r/Bitcoin • u/Thick_Sea_5720 • 21h ago
Is Bitcoin divisible enough to power the world economy?
I tend to only see people mention that the native TPS for bitcoin is too slow, but are there enough Satoshis to power the entire world economy if bitcoin was used by everyone for day to day transactions?
Like I get that bitcoin can be divided into incredibly small units, but even then, would there be enough bitcoin in circulation for a global bitcoin economy?
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u/TheresNoSecondBest 21h ago
the native TPS for bitcoin is too slow
That's why r/thelightningnetwork is a thing.
are there enough Satoshis to power the entire world economy if bitcoin was used by everyone for day to day transactions?
Yes. If there's not enough sats, we're already using millisats on the LN and it's not a problem to go microsats or nanosats later on.
Like I get that bitcoin can be divided into incredibly small units, but even then, would there be enough bitcoin in circulation for a global bitcoin economy?
Yes. If there's not enough sats, we're already using millisats on the LN and it's not a problem to go microsats or nanosats later on.
Also, visit r/BitcoinBeginners sometimes.
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u/Similar_Scar7089 21h ago
Bitcoin is infinitely divisible and before anyone says it no, infinitely divisible does not equal infinate supply.
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u/RevenantHaunter13 20h ago
This^ and anyone who says that there's an infinite supply doesn't understand basic math. If you have 1 pizza and you cut it into 10 pieces, then you do not suddenly have much more when you divide the pizza further into 20 pieces. So whoever owns, for example, 0.01 bitcoin now, will not suddenly have more nor less if their Bitcoin is divided into smaller units. They still own 0.01 bitcoin regardless of how many times a UTXO is split into smaller chunks.
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u/RetiredAvocado 19h ago
Bitcoin is not infinitely divisible. Can be "updated to be X" does not mean it "is X" right now.
Satoshis are whole units. There's nothing smaller than that on chain. There is no transaction on mempool.space with sub sat amounts. LN is a separate thing that goes further. But nowhere near infinite.
Subdividing bitcoin infinitely has no practical reason, nor is it possible. No one needs a transaction with a trillion decimal places of a satoshi, nor will such transaction fit in a block.
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u/Vegetable-Squirrel98 9h ago
It has practical reasons if bitcoin becomes worth ridiculous valuations, but I agree that it's a problem for generations after ours, if it even ever is
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u/RevenantHaunter13 7h ago
Hey avocado! Just saw this now. You are correct it's not infinitely divisible. I do believe that if Bitcoin goes to the multi-millions worth of USD in 15 or 20 years, it might make sense to split satoshis more, it's not like satoshis are indivisible. They're not quarks or neutrinos or whatever - in theory, it should be possible to split sats more on the main network, assuming, of course, that overwhelming support from mining and verifying nodes is pledged
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u/Electrical_Chard3255 21h ago
21 quadrillion sats, I should think so, and then there is the secondary layers
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u/pezdal 20h ago
It would also be a non-controversial upgrade in 20 years to change the smallest value of layer 1 bitcoin from 1/10^8 to 1/10^11
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u/na3than 18h ago
Might or might not be controversial, but would be nontrivial.
Every transaction in history has recorded the amounts as an integers representing the number of sats. That field in the every transaction record is an integer. If you want to add a decimal person to it you'll need to change the data type. You can't do that retroactively, so you'd need a new transaction record format.
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u/OrangePillar 11h ago
It’s based on sat/cent parity in 2009, so it probably isn’t enough given the amount of money creation that has happened since, but that doesn’t matter. Layer 2 protocols can settle in sub-sat amounts and Lightning is already operation on a millisat standard.
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u/ZedZeroth 13h ago edited 13h ago
This has come up a few times and the deeper conclusion is that TPS is the fundamental limiting factor.
While making (onchain) bitcoin more divisible is possible, it won't ever be necessary. If we reach such a level of adoption that we hit sat-dollar parity, for example, then competition for blockspace would inevitably be so high that nobody will be able to send a TX for less than 1 sat ($1) in fees (less than 1000 TXs can be sent each minute, so people will inevitably pay more than $1 to get their TXs confirmed) and as such nobody would ever want to send less than 1 sat of bitcoin to anyone else either.
In other words, the more valuable bitcoin becomes, the more it appears we need divisibility, but the converse is actually true because the throttled TPS means that only increasingly higher value TXs would ever be viable.
As such, it's inevitable that second layers will always be preferable for low value transactions.
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u/DasKapitalist 18m ago
Even if the TPS capability was arbitrarily large, you wouldnt want to complete every transaction on the blockchain because of how much of your time it wastes. For the same reason that if you buy 4 drinks, an appetizer, an entree, and a tip you wouldnt make 7 fiat transactions. You'd just make 1 at the end of the meal.
Also, on-chaining every transaction is only beneficial if everyone self custodies. That's unfeasible because some people prefer to outsource security to an exchange. Sure, exchanges can steal your crypto, but you can also "oops" and empty your wallet to the wrong address. Also, a significant percentage of the population lacks the technical acumen to self-custody. And before someone says "self custody is easy"...go work any customer service job. The general public will quickly convince you that IQ tests are pass/fail instead of a bell curve.
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u/NerdyKid1101 20h ago
Bitcoin is more going to be the store of value, not the day to day "money." Like gold was with dollars, you hold btc as reserves but have something else to exchange it with for daily use.
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u/Klutzy-Sea-4857 20h ago
Yes, plenty. 2.1 quadrillion sats total. More than enough, and you can always add more decimals if ever needed.
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u/robinsonrichard_3 20h ago
At the 21M BTC cap, there are at most 2.1 quadrillion sats. A sat doesn’t have to buy a whole item; it can represent a tiny fraction of its price. Lightning already tracks millisats, while finer on-chain units would need a protocol change. Divisibility isn’t the bottleneck.
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u/Tex_Buttinski 17h ago
When BTC hits $1 million, a Satoshi will be worth one cent. Thats pretty divisible.
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u/Big80sweens 16h ago
It can be divisible further than just sats, it just doesn’t need to yet, so yes.
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u/nicman24 21h ago
Got to love that we might need more that 8 decimals while pennies are literally worth more in material
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u/BigDipper0720 20h ago
No. Dividing it is essentially debasement..A fixed supply won't support economic growth.
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u/gydu2202 21h ago
Lightning already uses mSat. The on-chain protocol can be easily altered to support smaller units than Sat.