The most frequent question asked by new investors exploring bitcoin: "why should we be confident in the 21m coin limit? What stops people from changing that?" My most succinct but meaningful answer still takes a bit of space /1

2/ Anyone can change the bitcoin code they run to change anything about it. Doing so immediately pushes them off the bitcoin network as they're running incompatible software. Does that mean bitcoin can't be changed?

3/ when someone makes a meaningful change to the bitcoin code, we get multiple networks, with bitcoin owners now owning tokens on each network. "bitcoin" is whatever the world refers to as such. In practice, this is an informal consensus of stakeholders.

4/ stakeholders include exchanges, holders, users, miners, etc. These stakeholders are mostly incentivized to maximize the value of their bitcoin tokens. Since a core value proposition of bitcoin is the predictable disinflationary emission curve,

5/ these stakeholders (correctly) believe that increasing the inflation rate (and ultimate supply of bitcoins) would reduce their value - they'd be hurting themselves. So, they'll call the network that honors the value proposition of 21m, "bitcoin."

6/ in the event that there was some reason that bitcoin stakeholders near unanimously felt increasing the inflation rate would benefit themselves, this could happen. As a bitcoin holder, if the stakeholders are correct, you'd be happy with this change.

7/ in the event that there's meaningful disagreement on this, we'd likely end up with two networks, and you'd own "bitcoins" on both networks, one which maintained the 21m limit, and one which didn't, and market forces would determine the rest.

8/ my best analogy on this is: "what stops America from reintroducing slavery? How can we be confident that voters won't support a constitutional amendment bringing it back?" Nothing prevents that...except the voters and their incentives.

9/ the point of this analogy is that *everything* we trust about the world (outside of physics) ultimately rests on social consensus and incentives. Everything else is window dressing. Bitcoin has incredibly clear and powerful incentives and consensus favoring stability.