Napkin math suggests Bitcoin will perish unless its mining incentives change

Capped supply is overrated anyway [1].

[1] https://john-tromp.medium.com/a-case-for-using-soft-total-su...

I would assume this would be somewhat concerning for anybody investing in crypto.

Correct me if I'm misguided - I'm not an economist, let alone a crypto-economist - I would assume the price of a bitcoin would go up as the mining rewards get fewer and fewer, but with Bitcoin being "tied" in a sense with traditional currencies, I wonder how much of a effect the lowering mining rewards would have compared to other global economic factors.

Is this the kind of event where investors/holders hit critical mass where they start selling off their Bitcoin, leaving a bunch of bag-holders? Or, will the idea of having scarcity keep the currency going? I somewhat understand that the USD was a gold-backed currency before, which I would think (again, not an economist), keep the value of the currency more stable, compared to the system we have now? I'm curious if there's any parallels between the old "gold standard" and limited availability of crypto like Bitcoin.

Very interesting. I've always wanted to play around with crypto stuff but haven't sat down and given it a decent go.

Nothing new here. This has been known since 2009-ish.

In essence, if mining incentives go low (and unspoken in title: If transaction volumes stay low so that transaction incentives are also low), then a 51% attack becomes trivial over time b/c miners drop out.

So, either we start using bitcoin a lot, generating significant transaction fee revenue to keep miners in, or it's doomed to an inevitable compromise.

So they are attacking bitcoin as a stable store of value, but not necessarily as a currency. Is there a road to 1000x more daily transactions? I don't know. It's currently more like a blue chip stock than a currency or asset.

A key mistake is to think that mining rewards are measured in coins, whereas they are actually measured in fiat currency. Miners pay their bills in dollars/pounds/euros/etc. To them, the price of a coin matters as much as the mining reward. As Bitcoin becomes scarce to obtain, it's price will skyrocket, offsetting any reduction in mining incentives. It's designed to balance itself.

And of course if it becomes a real problem, the miners will update the codebase.