Oddbean new post about login | logout It could (probably not 1M though) but only temporarily. You’ve got to remember that Bitcoin is scarce and finite, so there is definitely an upper limit to the fees that people would be willing to pay. I actually think that fees could go down in Bitcoin terms, but go up in USD terms. Median fee in 2050 might be 20 sats/vb but that might equal $250 dollars for instance.
Thanks - i expect it’s super hard to speculate, but do think there’s any way of estimating how many transactions people will want to perform? I was tempted to make a simulation of agents and use data like number of houses bought in the world, number of business sales, etc to get an idea of how many possible transactions there could be… But it gets super messy. I suppose it won’t be just bitcoin and other systems like you mentioned will take a lot of the load. Any chance you know someone who’s explored this in depth?
There are trillions of transactions which take place annually. Bitcoin can do about 200 million layer one transactions in its current form. FedWire is a interbank settlement network run by the federal reserve, which did 200 million transactions last year. That is the best comparison to Bitcoin in terms of volume and final settlement assurances (although it’s nowhere near as final, nothing in fiat is irreversible). You can use Bitcoin however you wish, so I’m sure there will be people like you and me who buy houses or cars on L1. In 50 years though, L1 will likely be dominated by financial service providers and banks settling between each other, or fedimints and other Lightning providers opening and closing channels. You definitely won’t be buying cars on L1, and you probably won’t even buy a house on it either.
Fascinating!