Eli Ben-Sasson, CEO of StarkWare, thinks Bitcoin’s 21 million cap should go. In his proposal: replace it with a 4% annual issuance rate instead.
His reasoning? People lose private keys. Permanently. “As time goes to infinity, all keys will be lost,” he posted on X. Ledger estimated last year that up to 4 million Bitcoin are already gone — burned or locked forever. Ben-Sasson says a hard upper bound still makes sense, just not the current one. He argues 4% annual inflation roughly tracks human population growth.
Bitcoiners did not take this well.
The fixed 21 million cap is basically sacred in Bitcoin circles. It’s the “digital gold” narrative, Austrian economics — a fixed supply that can’t be debased. Critics say changing it would destroy what makes Bitcoin Bitcoin. One user pointed out Bitcoin is divisible into 2.1 quadrillion satoshis, so there’s plenty to “go around.” Ben-Sasson countered that those units trend toward zero too, as keys get lost.
Strategy chairman Michael Saylor is actually a fan of lost keys. He plans to burn his own upon death as a “pro-rata contribution” to other holders.
Zcash founder Bryce “Zooko” Wilcox suggested Bitcoin look at Zcash’s “Network Sustainability Mechanism” proposal. It keeps the fixed cap but lets users burn tokens, which get reissued as block rewards over four years. Miner incentives stay healthy without lifting the hard limit.
One problem: Bitcoin doesn’t have a central authority. Changing the supply cap would need consensus across developers, miners, and node operators. That’s a tall order for a network built on decentralization.
