Gavin Andresen about the theoretical future: Whales control and turn off the BTC network
2 min readA few days ago, former BTC developer Gavin Andresen published an interesting blog post about “the possible future”. The blog post describes in detail the theoretical situation in the BTC network in 2061, when most transactions no longer take place in the network.
Gavin Andresen: $ 6 million for BTC in 2061
Former BTC Core developer said people should take it as a bit of sci -fi, but added, “From all possible futures, I think this one has a good chance of happening.”
“Imagine: it’s 2061,” writes Andresen in his latest blog post. “The price of BTC is six million US dollars – which is about a million in 2021 dollars due to inflation. Miners are remunerated at 0.006103515625 BTC per block, plus transaction fees of about 5 BTC per approximately 4,000 transactions ($ 7,500 per transaction). However, most BTC transactions do not take place on the BTC network.
People have moved their BTCs either because they want faster transactions, lower fees, more privacy, or they want to invest their BTCs in decentralized finance. Transactions that take place on the main BTC network are of high value, mostly between whales (centralized exchanges, central banks and decentralized multi-blockchain addresses that store all packaged coins).
Possibility of zero BTC circulation in the BTC network
Andresen’s theory can very well happen, many other packaged or synthetic BTCs are currently used on other blockchains. Dune Analytics shows that the number of BTCs used through Ethereum is 269,642 BTCs in seven different projects. The Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) project has a total of 205,921 of these coins at the time of writing. Andresen continues his theoretical contribution with super whales overtaking the BTC network.
“These whales control the BTC network,” writes Andresen. “They are miners and creators of transactions; They don’t care how high transaction fees are because they receive as many fees as they pay. In the year 2100, whales will notice that the mining fee is essentially zero, and fewer and fewer transactions are taking place in the slow, expensive BTC network with zero privacy. So they decided to simplify and save money by turning it off, ”adds the former BTC developer.
One by one, they turn off the “bridges” that move the BTC between the chains. It then burns all BTCs locked in the chain by sending them to address 0x000… to ensure that no one can ever spend them on the BTC network. Finally, zero new BTCs are generated in the BTC network, zero BTCs circulate in the network, and the chain stops. ”
About 20 million BTC will circulate in other blockchain networks.
