Well there are currently over 14k bitcoin nodes securing the network. Even if you deployed 20k new nodes, more than doubling the number of existing nodes, to run a fork that supports an increase in supply, it still wouldn’t work.
You would have to somehow take down the vast majority of nodes, many of which run on Tor.
Notably, neither miners alone nor the core Bitcoin devs could force an increase in supply without the support of the majority of nodes.
Note also, you can run a node on a Raspberry Pi so most node operators are regular folks securing the network for themselves. Bitcoin is run/secured by plebs, not whales.
In the Blockwars of 2017 many large miners and custodial exchanges tried to increase the block size but were thwarted because the majority of nodes didn’t agree with the change.
I think the 21 million cap is safe for the foreseeable future. If anything we may see a switch to Satoshis (Sats) as the default currency to replace Bitcoin. There are 1 Billion Sats per Bitcoin which should be more than enough for some time.
Re-reading your comment with a different lens, the minimum number of natural persons required to fork Bitcoin to a larger supply is actually 1.
That said, it would be a fork, responsible for producing its own hash power, and would not be recognized as Bitcoin since it wouldn’t be following the Bitcoin protocol.
If you wanted to modify the Bitcoin protocol to support a larger supply, see my previous comment.
You would have to somehow take down the vast majority of nodes, many of which run on Tor.
Notably, neither miners alone nor the core Bitcoin devs could force an increase in supply without the support of the majority of nodes.
Note also, you can run a node on a Raspberry Pi so most node operators are regular folks securing the network for themselves. Bitcoin is run/secured by plebs, not whales.
In the Blockwars of 2017 many large miners and custodial exchanges tried to increase the block size but were thwarted because the majority of nodes didn’t agree with the change.
I think the 21 million cap is safe for the foreseeable future. If anything we may see a switch to Satoshis (Sats) as the default currency to replace Bitcoin. There are 1 Billion Sats per Bitcoin which should be more than enough for some time.