Jamie Dimon Thinks Bitcoin Supply Is Not Capped At 21 Million

January 22, 2023 10:58 pm Comments

Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan, has been a long time critic of Bitcoin and the crypto industry where he has frequently accused BTC of being a Ponzi scheme.

Although his stance on this has softened in recent years, he continues to make some criticisms which might decrease the confidence of some investors.

One of his recent remarks is that he questioned whether or not the supply of Bitcoin is actually capped at a total supply of 21 million.

Theoretically, Bitcoin having a defined limited supply would be bullish for the price of Bitcoin as it ensures that the price of the asset will go up if demand increases.

However, Dimon commented that he was skeptical about the algorithm of Bitcoin and its ability to actually enforce that.

DeCrypt.co reports:

Many have, in fact, read Bitcoin’s algorithms—which are open source and freely viewable by the entire world. As pointed out by Jameson Lopp, co-founder of the Bitcoin wallet company Casa, Bitcoin’s supply cap is implicitly enforced by just 5 lines of code.

To be precise, Bitcoin is programmed to cut its supply issuance rate in half every 210,000 blocks, which is roughly every four years. Whereas 50 new BTC were issued per block in 2009, only 6.25 BTC come attached to each block today.

These events, called “halvings,” are programmed to occur just 33 times, after which Bitcoin’s block reward will be cut to zero.

This should occur by the year 2141, assuming nothing changes before that time, Bitcoin developer Luke DashJr told Decrypt.

Whether or not the code of Bitcoin can actually change is debatable and something as major as the supply would have to be consented to by the entire blockchain.

Some speculators think that Dimon is perhaps saying this in order for JPMorgan and other financial insitutions to continue to accumulate Bitcoin.

After all, it is always a better idea to watch what institutional investors are doing in the market rather than their public announcements.

Others believe that JPMorgan might soon be launching its own form of crypto which may eventually compete with BTC one day.

No matter the reason, it is clear that Dimon’s stance on BTC being a useless asset has certainly weakened and its not a far stretch to say that it will be completely different in a few years time.

Yahoo reports:

That said, anything enforced by code can technically be changed, as long as users consent to it.

Many argue that the Bitcoin community will be forced to upgrade its software to produce more than 21 million coins, in order to provide consistent funds to support the mining industry.

While Bitcoin’s supply is limited, it is still infinitely divisible. Tiny units of the currency could still be used for small transactions, even if its price were to enter the seven-figure range.

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