Bitcoin’s scarcity is everything — change that, and you won’t have Bitcoin

Rich Rines, Founding Contributor at Core, ex-Coinbase, says Bitcoin’s most important quality is not digital nativity, privacy, security, or censorship resistance, but scarcity.

In the following article, he reveals why.

The absolute, mathematically enforced scarcity with a hard cap of 21 million tokens. No more, ever. Satoshi Nakamoto carved scarcity from the infinite stone of digital abundance. That’s his true contribution. Because scarcity is not natural in a world where everything can be copied, cloned, streamed, and duplicated endlessly. It must be engineered.

Bitcoin is the first and still the most credible example of that engineering. No institution or entity has the right to alter Bitcoin’s scarcity. Without scarcity, there will be no Bitcoin.

Scarcity matters in a world of abundance

Bitcoin is the most sought-after digital asset because it’s the first to be truly finite. There will only ever be 21 million. And scarcity matters not just as a number but as a principle that unlocks a cascade of other values.

It exemplifies rare trust, honesty, and a promise that Bitcoin will always hold weight, no matter how uncertain societal conditions become. In the absence of supply-side bailouts, scarcity improves accountability and guarantees each BTC holder has control over a fixed, unchangeable system.

Bitcoin’s scarce token supply brings order to an otherwise chaotic global financial ecosystem, anchoring positive expectations in a rule-based economic mechanism. Scarcity also encourages fiscal discipline as the hard cap helps in thoughtfully designing financial decisions for long-term, sustainable gains.

Unlike fiat currencies, where central banks can indiscriminately print money, leading to uncontrolled inflation, Bitcoin’s fixed supply ensures steady price appreciation. Further, the quadrennial Bitcoin halving provides a predictable supply growth rate where the 21 million cap will be reached around 2140.

This is why Bitcoin has succeeded where many others haven’t. It’s committed to scarcity, not in theory but in architecture.

When scarcity is real, users respond. Besides Bitcoin, this is evident in how innovations like NFTs or limited-supply tokens captured interest. But when it is marketed and not enforced, the consequences are predictable — dilution, distrust, decline.

That doesn’t mean every token needs to be hard-capped. Abundance has its place. The point is, one must intuitively know the difference between when scarcity is essential and when it isn’t. So, when it is promised, like it was for Bitcoin, it must be delivered.

As a space, the crypto industry can do better at guarding this sacred principle of scarcity. Upholding it isn’t just good design. It’s the bedrock of long-term trust. And it’s particularly important for any project building for the Bitcoin ecosystem to align with Bitcoin’s principles and follow Satoshi’s standard.

The line that cannot be crossed

The greatest quality of the Bitcoin community is its absolute dedication to upholding the scarcity principle. This was particularly clear in December 2024, when BlackRock released an ad promoting its Bitcoin ETF that included a legal disclaimer, ‘There is no guarantee Bitcoin’s 21 million supply cap will not be changed.’

The disclaimer was, in all likelihood, inserted by conservative compliance advisors to avoid regulatory risks. But the community’s reaction was telling as the footnote struck a raw nerve. The backlash was swift, and it wasn’t just from Bitcoin maximalists.

People pushed back not out of fear that Bitcoin would change, but to reaffirm their commitment that it must not. That’s what belief in scarcity looks like. It’s not passive—it’s an active defence of a principle.

Sure, any encoded rule can be changed through a hard fork. But if Bitcoin were to exceed its 21 million cap, it wouldn’t be Bitcoin anymore — not in spirit, social consensus, or value.

That’s not a technical nuance; it’s a foundational truth — one that only a compliance lawyer could rationalise away. Bitcoin is the 21 million cap. Break that, and you don't have Bitcoin.

But that doesn't mean the Bitcoin community can rest easy knowing the limit is permanently safe. The community will have to actively keep defending it, particularly as block rewards continue to decline with each halving and miners rely increasingly on transaction fees. Someone will surely again propose increasing the 21 million cap or reintroducing tail emissions to keep miners incentivised.

The Bitcoin community and the crypto industry at large need to handle those conversations with clarity. Bitcoin’s value depends on its credibility, while its credibility depends on scarcity. And protecting the scarcity principle further depends on the entire Bitcoin community. Not on any one developer, miner, or institution — but on the collective will to say — this rule doesn’t get changed.

That doesn’t mean ignoring the economic realities miners face. On the contrary, it means building around them. Bitcoin ecosystem developers need to support products and build systems that sustain miner revenue through transaction fees, layered applications, and usage-driven design. The community needs to reduce the pressure to mint more tokens by facilitating enhanced value capture for miners.

Although miner incentives matter, Bitcoin’s supply integrity matters more. Because there will be no miners if there is no Bitcoin. There are many ways to fund Bitcoin’s security, and developers will build such alternate revenue streams.

But there is only one chance to uphold Bitcoin’s fixed supply. This is the hill, and it always has been. So it must be defended at all costs, no matter what happens.

About author

Rich Rines is a Bitcoin class of 2013 OG, who previously led money movements at Coinbase. He left Coinbase to focus fully on Core, recognizing its potential and aligning better with his startup-oriented mentality. Rich serves as the CEO of Element Wallet, a consumer application set to become integral to the Core ecosystem, focusing on stablecoins and encrypted messaging infrastructure. As a serial entrepreneur, Rich also founded AutoReach, a B2B software company. He is a versatile builder, often described as a ‘zero-to-one and one-to-100’ operator, driving Core’s strategic growth and infrastructure development.

About Core

Core is the leading Bitcoin scaling solution, transforming idle Bitcoin into a productive, yield-generating asset that powers Bitcoin DeFi at scale. Core’s TimeLock and TimeLock+ offer Bitcoin holders a secure, native way to earn yield by locking BTC directly on the Bitcoin blockchain, without giving up custody or introducing new risk. This trustless yield mechanism helps to secure the high-performance, EVM-compatible Core blockchain, where users can access an expanding universe of Bitcoin-focused decentralized applications. Core powers first-of-their-kind products like Valour's yield-bearing Bitcoin ETP and lstBTC—the first liquid, yield-generating Bitcoin asset. The network supports over USD 500M in DeFi TVL, backed by 7,000+ timelocked Bitcoin and ~75% of Bitcoin mining hash power.