I wrote this piece to discuss a bit of a hole I saw in the recent discussion about high fees on the Bitcoin blockchain. Essentially, there is a distinction between high fees in real terms, and high fees in BTC terms. They signal different things, and while one is positive and inevitable, the other is neither inevitable, nor necessarily a positive.
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100 sats \ 0 replies \ @Arceris OP 5 Jan 2024
Some of this is related to the continuing FUD around "the security budget"... specifically how ordinal inscriptions & BRC-20s have somehow "solved" the mining death spiral issue.
That is a load of crap. Purchasing power (high fees in real terms) is the only thing that matters long term. For instance, if 1 BTC has the purchasing power of $500k, than an aggregate block fee of 25M sats supports the same security budget as the entire block subsidy of 6.25BTC at a purchasing power of $20k.
There is no fundamental need for fees to rise in BTC terms, so long as the purchasing power of BTC itself rises. Therefore, no "tail emission", no PoS, no fee-generating and blockspace congesting apps are needed to support the network (as some seem insistent upon suggesting: https://x.com/twobitidiot/status/1742230409574813765)
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @SimpleStacker 5 Jan 2024
Good point. High fees in real terms is good. High fees in Bitcoin terms is bad.
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