StarkWare CEO: 21 million Bitcoin cap is \'meaningless\'

StarkWare CEO proposes to replace the fixed supply cap of Bitcoin with an annual issuance cap.

Eli Ben-Sasson, CEO of StarkWare and co-founder of Zcash Scientific Theory, pointed out in a post on the X platform this week that once Bitcoin, which disappears permanently due to the loss of private keys, is taken into account, the fixed supply cap loses its meaning. He proposed replacing the existing fixed cap with a maximum issuance rate of 4% per year. The post, posted on July 7, rekindled a debate that most Bitcoin supporters thought had settled a decade ago: Whether absolute scarcity is Bitcoin\'s biggest advantage or a slow design flaw.

Up to 4 million BTC have been lost

The logic behind the proposal is mathematical, not ideological. Every year, some Bitcoin holders die without leaving mnemonic words, discarding hardware wallets or forgetting passwords, and these coins are never circulated again. Ben-Sasson pushes this observation to the limit: \"As time approaches infinity, all private keys will be lost.\" With a fixed upper limit and no new issuance, the circulation supply can only decrease in one direction.

The data supporting this view is not marginal data. Hardware wallet maker Ledger pointed out in November estimates that as many as 4 million bitcoins will never be accessible, while a 2024 study by River Financial calculated that 3.8 million bitcoins were stored in addresses that had not been moved in more than a decade. About 20 million of the current total supply of 21 million have been excavated, which means that the Internet has issued more than 95% of its total future production. After deducting the lost coins, the effective supply may be close to 16 million to 17 million coins.

These estimates support him more than critics are willing to admit. Hardware wallet maker Ledger calculated in November that up to 4 million BTC items would be permanently inaccessible, nearly one-fifth of the total supply. James Howells is the most famous case of this problem. The IT worker from Newport, Wales, threw away a hard drive containing 8000 BTC in 2013 and has been fighting for permission to dig a landfill for years. His coins remain on the ledger, where anyone can see them, but no one will ever move them.

(The following is Bitcoin supply indicator data, with text descriptions replacing the table: )
Fixed upper limit: 21,000,000 BTC; dug up: approximately 20,000,000 BTC (more than 95%); remaining pending issue (until approximately 2140): less than 1,000,000 BTC;Ledger estimated loss (November 2025): up to 4,000,000 BTC.

The lost coins are equivalent to dividends paid to all holders

The Bitcoin camp on Platform X responded within hours with no ambiguity. The reply treats the 21 million cap as a non-negotiable social contract and warns that touching the cap will actually create a different asset. One recurring comment called the number \"at the heart of faith.\"

The economic rebuttal is deeper than tribal loyalty. In the Austrian economic framework that underpins the digital gold argument, lost coins are not a loophole in the system, but a transfer-because when someone\'s private key disappears, the purchasing power of each remaining coin increases proportionately. Strategy Executive Chairman Michael Saylor pushed this view to the logical extreme, saying he planned to destroy the private key at the time of his death and described it as a proportional contribution to the remaining holders.

As for the practical level: Will shrinking supply lead to units running out? Bitcoin supporters point to divisibility. A bitcoin can be divided into 100 million sago, so the total cap contains 21 trillion base units, and second-layer systems such as the Lightning Network can handle more refined increments, which means that in almost any loss scenario, there are still sufficient units for global commerce. Ben-Sasson responded that the Satoshi and the whole coin behind the lost private key were also inaccessible, so divisibility did not solve the potential liquidity depletion problem.

Monero and Zcash provide alternative practices

The debate is not purely theoretical, as other networks have made the opposite choice. Monero abandoned a fixed cap many years ago and switched to a tail issuance mechanism, with each block permanently generating 0.6 XMR. Miners \'incomes will not plummet, fees will remain low, and the Internet will avoid the cyclical squeeze on miners by halving shocks every four years. Critics, including analysts at CoinShares, argue that permanent offerings will quietly erode purchasing power and make long-term economic models more difficult to explain to investors.

Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox points to a middle ground being discussed within his ecosystem-network sustainability mechanisms. The 21 million cap remains unchanged, but users can voluntarily destroy coins, which will be reissued to miners as block rewards within four years, thereby maintaining a security budget without issuing new coins.

(The following is a model comparison, with text descriptions replacing the table: )
Bitcoin (current): Fixed cap of 21 million, halved to about 2140 years, only transaction fees after subsidy;Ben-Sasson proposal: up to 4% annual issuance, permanent block reward; Monero tail issuance: permanent 0.6 XMR per block, fixed permanent subsidy plus fee;Zcash NSM proposal: The 21 million cap will be retained and the destroyed coins will be reissued within four years.

The security budget is the real time limit behind the argument

Philosophy aside, a specific engineering problem remains. Most of miners \'income now comes from newly minted coins, and this subsidy halves every four years and returns to zero around 2140, when transaction fees must bear the full cost of protecting the network. If transaction fee income is insufficient to support it, computing power will decline and the cost of attacking Bitcoin will also decrease. In forums such as Delving Bitcoin, researchers have been openly debating whether transaction fees alone can maintain sufficient computing power to defend against well-funded attackers. Ben-Sasson\'s proposed cap on issuance rates is just one of several possible answers. This is also the part of his post where serious Bitcoin developers are willing to participate in the discussion-even though they deny changes to the supply cap itself.

Why a 4% fork will eventually become a minority chain

Changing the issuance plan requires consensus among developers, miners, node operators, exchanges and holders, whose entire investment logic is based on a fixed cap. Such an alliance does not exist and shows no sign of forming. If a faction does launch a client that supports 4% release, the real result will be a controversial hard fork, creating a minority chain, while the original 21 million networks will retain their code, liquidity and brand.

The more likely direction in the next decade is to solve problems through efficiency improvements rather than expansion. Solutions such as Cluster Mempool and covenant-based upgrades aim to increase the transaction fee revenue miners extract from existing block space, thereby solving security budget issues without changing monetary policies. There is also an irony behind the entire incident: the Zcash network, based on Ben-Sasson\'s own research, implements the same fixed cap of 21 million coins copied from Bitcoin-meaning that the cryptographers who today question this number were the ones who helped export it.