It's the case of totally missing the forest for the trees. In the long run, without Block Subsidy, the only thing keeping Bitcoin going is fee pressure. Transactions. The desire and demand to transact in Bitcoin.
The End.
No, that's not today but eventually it will be.
And if Bitcoin is so great, so necessary, so relevant, and so irreplaceable... a few things are logically true:
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Using Bitcoin becomes an economic imperative - for the individual, for the family, for the business, for the corporation, for the nation.
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Since it's 'imperative' everyone will want and need to use it, therefore the demand to use it will be high.
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Since the 'demand' is high it will be relatively expensive to use. How expensive no-one knows... but if that 3 sats/vb fee costs ~ 40 cents for a transaction today... At 60 sats/vb it's 8$ for a basic transaction.
At 100 sats/vb that's ~13$ for a transaction, or maybe double that (25$) to open a Lightning Channel.
That's at 30x current, sustained blockspace demand and my brothers and sisters if Bitcoin is so great that is fucking cheap.
And if people don't pay and can't pay and aren't interested enough in transacting in Bitcoin, spending 25$ at 30x current blockspace demand to open one Lightning channel to make an unlimited number of cheap and instant transactions using the "greatest money" ever devised...
Then What Future does Bitcoin have?
Mara 'mined' this transaction today in block 894667
It consumed nearly an entire block at ~ 3 sats/vb
and cost the 'transactors' 2,952,726 Sats or ~ 2800$
It had one utxo output... for 6969 sats obviously just to troll.
And mathematically at 30x demand for Blockspace, inevitable if Bitcoin is to become the baselayer global monetary asset it would cost ~ 84000$ to mine.
Because of this I think it's logical, necessary, and consistent to include almost any and all transactions that pay the fee because at real demand for blockspace - NECESSARY FOR BITCOIN'S long-term SURVIVAL ANYWAY - JPEGS become so prohibitive, so expensive for 99.9% of uses...
That we must depend on the fee-market for what is and isn't Bitcoin, for free-market selection, and for Bitcoin's ultimate, long-term survival.
The 'transactors' haven't created Bitcoin out of thin air, they haven't broken consensus, they haven't "stolen" from anyone else, they have paid the fee, and they have gone to a miner directly to publish a NON-STANDARD transaction...
Paying more money than most people on Earth make in a month.
Outbidding the anemic 1 or 2 sats/vb of everything else in the mempool.
So if Bitcoin's fee market, the monetary market cannot compete with the others in the world, if it is and remains so anemic with demand so low as to have blockspace be practically free where a monkey JPEG can outbid other usage...
Then what are we doing? What is the future?
There is serious on-going debate about op_return and whether we need 'more outputs' or 'fewer outputs' or 'more bytes' or 'fewer bytes' or the 'correct number' if that's 80 or 140 or 250 or whatever...
It's like arguing "about the Polkas."
From the Robin Williams film Good Morning Vietnam:
Sir if it is my programming choices I can change. I've been broadcasting the polkas because I thought a certain segment of the men weren't represented by Cronauer's broadcast of rock and roll but I can easily play an occasional Gary Lewis record...
It doesn't make a damn whether you play polkas or don't play polkas... it's military politics, nothing personal. The men just like him better than they do you.
He maliciously and with ill-purposeful intent read unofficial news...
No No No No he made a mistake, we all make mistakes. Now this thing is a delicate balance over here... and I don't want it dependent on a disc jockey. The men want him back, I want him back.
Sir, you heard from the men who don't like my humor, but what about the silent masses who do? And as far as polkas, they are a much maligned musical taste...
Lieutenant you don't know whether you're Shot, Fucked, Powder-Burned or Snake Bit. I don't care about polkas. They're rioting in Way, we're bringing in thousands of troops every month, terrorism's on the up-rise in Saigon. The problems of this country have not one goddamn thing to do with whether you play polkas or don't don't play polkas. The men want him back, I want him back. Reinstate the man.
It's not about the Polkas guys.