Bitcoin developer Peter Todd’s proposal to give miners a permanent stream of newly created bitcoin has reignited a fierce debate over whether the cryptocurrency’s supply should ever exceed its 21 million limit.
The idea has provoked strong opposition from users who regard that cap as Bitcoin’s defining promise. Debate intensified after Bitcoin++ published a recording of Todd’s 23 July talk in Toronto, titled “Tail Emissions and Demurrage”, on 14 August.
Rather than prompting a detailed discussion about long-term mining incentives, the video triggered a familiar criticism on social media: that “tail emissions” amount to inflation presented as a technical solution.
Todd has advocated a fixed number of new coins being issued with each block since at least 2022. His latest presentation highlighted how little support there is for changing a monetary rule that many Bitcoin buyers consider settled.
“‘Tail emissions’ and ‘demurrage’ are just academic euphemisms for perpetual inflation and a wealth tax on savers,” one X account wrote. “The entire value proposition of Bitcoin rests on absolute, inviolable mathematical scarcity: 21 million, full stop. The moment you introduce perpetual dilution to subsidize miners, you’ve just recreated fiat central planning with extra steps.”
Bitcoin miners use electricity and specialised hardware to produce blocks. Their income currently comes from two sources: newly issued bitcoin, known as the block subsidy, and transaction fees paid by users.
The subsidy is designed to fall over time. Each Bitcoin halving cuts it by roughly half, and by about 2140 it is expected to reach zero. At that point, fees would be the only direct source of mining income.
Todd’s argument is that relying entirely on fees could create unusually large and unpredictable rewards for some blocks. Those incentives might encourage a miner to try to reorganise the recent transaction history rather than simply extend the existing chain.
Such an event is known as a chain reorganisation, or reorg. It would not automatically cause Bitcoin to fail when block subsidies ended, because users could wait for additional confirmations before accepting payments. However, Todd’s concern is that miners with very large amounts of computing power could pursue strategies unavailable to smaller operators or more decentralised mining pools.
The argument centres on Bitcoin’s security budget. Proof of work is intended to make dishonest behaviour expensive while rewarding miners for maintaining the ledger. If fees do not provide enough income, critics fear that mining could become more concentrated, giving a smaller number of participants greater influence over transaction settlement.
Todd’s proposed answer is to preserve a small reward in every block after the existing subsidy has disappeared. Supporters say that would create a predictable minimum level of mining income. Opponents argue that it would permanently increase the supply of bitcoin and dilute the relative holdings of existing owners.
Todd has also suggested that ongoing issuance could compensate for bitcoin that is permanently lost through forgotten passwords, damaged devices, dead keys or inadequate inheritance planning. He has referred to an annual loss rate of about 0.1%, although that figure is a modelling assumption rather than an independently measurable fact.
Critics say it is impossible to know how many coins will be lost in the future. Better custody arrangements, multi-signature wallets and inheritance services may also reduce the rate of loss, making it risky to base Bitcoin’s monetary policy on an uncertain estimate.
A second option proposed by Todd is demurrage. Under that model, coins would incur a charge when they were spent after remaining inactive, with the proceeds placed in a fund that miners could access.
Demurrage could potentially be introduced through a soft fork, meaning a backward-compatible change to Bitcoin’s rules. Permanent issuance would require a hard fork. But opponents argue that the distinction is technical rather than political: both approaches would take value from holders.
Tail emissions would impose a continuing cost through an expanding supply, while demurrage would apply a more visible charge to dormant savings. Critics say neither system matches the fixed monetary policy that attracted many Bitcoin users.
“No, Peter Todd. Just no. 21M is 21M. It’s a value proposition of Bitcoin,” one person replied in the Bitcoin++ X thread.
The 21 million limit is widely viewed as the feature that most clearly separates Bitcoin from central-bank fiat currencies. There is no committee or emergency meeting that can create more units whenever a particular group needs funding. For opponents of Todd’s proposal, the cap is therefore not only a technical rule but also the social contract behind Bitcoin.
They are not necessarily arguing that miners should operate without adequate compensation. Their objection is that a system built on absolute scarcity should not make that scarcity negotiable once the scheduled block subsidy becomes less generous.
Bitcoin supporter Trey Sellers said a “fork to change bitcoin’s supply schedule would fail just as hard as BIP-110, if not harder”. Adam Back, the founder of Blockstream and a cryptographer, responded by focusing on the difficulty of persuading enough users to support a contentious fork.
Back argued that supporters would need a simple narrative capable of rallying people behind a dangerous proposal, even if its central claims were wrong. “[The] trick is finding ways to trigger and rally people to your dangerously inadvisable cause with simple though false [narratives]. 110 used 1) JPEG spam and illegal [content] could be stopped but devs are captured so they won’t, 2) anti layer2 anchors devs want to etheriumize bitcoin,” Back wrote.
Supporters of BIP-110 quickly used Todd’s speech to reinforce claims that Bitcoin development had been compromised. A much smaller group of Bitcoin users openly backed the idea of tail emissions.
“BTC can afford tail emissions. 0.21 BTC/block = 0.05% yearly inflation. Noise when compared to productivity gains in the economy. But the community will never support it unanimously. If it happens, it will be through hardfork,” the X account Noem wrote.
Todd has acknowledged that a hard fork introducing tail emissions is unlikely within the next five years, even if supporters agree on a specific design. Any major Bitcoin change would need backing from node operators, miners, developers, exchanges, wallet providers and people using the network for economic activity.
The proposal is not limited to Todd. Starkware chief executive Eli Ben-Sasson has also supported the idea of bounded, ongoing issuance.
“Capping the supply of Bitcoin at 21M doesn’t make sense. Because over time, keys will be lost. In fact, as time goes to infinity, all keys will be lost,” Ben-Sasson said on X.
A Bitcoin proposal published on Delving in mid-2026 outlined the possibility of issuing 0.25 bitcoin per block from about 2040, alongside burning transaction fees. But that approach faces the same fundamental objection: a proposed security measure could also become a monetary risk for Bitcoin owners.
The key test will be whether transaction fees can continue to fund enough mining activity through future halvings, whether mining power becomes more concentrated and whether a solution can be introduced without weakening the promise that helped make Bitcoin valuable.
The next halvings will offer practical evidence about whether the fee market can reliably pay for the computing power securing the network. Until then, tail emissions remain a distant response to a potential future problem, while opposition to changing the 21 million limit remains immediate and emphatic.
Three months ago, public bitcoin miners were beginning to dismantle or repurpose mining fleets for artificial intelligence and other uses.
