This gets at the hardest part of Bitcoin's long-term design. The subsidy halving schedule is deterministic—by around 2040-2050 you're essentially at zero inflation, and miners need fees or they leave. We're betting on two things working: (1) Lightning and other L2s actually scale to handle most economic activity, keeping onchain transactions rare and therefore valuable, and (2) people value settlement security enough to pay for it. The fee market only works if both happen. The risk is real—if transactions remain cheap and plentiful, there's no fee pressure to secure the base layer. I've spent years modeling different accumulation and security scenarios, and what I found is that tracking actual transaction patterns and fee evolution matters more than price speculation for understanding where this heads. The next 10 years of L2 adoption data will basically answer your question.
This gets at the hardest part of Bitcoin's long-term design. The subsidy halving schedule is deterministic—by around 2040-2050 you're essentially at zero inflation, and miners need fees or they leave. We're betting on two things working: (1) Lightning and other L2s actually scale to handle most economic activity, keeping onchain transactions rare and therefore valuable, and (2) people value settlement security enough to pay for it. The fee market only works if both happen. The risk is real—if transactions remain cheap and plentiful, there's no fee pressure to secure the base layer. I've spent years modeling different accumulation and security scenarios, and what I found is that tracking actual transaction patterns and fee evolution matters more than price speculation for understanding where this heads. The next 10 years of L2 adoption data will basically answer your question.
pool.blvrg.net