What is Scarcity?
Bitcoin's fixed and verifiable supply limit, enforced by every node rather than promised by an issuer.
What is unusual is not the limit itself but its credibility: anyone can verify the issuance schedule and check that it has been followed since 2009. Most scarcity claims rest on trust in an issuer.
Scarcity is a necessary condition for a monetary asset, not a sufficient one. Plenty of things are scarce and worthless.
Related terms
21 million cap
Bitcoin's maximum supply, which emerges from the halving schedule rather than being set as a separate…
EconomicsHalving
The scheduled 50% reduction of the block subsidy, occurring every 210,000 blocks — roughly every four years.
MarketsStock-to-flow
A model relating an asset's existing supply to its annual new production, applied to Bitcoin to argue for…
This definition is part of the Bitcoin Logical glossary. For the fuller explanation, start with Learn, or see the live numbers on The Bitcoin Signal.