A Possible Future for Bitcoin
BY GAVIN ANDRESEN
Think of it as a short piece of science fiction; the possibility that the future looks like this is very small, but in all possible futures, I think it’s very likely to happen:
Imagine this: it is 2061.
Due to inflation, the price of BTC is US$6 million-equivalent to US$1 million in 2021.
Miners will receive a reward of 0.006103515625 BTC for each block, plus a transaction fee of approximately 5 BTC for about 4,000 transactions (each transaction is 7,500 USD).
But most BTC transactions will not occur on the BTC network. Most BTC are locked in a multi-signature output protected by multi-party computing and mirrored as a “wrapped” token on another chain. People transfer BTC because they want faster transactions, lower fees, more privacy, or want to invest their BTC in the decentralized financial sector. Or all of the above exist.
The transactions that occur on the BTC main network are of high value, mainly among the super-large accounts of Bitcoin holders (centralized exchanges, central banks, and decentralized multi-party computing addresses that hold all packaged coins).
These big players always maintain the BTC network. They are miners and transaction creators; they don’t care how high transaction fees are, because they charge as much as they pay.
In 2100, big players noticed that mining rewards were basically zero, and that fewer and fewer transactions occurred on the slow, expensive, and zero-privacy BTC network. Therefore, they decided to close it to simplify and save money.
One by one, they closed the “bridge” for moving BTC between chains. Then, they destroy any BTC locked on the BTC chain by sending it to the address 0x000… to ensure that no one can spend it on the BTC network.
In the end, the number of new BTC produced on the BTC network is zero, and the number of BTC circulating on the BTC network is zero. Nothing needs to be fixed, and the chain stops.
But about 20 million BTC still exists and circulate on other blockchains. They are valuable because of their limited number, and BTC is the first scarce digital asset.
