Bitcoin [BTC] supply expansion underway, claims Chinese news outlet; Dismissed as ‘speculation’

Just when the intense debate surrounding the increase in the total Bitcoin supply was fading, Jiang Zhuoer, the founder of the cryptocurrency mining pool BTC.TOP reportedly dropped the bomb on his Weibo handle that the development team of the Bitcoin Core camp has been targeting an increase to the previously set supply of 21 million BTCs.

In a recent report by a Chinese crypto outlet, Bitcoin core supporter Jiang claimed on his Weibo profile that the expansion process was underway. It further stated that:

“In Jiang’s opinion, Matt Luongo is the “mouthpiece” for the Bitcoin Core development team at the roundtable discussion.”

However, Luongo himself had some contrarian views. Matt Luongo, the founder of Thesis, retweeted the article published on the said website and said:

“Can anyone in the Chinese BTC community slide in there and correct him? Both on the big issue as well as the minor character assassination – I especially love the part where folks think I’m claiming to be a BTC core dev”

Previously, Luongo had tweeted:

“I was the guy that said we might have to one day raise the Bitcoin supply cap. Fight me.”

In a series of tweets last week, he clarified that there was no such proposal. The discussion was pure ‘speculations’ of a single person, he said. Further, the CTO of Casa, Jameson Lopp, who was also an attendee at Satoshi’s Roundtable, asserted that he was in the room and did not hear anyone agreeing to the proposal.

Matt Luongo further called out the Chinese tweet in a post stating:

“He’s taking the discussion out of context and pretending that it’s a widely held belief of BTC core devs. It isn’t. No one is seriously proposing raising the supply limit. I was only speculatively discussing how the free market might develop in the future relative to subsidies.”

A Twitter user, @crypto_zl, replied to the article tweeted by the news outlet in question, stating:

“Don’t make a rumor here, can you provide some real news? Shame on the Chinese.”

Luongo claimed that he had suggested an increase in BTC supply on rational grounds. He elucidated that the reward for mining a block halved every four years. So, the magnitude of transaction volume is expected to go down. This would leave very little incentive for the miners to validate the blocks and secure the network. This had not resonated well with the Bitcoin core community and had led to a heated debate online.