“We should change Bitcoin now in a contentious way to fix the security budget” is basically the same tinkering mentality that central bankers have.

It begins with an overconfident assumption that they know fees won’t be sufficient in the future and that a certain “fix” is going to generate more fees. But some “fixes” could even backfire and create less fees, or introduce bugs, or damage the incentive structure.

The Bitcoin fee market a couple decades out will primarily be a function of adoption or lack thereof. In a world of eight billion people, only a couple hundred million can do an on chain transaction per year, or a bit more with maximal batching. The number of people who could do a monthly transaction is 1/12th of that number. In order to be concerned that bitcoin fees will be too low to prevent censorship in the future, we have to start with the assumption that not many people use bitcoin decades out.

Fedwire has about 100x the gross volume that Bitcoin currently does, with a similar number of transactions. What will Bitcoin’s fee market be if volumes go up 5x or 10x, let alone 50x or 100x? Who wants to raise their hand with a confident model of what bitcoin volumes will be in 2040?

What will someone pay to send a ten million dollar equivalent on chain settlement internationally? $100 in fees per million dollar settlement transaction would be .01%. $300 to get it in a quicker block would be 0.03%. That type of environment can generate tens of billions of dollars of fees annually. The fees that people pay to ship millions of dollars of gold long distances, or to perform a real estate transaction worth millions of dollars, are extremely high. Even if bitcoin is a fraction of that, it would be high by today’s standards. And in a world of billions of people, if nobody wants to pay $100 to send a million dollar settlement bearer asset transaction, then that’s a world where not many people use bitcoin period.

In some months the “security budget” concern trends. In other months, the “fees will be so high that only rich people can transact on chain” concern trends. These are so wildly contradictory and the fact that both are common concerns shows how little we know about the long term future.

I don’t think the fee market can be fixed by gimmicks. Either the network is desirable to use in a couple decades or it’s not. If 3 or 4 decades into bitcoin’s life it can’t generate significant settlement volumes, and gets easily censored due to low fees, then it’s just not a very desirable network at that point for one reason or another.

Some soft forks like covenants can be thoughtfully considered for scaling and fee density, and it’s good for smart developers to always be thinking about low risk improvements to the network that the node network and miners might have a high consensus positive view toward over time. But trying to rush VC-backed softforks, and using security budget FUD to push them, is pretty disingenuous imo.

Anyway, good morning.

This is where we're building a circular Bitcoin economy. The townships outside Mossel Bay.

Does #Bitcoin belong here?

I recognize that Bitcoin is not for everyone.

It is for anyone. Anyone can choose to adopt it. But it is a choice some will inevitably choose not to make.

Does it belong where the unemployment rate is sky high, 40 - 60%, where people live without basics like running water and where you wouldn't expect people to be interested in (or capable of) saving?

It is a question we intend to answer with practical experience. Boots on the ground and in the mud.

And, so far, after two years of running this experiment, it's clear that there's a need for something that gives anyone that choice.

That's the beauty, anyone can make that choice. There's never been anything else quite like it.

When a Bitcoiner is asked what it's like to HODL

Yes, it is a bit unobvious.

So like, you are using iOS or MacOS and you're browsing with Safari.

You access a website which is protected by Cloudflare; perhaps that site is experience some DDoS attack in the most extreme case.

What they can do is show you a captcha and force you to prove you are human to access the site.

Or the privacypass model: some centralized service asks you to solve a few captchas well in advance, then provides you with blinded tokens. Later, when you want to access a site, you can bypass captchas by showing these tokens: they don't reveal you're the same person as the centralized service saw earlier, but they prove you *did* earlier do that captcha.

Apple now changes it a bit: now they are the central server, and, under the hood, the Safari browser sends a request back home to Apple for some blinded tokens. They are given to you because Apple can check that your device is "legit".

Imagine, as the article says, that they stop issuing tokens if your OS is out of date, or, they don't like you etc.

It certainly is an interesting idea/model, because the UX for most users will be perfect: no captchas, ever. But it is also potentially disturbing.

It's too early to be cranky here, enjoy the early days. Support the ppl who write code. Bitch less. Keep vibes up. This is still young and fragile. 🫂✌️