StarkWare CEO suggests 4% annual Bitcoin inflation to replace 21M cap
Bitcoin’s 21 million supply cap is back in debate after StarkWare CEO Eli Ben-Sasson proposed replacing it with a fixed 4% annual issuance rate. He argued that lost private keys mean Bitcoin supply effectively shrinks over time, so a hard cap “doesn’t make sense.” He still wants a fixed upper bound, just with ongoing issuance tied roughly to population growth. The proposal drew strong pushback from Bitcoin supporters, who say the cap is central to Bitcoin’s “digital gold” value proposition and that changing it would undermine what makes Bitcoin unique. Some argued Bitcoin’s divisibility into satoshis already prevents scarcity issues. Zcash founder Bryce Wilcox pointed to a Zcash proposal that preserves a hard cap while reissuing burned coins to support miner incentives, but any similar Bitcoin change would require broad consensus from developers, miners, and node operators.
