StarkWare CEO proposes 4% annual Bitcoin inflation

Eli Ben‑Sasson, CEO of StarkWare, proposed on Tuesday in a post on X that Bitcoin replace its fixed 21 million coin cap with a 4% annual issuance. He wrote the cap “doesn’t make sense” because private keys are lost over time and that “as time goes to infinity, all keys will be lost.”

Ben‑Sasson said a steady 4% annual inflation rate would roughly track human population growth while he still favored a hard upper bound on supply. He framed the change as a way to maintain scarcity in nominal terms while providing a predictable yearly issuance.

Hardware wallet provider Ledger estimated in November that up to 4 million BTC have been burned or are permanently inaccessible. Ben‑Sasson argued those lost keys shrink the effective circulating supply and that a fixed yearly issuance could help sustain miner rewards as block subsidies decline.

The proposal prompted replies from users across the network. Some noted that Bitcoin is divisible into 2.1 quadrillion satoshis and argued the protocol can support growth in transactions and holdings without altering the cap. Others warned changing the cap would make Bitcoin more like other cryptocurrencies. Ben‑Sasson responded that satoshi units would also become inaccessible if their private keys are lost.

Michael Saylor, executive chairman of MicroStrategy, has stated he plans to destroy his private keys at death as a “pro‑rata contribution” to other holders, a practice he and others say increases scarcity for remaining coins.

Bryce “Zooko” Wilcox, founder of Zcash, suggested developers consider a Network Sustainability Mechanism similar to one proposed in the Zcash ecosystem. That proposal would keep a 21 million cap while allowing burned coins to be gradually reissued as miner rewards over a multi‑year period to ease pressure on miner income.

Any change to Bitcoin’s monetary policy would require broad agreement among developers, miners and node operators. Bitcoin’s decentralized governance makes protocol‑level monetary changes difficult to implement.

The debate centers on two issues: how to preserve a fixed supply that many holders value for scarcity, and how to maintain incentives for miners as block rewards fall over time.