Discussion on Future of Bitcoin's Security Budget

Today I wanna bring up a topic about Bitcoin's security budget. With the halving coming next year, it seems super relevant. In 15-20 years, when block rewards drop below 0.5-1 BTC, will transaction fees have to rise? What do you guys think?

This feels like that classic question newbies ask: "What happens when halving reaches zero?" But let's be real, transaction fees are part of the block reward. It's been discussed here a bunch of times.

As a miner for over ten years, I think we need some solutions. One idea I like is to treat stale addresses as abandoned after 2059. If an address hasn’t been touched in decades, fold it back into the rewards. Sounds harsh, but banks do it.

Yeah, a lot of Bitcoin enthusiasts are on board with that. But technically, how do you handle BTC that’s been untouched for like 50 years? Many of those addresses will have lost their private keys. And what if that lost BTC was significant?

To prove an address is active, just do a small transaction. Move, say, 0.1 BTC from an old block to a new one. If it’s abandoned, recycle those coins back into rewards. If not, they stay active for another 50 years.

But isn’t it a slippery slope? I mean, if I stash my coins away for my kids, they should still have the right to them. I have some old stock certificates that still hold value, you know?

Lol, watch out for the pitchforks, man! If transaction fees stay as they are, miners are gonna get rekt. Rewards will plummet, and nobody will want to mine at those rates.

I feel like the long-term fix is increasing transactions per block. When BTC hits a million, paying high fees will be a nightmare. More transactions mean more fees for miners, simple as that.

Right, but if Bitcoin can't handle many transactions efficiently, it’s gonna struggle as a currency. Sidechains might be the answer but I doubt anyone wants a fork that’s just a tail-emission scheme.

Value-wise, Bitcoin has so much potential. I mean, if BTC reaches 1 billion by 2038, everything will be ridiculously more expensive. Think of inflation and currency resets.

Wait, what are you saying? Are you assuming BTC will hit 1 million easily? Just curious how you reached that.

I think there’s a lot of speculation around block size. Who decides what’s ideal? If we increase it, how does that affect forks like BCH? Seems messy.

But what if each satoshi becomes more valuable over time? Miners might get less, but they could still earn more in value. And with more users, fees will naturally increase.

So it’s either a ton of transactions or mining income has to come from elsewhere. If not, Bitcoin might become obsolete.

True, but if transactions get too expensive, no one will want to use BTC. It’s a catch-22.

I think the network's security is at risk if fees don't keep pace with block rewards. If it’s too cheap to transact, who will bother?

If Bitcoin goes up, miners will follow the money. But yeah, it’s an expensive game. A 51% attack is crazy costly.

Exactly. It’s not feasible to pull off a 51% attack with current ASIC prices. The barriers are too high.

And if you think about it, if BTC value rises, miners will always find a way to make it work, even if fees fluctuate.

But if we keep things as they are, it doesn’t solve the fee problem long-term. Something’s gotta give.