THE $2 TRILLION SECRET OF BITCOIN
No proof-of-work cryptocurrency has survived solely on transaction fees.
Bitcoin is about to attempt exactly that.
The numbers:
Transaction fees today: 1% of miners' revenue.
Necessary to maintain security: 100x current levels. Average fee needed: $85 per transaction.
Current average fee: $0.62.
Princeton researchers proved in 2016 that mining solely on fees is fundamentally unstable. 382 academic citations. Zero successful refutations. When fees replace subsidies, miners gain profitable strategies to attack instead of protecting the network.
The common assumption that cheap nuclear and solar energy will solve this is mathematically false. If energy costs drop 80%, attack costs drop 80%. The security equation remains unchanged. Game theory doesn't care about electricity prices.
Blockstream's Director of Research calls this "a scary phase shift that no other currency has gone through."
Bitcoin Core developer James O'Beirne: "We may only have two reductions ahead of us before this becomes a serious issue."
By 2032, block subsidies drop to 25% of current levels. By 2036, to 12.5%.
All other major proof-of-work chains have chosen perpetual issuance or completely abandoned proof-of-work. Monero issues forever. Ethereum switched to proof-of-stake.
Only Bitcoin is trying the unprecedented.
Sixteen years of data show fee revenue trapped at 1-4% regardless of adoption, price, or market conditions. The thesis that fees would naturally increase has had sixteen years to prove itself.
It did not.
The world's most valuable proof-of-work network guarantees $2 trillion through a mechanism that academic consensus describes as unstable and that no cryptocurrency has ever made work.
This is not a prediction. This is math.
The experiment is ongoing. Results will come by 2032.
$BTC
