The world's largest asset manager, BlackRock, raised eyebrows on Wednesday after including a line in an explainer video that supposedly disputed Bitcoin's BTC/USD finite supply thesis.
What happened: The 3-minute-long video, shared by various X users, including MicroStrategy co-founder Michael Saylor, went over the technical details of the top cryptocurrency and its value proposition.
However, when the video reached the fixed supply part, a text disclaimer emerged, stating, "There's no guarantee that Bitcoin's 21 million supply cap will not be changed."
This was enough to spark anxiety among Bitcoiners. A user, going by the pseudonym The Prairie Banana, wondered why such a disclaimer would be inserted.
Alexander, another user, said, “Umm, is BlackRock already coming up with a way to implement a hard fork increasing the BTC cap?
Joel Valenzuela, director of marketing and business development at Dash, voiced strong insinuations, even suggesting a "Bitcoin hijack" theory.
BlackRock didn't immediately respond to Benzinga's request for clarification.
See Also: MicroStrategy’s Aggressive Bitcoin Strategy Raises Eyebrows In Crypto Community
Why It Matters: For long, Bitcoin proponents have aggressively pitched its 21 million supply cap as a hedge against fiat debasement and inflation, giving it a gold-like status.
Theoretically, the supply limit can be altered, but thanks to the network's decentralized nature, the process would require a consensus-driven hard fork among nodes—entities that run Bitcoin software to validate and relay transactions.
The same was argued by Neeraj Khandelwal, co-founder of cryptocurrency exchange CoinDCX, who deemed the likelihood of such an event "unlikely."
Price Action: At the time of writing, Bitcoin was exchanging hands at $96,624.38, down 4.50% in the last 24 hours, according to data from Benzinga Pro.
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