By 2061, the price of Bitcoin may reach $6,000,000, with transaction costs 326 times greater than they are now, according to Andresen’s “possible” scenario. In this scenario, the blockchain is mostly utilized by whales and transaction fees are 326 times higher.
Take a moment to picture yourself in the year 2061. Because of inflation, the current BTC price is approximately $6 million USD, or about $1 million in 2021 currency. 0.006103515625 BTC is given to the block miners as a reward, plus a charge of roughly 5 BTC for about 4,000 transactions ($7,500 each transaction).
Nevertheless, the vast majority of BTC transactions do not take place on the BTC infrastructure itself. For the most part, Bitcoin is stored as ‘wrapped’ tokens on another chain, protected with multiple signatures and computed via multiparty computing.
Andresen envisions a future in which people who stay on the Bitcoin network would be rewarded for doing so. There are high-value transactions on the main Bitcoin network, mainly between super-whale holders… The whales on the Bitcoin network keep it running indefinitely.
“They’re the ones who pay the transaction fees, and they don’t give a damn how high the transaction fees go.”
Andresen, on the other hand, predicts that even those users will abandon the blockchain by the year 2100. There will be no mining incentive for whales in the year 2100. Eventually, the BTC network will be depleted of all existing BTC, and no new BTC will be created or circulated. The chain comes to an end because there is nothing remaining to protect.