StarkWare CEO Proposes 4% Annual Issuance Rate for Bitcoin to Replace 21 Million Cap

StarkWare CEO Eli Ben-Sasson has proposed replacing Bitcoin's hard cap of 21 million coins with an annual issuance rate of 4%. He argues that the current hard cap is unreasonable, as private keys will be lost over time, and predicts that all private keys will eventually disappear. Ledger estimates that approximately 4 million Bitcoins have already been permanently lost. Ben-Sasson points out that a 4% annual issuance rate roughly aligns with global population growth rates. This proposal has sparked opposition within the community, with critics arguing that the fixed cap is a core value of Bitcoin and that Bitcoin can be divided into 2.1 quadrillion satoshis, which is sufficient to address the issue of decreasing available supply.