Bitcoin Cannot Be Printed. Three Ways to Actually Explain Why That Matters For Your Money (Bit Coin, Wealth & Investing)

So the number everyone quotes is 21 million.

Bitcoiners get obsessed with it.

There will only ever be 21 million.

They get hats with them on.

I've got a T-shirt that someone gave me with 21 million written on it.

But just saying the number doesn't actually explain why that matters.

So let's use a picture instead or a couple of pictures.

Imagine an artist releases a print, proper limited edition print.

And on the bottom corner, it says four of 50. that number tells you two things it tells you there are 50 of these in total and it tells you the artist has made a promise a real one that no more than 50 will ever exist that promise is the entire reason that the print is worth anything beyond the cost of the paper and the ink and that thousands can't be printed you know just for free basically on your home printer If you bought print number four and then found out next year the artist had quietly printed another 200 of them because they fancied a bit more cash, that print you own would be worth a fraction of what you pay because suddenly there's more of them.

The scarcity, the fact there was only 50, was the value.

Take away the scarcity and you take away the value.

Now compare that to a print with no number on it at all, no limit stated anywhere, just one that you can buy in any shop or print from the internet.

The artist could make 10 more tomorrow if they wanted or 10,000 and there's genuinely nothing stopping them.

Would you pay the same money for that one? Of course you wouldn't.

You'd be a bit mad to pay, you know, thousands of pounds for a, I don't know, Andy Warhol print that you know that's just going to get printed endlessly and anyone can download the PDF and just print loads of it.

That unnumbered print is what every currency in the world has been throughout history, including the pound, including the dollar.

In your pocket right now, there is no 50 on the corner.

There's no promise to the people in charge of it, from the people in charge of it, that they're not going to print anymore.

And the people in charge of it can and regularly do decide to make more whenever they want.

Bitcoin is the numbered print.

21 million.

And that promise isn't a pinky promise from an artist you have to trust.

It's written into code, running on hundreds of thousands of computers all over the world.

And not one single person, company or government can quietly print a few more of them when it suits them.

Now to get into why it's not possible to make more of it, it gets super technical, but it's coded in, been tested by some of the best engineers in the world.