter is much worse in practice.

More complexity and more units is not desirable. Anyhow, if I understood you correctly your proposal will punish the best holders for simply holding. This is a terrible incentive.

Replace one type of confiscation with another? How do you know that my coins are lost, because I am not using them actively?  

There are simpler ways to approach this, not necessarily the best ways of courseand I will give one example. You can introduce a primary flat miner fee, and retain the variable fee from the fee market on top of it. For example,Let's say that we introduce a a flat fee of 100 satoshi, which as of today would be $0.11. At 3000 transactions per block, that is an extra 300 000 sats. Over a year using current prices that is an extra $17M for miners. No burn, no demurrage, no confiscation, no supply increase.  

Where we stand today, this is not even yet a problem let alone one that requires immediate intention. Most of thisthe speculation about this being a problem is coming from altcoin advocates who want to prove POW and Bitcoin's fair economics wrong, and prove POS, token-printing and selling as correct.  Do fees need to always stay high? No. Does the hashrate have to always increase? Also no.

NO, this is one of the worst possible proposals in practice. Think about it. You have two paths here. I will use 1M confiscation to keep the example simple.

• Option 1: Increase the limit by 1M to 22M and slowly issue this. Total supply changes right now, circulating supply changes as these get issued.
• Option 2: Do not increase the limit, but confiscated 1M of old coins. Total supply stays the same, circulating supply changes as these get reissued.

In practice, option 2 is much worse than option 1. While traditionally the limit is defined by the total supply, in practice what matters is circulating supply. Think about it. If for some weird technical reason you had to increase the total supply by a factor of 100x, but 0% of these coins entered circulation, what changes in practice? Nothing. There would be bad PR for sure, but the limit of 21M circulating coins would remain the same. In the option that you talk about, option 2: you get both an increase in circulating supply and a precedent of confiscation. It attacks two of the most important points of Bitcoin. Please note that I am not advocating for a supply increase, I am merely saying that between two such options that the latter is much worse in practice.

More complexity and more units is not desirable. Anyhow, if I understood you correctly your proposal will punish the best holders for simply holding. This is a terrible incentive.

Replace one type of confiscation with another? How do you know that my coins are lost, because I am not using them actively? 

There are simpler ways to approach this, not necessarily the best ways of course. You can introduce a primary flat miner fee, and retain the variable fee from the fee market on top of it. For example, a flat fee of 100 satoshi as of today would be $0.11. At 3000 transactions per block, that is an extra 300 000 sats. Over a year using current prices that is an extra $17M for miners. No burn, no demurrage, no confiscation, no supply increase. 

Where we stand today, this is not even yet a problem let alone one that requires immediate intention. Most of this speculation is coming from altcoin advocates who want to prove POW and Bitcoin's fair economics wrong, and prove POS, token-printing and selling as correct.  Do fees need to always stay high? No. Does the hashrate have to always increase? Also no.