Bitcoin’s scarcity only guarantees scarcity of the base asset, not scarcity of claims on it. If the financial system builds a large layer of digital credit through custodial claims, lending, derivatives, rehypothecation and synthetic exposure, investors can gain Bitcoin exposure without requiring an equivalent amount of actual BTC to be bought and withdrawn. That creates an elastic layer of financial claims around an inelastic asset and can absorb demand without forcing price to rise proportionally. Gold stayed physically scarce but bullion banking created a much larger market of unallocated accounts, futures, forwards and other claims that changed how price discovery worked. Bitcoin could follow the same path. Institutional adoption could validate Bitcoin while also weakening the pure scarcity thesis if future demand is increasingly satisfied through financial claims rather than self custody of finite coins.