Title: [As it stands the post is flagged, 45 minutes in -- very likely by a fan or investor in the cryptocurrency who is unable to stomach a conversation about an obvious challenge facing the project. I will try to appeal the flag.]<p>Bitcoin aims to give people self sovereignty and financial freedom (who otherwise couldn&#x27;t attain it). That&#x27;s a noble goal, but the project has always had a fundamental problem:<p>Bitcoin only survives if enough miners continue to participate, who spend on electricity to keep the network&#x27;s total hash rate high (enough to fend off a determined foe, including one focusing state-level resources in a short period of time to pull off a 51% attack). Miners do this in exchange for new bitcoin. Though miners&#x27; profitability has recently been challenged by the latest downturn, the market can adjust and is not in immediate jeopardy of collapse. But it will be.<p>The total supply of bitcoin is 21M. Less than 2M remain to be mined in the project&#x27;s lifetime.<p>Eventually the # of bitcoins produced per year will be too low to maintain miner incentives. [Every four years moving forward, half as many bitcoins will be produced. The so-called &quot;halvening&quot; has generally been seen by investors as a positive thing, b&#x2F;c it implies continued scarcity, but they miss the forest for the trees.]<p>Today, the amount of electricity used to safeguard the bitcoin network is roughly equivalent to what a small country like Argentina consumes. Historically, new bitcoins are created to reward miners who pay for that electricity, but that is increasingly less the case.<p>Transaction fees would need to increase to pick up the slack (of lower mining profits). Ever-higher transaction fees will kill the cryptocurrency&#x27;s potential for mass appeal (which companies like Square(Block) have bet big on).<p>The only way that none of this is an issue is if bitcoin continues increasing in value inexorably. To be fair, I&#x27;d say that&#x27;s Bitcoin&#x27;s #1 use case so far has been: a speculative vehicle that consistently rises in value. That will inevitably come to an end, if for no other reason than there isn&#x27;t enough money in the world to sustain its historic rate of climb. It&#x27;s also dubious for something to be branded as digital gold if it requires more new money coming into the system to be viable, in that respect it&#x27;s closer to a Ponzi scheme.<p>Another &quot;out&quot; is if all of the miners can agree to increase the project&#x27;s total supply, something I imagine will be attempted. That will be a huge shit show though, as the brand of bitcoin revolves entirely around scarcity.<p>That&#x27;s the project&#x27;s basic flaw. I set aside bitcoin&#x27;s less-existential problems: extreme energy demands, failure to act as an inflationary hedge, disproportionate use by ransomware gangs, potential vulnerability to quantum crypto-breaking computing, and existence in a space rife with scams (from USDT to UST and all the under-regulated web3 banks and securities-sellers in between, like Celsius).<p>[Old edit, now it can be seen on page 2. It likely tripped HN&#x27;s &quot;flame-war&quot; alarm, which is really a thing: [Interesting, this hit the front page of HN and was shadowbanned(?). I&#x27;m not seeing it as flagged, but now it&#x27;s nowhere in the top 90 posts. Can someone ping a mod, or @dang?]]<p>To address the Lightning network (which settles transactions off-chain quickly for less $) &gt; &quot;Transaction fees will have to grow in the coming decades, but if most users stay on the Lightning Network they won&#x27;t be directly exposed to those fees.&quot; If users are shielded from the future transaction fees b&#x2F;c of Lightning. Ok, well where does the money to safeguard the network come from if mining blocks produces less and less of it (and users don&#x27;t pay fees b&#x2F;c of Lightning)?
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