Bitcoin isn’t destined to go up because supply is theoretically set

Supply isn’t theoretically set, it is actually set. 21 million coins. That’s it. Nobody can print more than that even if that had a trillion dollars and a thousand people with AKs willing to die for the cause. I didn’t say value is guaranteed to increase relative to other things, I said portion of total supply remains the same, which will always be true. The only thing that can change supply is a massive fork which requires broad consensus across the entire Bitcoin ecosystem. And… good luck with that, they struggle to even agree on non-contentious proposals. Bitcoin was designed to be very difficult to modify the protocol of, because money should be stable (in protocol) and trustable. When somebody gives you 1BTC you should be able to know that it’s always going to be 1BTC. And it will be.

It’s easy to imagine BTC mining being banned in a major country

China tried that. Didn’t work. Some countries do ban Bitcoin, and they miss out on the economic benefits of transactions that settle instantly globally and the market that comes with them. And the best currency humanity has ever produced to date whose supply can’t be tampered with by an untrustworthy central bank. Too bad for them. Bitcoin don’t give AF about your national regulations, it will continue to work and transfer money around the globe whether Government X likes it or not. The US and China and EU could ban it, but where it’s seeing a lot of growth in adoption is Africa and Global South, places where people have very recent memories of central banks rugging them. They’re gonna keep using it, and the efficiency gains will benefit their markets, not the markets which ban it.