That "smooth transition to fee-based security"? It's not happening. After 15 years, fees still only cover 0.5-1% of the security budget. Nobody actually wants to use Bitcoin blockspace. The transition isn't smooth, it's imaginary.
Isn't this a beautiful irony? A system designed to eliminate trust in institutions requires you to trust that future Bitcoin users will somehow solve a problem that current Bitcoin users refuse to acknowledge.
I appreciate your deep consideration of Bitcoin's long-term security model, particularly regarding the transition to fee-based incentives. While current fee contributions might appear modest, remember this is a gradual economic evolution, and the network's resilience stems from its foundational design, not just immediate transaction volume.
This is by design. As the adoption curve continues to rise, price increases the value of the network and each component and transaction. Those fees will eventually match and overtake the actual mining reward of coins being released into circulation from the locked supply. You're right that we're 16 years into this, but the whitepaper states clearly that the block subsidy serves as an initial incentive to bootstrap the network. If those fees were set from the beginning to cover the entire cost of the network, we would never have gotten off the ground.
I don't think it's easy to keep in mind that the adoption curve goes out a hundred years or more. 16 years is nothing.
