Bitcoin Doesn’t Need Another Bull Run. It Needs An Economy
Bitcoin usage still skews toward long-term storage, as seen in how much BTC sits unmoved, says Terahash co-founder Hunter Rogers. But this behavior preserves individual wealth while starving the network.
Bitcoin continues to draw global attention, institutions continue to accumulate it, and a market cap above $1.7 trillion indicates how widely held Bitcoin has become. Yet when you look at how the network actually behaves, the signals don’t match the headlines. More than 60% of all BTC hasn’t moved in over a year, on-chain activity is decreasing (with part of that drop tied to ETF adoption), and miner fee income continues to fluctuate. For a system built to move value rather than simply store it, this becomes a real problem for how it works
Bitcoin was never designed to stand still. That simply isn’t in its nature. Its architecture assumes one thing from the very beginning: economic activity. This means the network relies on transactions to pay miners and on steady activity to let the system function. But today, the system is stumbling upon a contradiction — a high-value network with low-value throughput.
Unlike Ethereum or Solana, where users interact with apps, stake tokens, or mint assets, Bitcoin usage still skews toward long-term storage, as seen in how much BTC sits unmoved. Yes, this behavior preserves individual wealth, but it starves the network. So the more people treat BTC as an untouchable holy grail, the less reason there is to transact, and the thinner the fee base becomes.
Now imagine this: the year is 2140, and the last Bitcoin has been mined. Subsidies are gone, and the network has to pay its security bills solely through transaction fees. But usage hasn’t scaled. There are fewer than 250,000 daily transactions, average fees under $2, while block rewards dry up.
