These parts suggest the author doesn't understand it that well:<p>--
I can't speak to the economic implications of limiting # of bitcoins
to only 21 million -- it's probably based on the fixed rate of coin
generation and the desire to have it stop by 2016.
---<p>Bitcoins are generated until 2140.<p>---
Also, if you are serious about making a currency for the
whole internet, 21 million seems like a few order of magnitude too small due to number of participants.
--<p>Each coin is made up of 100,000,000 atomic units, so using the bitcoin denomination is arbitrary, and smaller denominations can be used as the value of a bitcoin increases.