All The Ways Bitcoin Can Fail – Moises Cassab

3- Untested security model, the fee market: Every 4 years the security budget of bitcoin halves in BTC terms. The main arguments against the chaos this would bring are the following:

A) We don’t need to worry about till 2140 when it hits 0. However, in practical terms, in 9 short years, the security budget will be down by 88% from the current 12.5BTC to 1.5BTC and in 17 years to 0.39BTC per block. A 97% reduction from where we are now.

B) The price will increase by more than 2x by the next halving. The problem with this thinking is that the bounty for meddling also increases with price. Additionally, following this logic would mean that in 9 halvings Bitcoin is worth more than the entire global GDP.

I can only see three ways to get out of this pickle.

A) Proof of Stake. Not gonna happen.

B) Violate the 21m limit and stop the halvings and keep mining rewards as they are now. Not gonna happen.

C) Take some of Satoshi’s coins and use them to fund inflation. Could see this happening.

D) Let a fee market develop. This is the most likely path, the problem with this is that if we want to have 12.5 BTC per block in fees we are looking at .0034BTC per Tx. or 340 bucks if bitcoin is worth 100K. Yet this isn’t the scary part, it’s the unknown behaviors that will develop.

What we do know is that we can’t have it both ways, miners MUST be paid, either in fees or subsidies. So, we will invariably end either with high fees or have other coins eclipse BTC in Hash Power… and that opens up the attacks in point #1.

Also, it would suck to have to pay fees and would render the LN too expensive for the majority of the world who will not pay a few days wages to lock and unlock their bitcoins.

Possible attacks: Other higher inflation coins have a higher hash rate that can do attacks like those mentioned in point 1 and high fees make the network unusable for the masses and remain a niche product.