StarkWare CEO Eli Ben-Sasson has proposed replacing Bitcoin's 21 million hard cap with a 4% annual issuance rate, citing concerns over lost private keys and aligning issuance with global population growth. Ben-Sasson argues that as time progresses, all private keys will eventually be lost, making the current hard cap "unreasonable." Ledger estimates that approximately 4 million bitcoins are already permanently lost. The proposal has faced strong opposition from the Bitcoin community, which views the fixed cap as a fundamental principle of the cryptocurrency. Critics argue that Bitcoin's divisibility into 2.1 quadrillion satoshis is sufficient to address supply concerns. Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox suggested an alternative approach, involving a "network sustainability mechanism" that maintains the cap while allowing token burning and gradual reissuance as block rewards. Implementing any such change would require consensus among Bitcoin's decentralized stakeholders, a notably difficult endeavor.